The Pleasures of Winter by Evie Hunter Page B

that. Hysteria, perhaps.
    He met her feeble joke with a stony expression that chilled her.
    ‘Jack, I –’
    His hand locked around her wrist. ‘Excuse me, gentlemen, I believe I need to have a word with Ms Marshall in private.’

7
    Jack grabbed her wrist and hauled her off. She tried to resist being pulled along like a recalcitrant child, but he was impossible to oppose. It was like trying to resist a tsunami. He was a force of nature. A really pissed-off force of nature.
    NYI
reporter left bruised by Hollywood superstar
. But she realized that, though his grip was manacling her wrist, it wasn’t quite tight enough to leave bruises. She absolutely refused to admit that any tiny part of her liked his grasp on her. The look on his face and the set of his jaw warned her that whatever was coming would not be pleasant. Jack Winter was not thinking sexy thoughts. He obviously wanted to let fly at her without being inhibited by the other two. Well, so be it.
    He dragged her into a cave she hadn’t noticed. ‘What is this?’ she asked, hoping to distract him. ‘Did you and Kevin find it?’ She glanced around the cave, trying to distract herself from the six-foot tower of testosterone in front of her. The cave was dry and appeared to be spider-free. In the centre it was tall enough for Jack to stand upright. ‘Nice, I like what you’ve done with the place.’
    He ignored her flippancy and turned to face her. ‘Do you have any idea just how badly you behaved?’
    He seemed to be waiting for an answer, so she said, ‘It wasn’t that bad. Nobody got hurt.’
    It was the wrong thing to say. Rage lit his eyes, but ominously, his tone become more measured. ‘Nobody got hurt because I came back. If you had been on your own, you or Zeke would have been killed. All because you didn’t do what I told you. What the hell were you thinking?’
    Abbie was tempted to lie, to say she had forgotten or hadn’t been able to do it. ‘I had a million things to do. Zeke was moaning at me to fix his sling again and then when I saw the ants I –’
    His dark expression didn’t change a fraction, so she pressed on with the words, even though she knew they would make things worse. ‘I didn’t want to. I’m just sick of being ordered around. Really, it was your fault.’
    For a second his eyes widened, then they became dangerous slits. ‘I can’t believe you just said that.’
    She wished the cave were darker so that she wouldn’t have to see the expression on his face. She was in a world of shit here. Then she braced herself. ‘What are you going to do about it?’
    ‘This.’ She never saw him move. One moment he was standing there, looming over her like a bad-tempered teacher. The next he had picked her up and was striding to the side of the cave. By the time she had caught her breath, he had sat down on a rock and hauled her over his knees.
    ‘I warned you there would be consequences, Abbie. Now you can deal with them.’
    No! He couldn’t possibly mean to spank her. She had joked about it before, but because the idea was a joke. It didn’t happen in the twenty-first century to women like her. She fought like a wildcat, determined to get out ofthis undignified position and away from him. ‘Let go of me, you bastard.’
    He held her easily. ‘You asked for this, Abbie, now you’re going to get it.’
    He was serious. He was actually going to do it. Abbie struggled furiously, not caring if she fell on to the ground, as long as she got out of this appalling situation. His thighs were rock hard, and dug into her chest and stomach. Blood flowed to her head, making her dizzy. She screamed with rage and tried to get leverage to push herself up again, but her hands and feet barely touched the ground and his grasp was implacable.
    ‘Let go of me, you son of a bitch, you can’t do this.’ The rage was real, but she was disgusted to hear how breathless her voice sounded. She raked with her fingernails, trying to claw him, but