A Midsummer Night's Sin Read Online Free PDF Page A

actress. “Then you do not believe me?”
    “No more than you believe me, no. But does it matter? I don’t imagine you’ve brought me out here for an exchange of names.”
    “And why have I brought you out here?” he asked,even as he lifted the silken hood back and off her head, revealing a mass of artfully placed curls nearly black in the dim light.
    “I’m not entirely certain. I was rather thinking it was to kiss me.”
    “To kiss you,” Puck repeated, taken aback. She said the words as if they were dangerous in the extreme. “And you came here to be kissed?”
    “I didn’t think so, no. But now that I am here, I may as well be hanged for a sheep as well as a lamb, don’t you think? I’m convinced my—my companion is taking full advantage of this rather exciting bit of freedom. The masks, you know. A stranger’s kiss in the moonlight.”
    Puck’s brain was sending out alerts his libido pushed aside as ridiculous. She was an actress, that was all. She was most probably playing the coy maiden in hopes that the novelty would excite him.
    And her ploy was working, probably even better than she had hoped. His mind was being seduced by her feigned naiveté, while the rest of him was growing hard with a base passion he hadn’t experienced since he’d been a randy youth who could have embarrassed himself at the mere thought of touching a female breast.
    “Then, my queen of the fairies, we will begin with a kiss.”
    Because he thought she would wish him to play along with her small charade, and because the idea of doing so only increased his growing passion, Pucklightly cupped her chin and leaned in to put his mouth to hers.
    Oh, and she was good. She did not disappoint. She allowed the kiss, but did nothing to encourage him to deepen it. She did not put her arms around him, did not immediately begin to grind her body against his, the sure signal of a professional who wished the act over and done and several gold pieces slipped into her purse.
    But she’d miscalculated, badly. Her supposedly untutored mouth presented not only a challenge, but a frisson of delight that went straight to Puck’s manhood, which now strained against his trousers.
    A kiss. A single kiss, and he was ready to set her up in her own apartments, give her anything she wanted: diamonds, pearls, her own carriage and stable. One kiss, and he was the fool he laughed at, enslaved by a woman whose cold-blooded profession it was to jumble the wits of idiots like himself.
    Idiots like his own father.
    He lifted his face away from hers and looked into her magnificent eyes.
    He saw no guile. No greed. No reaction at all save what might be termed confusion.
    Oh yes, she was good.
    But he was better.
    This time he didn’t approach her gently. He swooped, openmouthed. He took her into his arms, his lips slanted across hers, his tongue probing, his teeth nibbling, his hands traveling down her back and then coming up and around to cup her lush breasts. He insinuated his right thigh between her legs, pressing upward against her sex.
    He kissed her mouth, her throat, bent her back over his arm to press his lips against the smooth expanse of skin above the neckline of her gown.
    And all the while, he crooned to her in French. How lovely she was. How he was being made mad by her virginal game playing. What he would do to her to reward her, how he would do it, how she would know she had never been made love to before, no matter how many men she’d had.
    And she whispered back to him: “I have a hat pin poised to stick in your ear, and I will do it if you do not release me at once.”
    The words were clear, and they had been pronounced in flawless French.
    Puck hauled her upright and put her away from him, staring at her in astonishment. This was no whore for hire. He’d been duped. By God, had he been duped? And by some idiot slip of a girl out for a lark?
    “ What did you say?”
    “Nothing half so horrible as you did, I’m sure,” she answered as