Read Online Rebel: The Blades of the Rose by Zoe Archer - Free Book Online Page B

it might look like unbound. Those trousers showed her legs to be long and sleek.
    Hot, swift hunger clawed through him. He saw himself leap toward her, drag her off her horse, and, wrapping her legs around him, thrust into her as she moaned her pleasure. A claiming. Pure visceral demand. He saw it clearly but fought the urge to act. He stayed on his own horse and beat his thoughts and needs down, stunned by their savagery and strength. It had to be the animal within him.
    He didn’t know who the hell he was anymore. He was a stranger to himself, a stranger who was not another man but, incredibly, a wolf, capable of killing with nothing more than tooth and nail. Wanting a woman in the most basic and elemental way. Demanding to make her his. His study of the law meant nothing compared to the unleashed truth of his body and mind.
    She turned in her saddle at his rueful laugh. “You find this amusing?”
    â€œNo. Yes.” He shook his head. “The world’s changed.”
    â€œIt often does.”
    He nudged his horse so that he rode beside her, and considered the clean lines of her profile beneath the brim of her hat. “Tell me what you know.”
    Her shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “I know as much as you.”
    â€œDon’t lie to me. You saw me turn into a wolf, and it didn’t shock you at all, like you’d seen something like that before. You know the men who abducted me, who paid the trapper to capture me. For someone who claims to be ignorant,” he said, his voice hardening, “you sure know a hell of a lot.”
    A slight tension in her jaw drew his gaze. So subtle, the shifts of her emotions, yet he could read them. She wanted to bury those emotions, but there was too much fire in her to be dampened. She debated with herself, what to say, what not to say. She was a keeper of many secrets. He wanted to know them, to know her. The glimpses of herself that he caught tantalized and made him need more.
    â€œTell me, damn it,” he growled.
    Her nod of acquiescence was so small as to be almost invisible. “There is,” she said after a pause, “real magic in the world. The magic of legends and tales. You said you did not believe in it, but, after what happened at my cabin, it is safe to assume you believe now.”
    â€œI’ve got proof,” he said, grim.
    â€œYour mind is open now.” She gave him a quick glance of approbation. “That’s good. You will need to keep it open.” She guided them down a series of switchbacks through the trees, using a trail only she could see. “This magic can be found everywhere, all over the world. When humanity created civilization, it created magic, and placed it into objects both for protection and to coalesce the magic’s power.”
    â€œWhat kind of objects?”
    She gestured with a gloved hand. “Anything, everything. A coin, a knife, even something as mundane as a rock. Such objects are known as Sources.”
    Just the word alone sent a cataract of wakefulness swirling through him. He felt it, the animal inside himself, respond, pacing and alert, as though responding to a long-awaited call.
    â€œThe Sources are prized beyond all reckoning,” she continued. “They must be kept hidden from those who would exploit them. And there are many who do just that.”
    â€œThe men who abducted me,” he deduced.
    Again, she looked approvingly at him, though it was only a slight thaw in the gray ice of her eyes. “They are called the Heirs of Albion, an organization of British men who plunder Sources in order to make Britain master of the globe. If the Heirs had their desire, Britain’s empire would see no limits.”
    â€œThey didn’t come all the way from England just for me,” he objected. “I’m just one man.” He stumbled over that word, knowing he was something more than a man. He felt it now when she spoke, how her voice lured the