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She leaped from the bed, bird wings fluttering
madly in her chest as she pictured his hulking body
filling the doorway. He could do whatever he wanted
to her. If only she d taken the sharp knife from the
kitchen as she d intended. But no, her foolish heart had
told her it was safe to trust the white man s welcoming
smile. Now she had no weapon except her fingernails
with which to fight him off.
But Alan Somma walked past her room without
stopping and went downstairs. Moving close to the
door, Huiann listened to the squeak of the hinges on
the kitchen door as her benefactor left the building.
She breathed a sigh of relief and moved to the open
window to catch a breath of fresh air. The wall of
another building was only a few hand spans away. She
craned her neck to catch a glimpse of the starry sky
above. Below, footsteps caught her attention and she
looked down to see the top of the giant s head and his
wide shoulders as he walked down the narrow alley
toward the street. The pale streaks in his light brown
hair caught the moonlight. She watched until he
disappeared around the corner of the building.
Bonnie Dee 67
Huiann pulled her head back in the window and
removed the blouse and skirt her host had given her,
glad to be rid of the unfamiliar garments. She wrapped
the blanket around her and lay on the pallet, staring at
the shapes of the shadows on the wall.
This day had ended far better than she could ve
hoped, but her good fortune in landing in what seemed
to be a safe place didn t stop melancholy from
washing through her. She feared she would never be
able to earn money to return home. What if she died in
this country with no relatives to mourn or bury her
properly? She would wander in this foreign land as a
ghost forever parted from her ancestors.
She worried about Xie Fuhua. Would he let her go
so easily or send his men to look for her and question
the shopkeepers in this area? Not only did he have a
financial investment in her, but his pride would be
injured that she d dared to run away from him.
As if these thoughts weren t enough to keep her
awake, Huiann s mind kept returning to Alan Somma,
the friendly giant whose looks, speech and manner
were utterly different from any man she d ever met.
Yet she felt certain he wouldn t harm her. She d felt
safe at last.
Her first impression had been that he was ugly
huge and gangly with eerie transparent eyes. But when
he d smiled at her, lights danced across those blue eyes
like sparkles on a river, and she d seen beauty in his
unfamiliar features. How could anyone with a smile
that warm be evil or untrustworthy? After she got over
her initial fear, she even found the man s size
appealing and powerfully masculine. Fireflies flitted
and glowed in her stomach whenever their eyes met.
68 Captive Bride
In the kitchen, when he wasn t looking, she d
studied him. His hair was light brown with strands of
gold and copper running through it. It reminded her of
colorful autumn leaves and she wondered if it was as
soft as fine silk. Would it feel cool or warm sifting
between her fingers?
In the parlor, she d had only a glimpse of him in
the lamplight, reading a book, but she d noticed his
boots were off and one of his socks had a hole in the
bottom. She would darn it for him. The idea of caring
for his house, his clothing, his personal items, struck
her as very intimate, almost wifely, and inappropriate
for a single woman. But she must earn her keep, and
part of her was happy to serve him, pleased to tend to a
man who so clearly needed to be taken care of.
And even as she d feared him coming to her room
tonight and demanding sexual payment for his help, a
small part of her had been disappointed when he
walked past her door.
Such a shameless woman she d become. She
couldn t rein in her galloping mind, which kept racing
toward ideas Madam Teng had planted in it, ideas
about what a man and woman did together in bed,
astonishingly intimate acts performed with mouth and
hands and sexual organs. What would Alan Somma s
large hands feel like touching her body? What would
he look like without clothes on? Her insides turned to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]