At His Mercy Read Online Free PDF Page A

until they were nothing
but motion, up, down, up, down, the headboard knocking the wall to
their beat.
    He watched her when she cried out, her
eyes closing, her chin lifting. She thrashed beneath him, all limbs
and tremors and tight milking grips. He waited … He waited
…
    He couldn't wait anymore. He gave into
the needs of his cock and exploded, a burst of sensation and semen
that grabbed his balls and squeezed until his toes
tingled.
    He shuddered, collapsed onto his elbows
to keep from crushing Lise with his weight. When she mindlessly
stroked the side of his face, he nearly fell asleep. And when he
saw satisfaction play over her features, he knew he'd done his job
well.
    But that didn't mean he was through
getting what he wanted.

Chapter Six
     
    Lise woke in the middle of the night.
The soft glow from the lamp hanging in the room's corner allowed
her to see that the other side of the bed was empty, but something
told her she wasn't alone.
    She waited before turning over,
listening, remembering, feeling a new rush of heat as the night
came back. Feeling, too, less than sure of herself, and that
surprised her.
    If she'd been alone the morning after
the bar and Donovan's bedroom, she could relish the memories the
rest of the way to New Orleans. But he was still here, there was
music to face, and she knew he was waiting.
    She pushed up, glanced toward the
corner with the lamp, found him in the large wing chair done up in
a navy and red country plaid. He sat on the clothes he'd tossed
there earlier, and he was as naked now as when he'd stripped them
off.
    The lamp cast a pool of light over his
shoulders, and his skin glowed as if sun-kissed, and strands of
hair a nearly blue black caught the light and gleamed. His face was
shadowed, though his eyes sparkled, and the stubble along his jaw
gave definition to the hard lines of his face.
    She swallowed, taking in the breadth of
his chest, the muscles there, the dark hair cropped close. His abs
flexed as he breathed, and the arrow of hair trailing down his
center drew her gaze lower where his thighs were spread
wide.
    His penis rested on a thatch of dark
hair, and as she stared it twitched and thickened. She wet her
lips, returned her gaze to his. She didn't know how much of her
story to tell him. Or if she owed him anything at all.
    They were ships passing in the night,
and a few short hours from now she'd be gone, leaving him here,
leaving a piece of herself with him. She wanted him to think of her
fondly, yet found herself blurting out the truth.
    "I'm married."
    He'd been looking at her. He hadn't
been moving. But it seemed as if he grew even more still, more
focused. Or maybe it was the air in the room that quieted, allowing
the heavy shift of tension to squeeze.
    "I see," he finally said.
    She shook her head. "No. You don't. You
can't. The marriage is over."
    "Officially?"
    In her mind, in her heart, yes. And for
months. "The papers were being delivered to … him, to Mark, at the
same time I was leaving Atlanta."
    Another minute passed. A second. A
third followed. The vein at his temple throbbed, and his fingers
made dents in the plush chair arms. "Did he know they were
coming?"
    Did it matter? "He's a bit of a control
freak. No. He's a major control freak. It wouldn't have worked if
he'd known."
    "You needed to be gone when he got
them."
    Nodding, she pulled the sheet to her
waist. "It was the only way I had to get out of there."
    A new silence settled around them.
Donovan took a moment, then leaned forward, elbows on his knees,
fingers tightly laced. His eyes, when he looked at her, conveyed a
frightening wealth of anger.
    And his voice, when it came, scraped
her nerves with its painful calm.
    "Did he hurt you?"
    Tears welled and burned. Her eyes, her
nose, her throat. "Physically, no."
    She left the admission at that, hoping
it was enough. Thinking it should be easy to explain those
tumultuous years to a stranger. But Donovan had stopped being a
stranger, and baring