Read Ten Things I Love About You for Free Online

drunk lemonade with him in the corner, trying to engage him in conversation, hoping and praying that something—anything—might prove to be of more interest than her breasts.
    But then he had somehow maneuvered her into the corridor. Annabel didn’t quite know how he had done so. Something about a friend, and a message that needed to be relayed, and then before she knew it, he had her in a darkened corner, pressed up against the wall.
    “Good Lord,” he groaned, grabbing one of her breasts with his beefy hand, “I can’t even fit my fingers around it.”
    “Lord Newbury,” Annabel cried, trying to twist out of his grasp. “Stop, please—”
    “Wrap your legs around me,” he ordered, slamming his lips against hers.
    “What?”
She tried to say it, tried to scream, but she could barely even move her mouth against the pressure.
    He grunted and shoved against her, his arousal hard and angry against her belly. One of his hands grabbed at her bottom, trying to move her leg the way he wanted it to go. “Lift up yourskirt if you have to. I want to see how wide you can go.”
    “No,” she gasped. “Please. I can’t.”
    “The morals of a lady and the body of a harlot.” He chuckled and squeezed her nipple through the thin fabric of her dress. “The perfect combination.”
    Panic was rising in Annabel’s chest. She’d dealt with unwelcome advances before, but never from a peer of the realm. And never from a man she was expected to marry.
    Did that mean he expected liberties from her? Before he even asked for her hand?
    No, he couldn’t possibly. He might be an earl, used to having his every command obeyed, but surely that did not mean he thought he could compromise a respectable young lady.
    “Lord Newbury,” she said, trying to sound stern. “Release me. Immediately.”
    But he only smiled and tried to kiss her again.
    He smelled like fish, and his hands were big flabby things, and she just could not bear it. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. She hadn’t been expecting romance, or true love, or—Dear God, she didn’t know what she had been expecting. But not this. Not this awful man up against a wall in a strange house.
    This couldn’t be her life. It simply could not be her life.
    She didn’t know where she got the strength; he must have weighed nearly twenty stone. But she managed to wedge both of her hands between them, and then she shoved, hard.
    He staggered backward, cursing as he hit a table and nearly lost his balance completely. Annabel had just enough time to yank her skirts up over her ankles and run. She had no idea if Lord Newbury gave chase; she didn’t pause to look behind her until she’d made it through a set of French doors and found herself in what had to be a side garden.
    She leaned against the exterior stone wall and tried to catch her breath. Her heart was pounding, and her skin was now covered with a thin sheen of perspiration, which was making her shiver in the cooler air.
    She felt dirty. Not inside. Lord Newbury could not make her doubt her own values and conscience. But on the outside, on her skin, where he’d touched her …
    She wanted to bathe. She wanted to take a cloth and a fat bar of soap and erase every last memory of him. Even now, her right breast felt funny where he’d grabbed her. It wasn’t pain. It just felt wrong. Her whole body felt like that. Nothing hurt. There was an indescribable sense of wrongness.
    In the distance she could see the light from the torches in the back garden, but here it was nearly dark. Clearly this part of the property had not been meant for partygoers. She shouldn’t be here, that much was obvious, but she could not bring herself to return to the party. Not yet.
    There was a stone bench halfway across the lawn, so she walked over and plopped herself down, allowing herself an audible, “Ooof!” when she landed. It was the sort of unfeminine noise,accompanying the sort of inelegant motion, that she could not permit herself