Always a Temptress Read Online Free PDF

For the first time in a decade, she remembered what it had felt like to anticipate, and it shredded her control.
    “Or would you like to offer a bit of incentive not to look?” he murmured into her ear. “I’m sure it wouldn’t be difficult. From what I hear, it’s your favorite thing to do.”
    And then, Harry made his mistake. He took that last step as if he had the right, as if she would never think to defend herself. 
    He wrapped one hand around her throat. Not squeezing, just controlling. It was too much. She felt the familiar wings of terror beating against her ribs. She had nowhere to run.
    She did the only thing she could. She rammed her knee straight up into his bollocks.

C hapter 2
    H arry made it down three flights of stairs before finally giving in to the agony in his body. Taking a moment to make sure he was alone, he leaned back against the wall and bent over, eyes closed, hands on knees, and let out a long, low groan.
    He shouldn’t have let his anger get the better of him. He’d had no business picking Kate up. If he’d been more rested, he wouldn’t have made that mistake. He would have let Frank deal with her and kept his distance, which had been his intention all along. It would have saved him from not just the fresh pains in his chest, but the hot ache in his balls.
    He should never have agreed to this. He should have kept to his original plan and gone home after the wedding. He’d promised himself, lying on that shattered Belgian field among the screaming horses and groaning men, that he was finished with world events. No more Rifles or army or extra little missions he’d found himself taking on during the last ten years. The future would hold nothing for him but the clean, strong lines of construction, the peaceful dust of history, the immutable laws of mathematics.
    And yet here he was again. And it was all Kate’s fault.
    Even so, he owed her an apology for what had just happened. He had never treated a woman so badly. He’d meant to crowd her a bit, push her into an indiscretion. Instead, the minute he’d stepped close, all of his hard-won discipline had disintegrated. Just the scent of her had damn near destroyed him.
    It was her perfume, an oddly discordant scent of jasmine and vanilla, and the clean, fresh-air scent of her hair. His body remembered as if he’d held her last only a week ago, as if the betrayals and lies, the years of separation, had never happened. His body didn’t give a damn about betrayal. It wanted her just as badly as it always had. It wanted her flat on her back, legs spread, eyes soft with desire, just for him. A duke’s daughter offering herself to plain Mr. Harry Lidge.
    He wasn’t plain Harry Lidge anymore. He was Major Sir Henry Lidge, knighted for conspicuous bravery, friend of Wellington and Rothschild and Nash. The squire’s son who had dared to fall in love with a duke’s daughter had come far in the world. But she was still a duke’s daughter. And he’d lost his taste for dukes’ daughters ten years ago.
    Except that it seemed he hadn’t. Even throbbing like hell, his balls clenched with the thought of having her in his arms again. Even disillusioned and furious with her, he couldn’t get the memory of her out of his mind: the old echoes of her surprised sighs when he’d touched her; the velvet-soft span of her skin as they’d nestled close, hip-to-hip, belly-to-belly; her plump, luscious breasts flattened against his chest.
    And her eyes. Grass green, with little flecks of yellow that lit like chandeliers when she was excited, that softened to velvet when she comforted or kissed. Those eyes had once been the most beautiful thing about her, as changeable and vibrant as a moor beneath passing clouds. He had fed on those eyes, deliberately inciting mischief and outrage and glee just to see the emotions flare. He had seen the sun in those eyes.
    Now, though, her eyes were sharp as shattered glass; brittle, knowing, sly. A much better