Desire In His Eyes Read Online Free PDF Page B

stood quietly, facing each other.
    “Listen to me very carefully, Juliette, for I only intend to say this once.”
    The edge in his voice caused her heart to beat faster than usual. She ignored it. “You have my undivided attention.”
    Harrison eyed her skeptically. “The ship and my crew are not here for your amusement, Juliette. You have inconvenienced me beyond all measure, but I will not have you causing any trouble or inconvenience to my crew as well. They have a great deal of work to do and cannot be sidetracked from it. And the last thing they need is to be distracted by the likes of you.”
    She bristled at his attitude. “What have I done?”
    “Don’t play the innocent miss with me. You know entirely well the effect you have upon men, and you should leave poor Robbie alone. By the look on that boy’s face, he’s already half in love with you.”
    Juliette laughed at his presumptuousness. “Pardon me,” she paused before adding, “Captain…” She gave him a pointed look. “But were you not the one who ordered him to bring me this hat?”
    “Yes, I did. That tweed cap of yours is entirely unsuitable to protect you from the sun.”
    “Then I don’t see why you are laying the blame at my door. A young man is smitten with me. I cannot be faulted for that, now can I?”
    “Yes you can, damn it!”
    Juliette stepped back without thinking. Captain Fleming’s eyes had turned a cold and dark gray, like the color of a storm-threatened sky.
    “You are disrupting my entire ship.”
    Again Juliette laughed at his overstating of the situation. “Your entire ship? Is such exaggeration truly necessary, Captain Fleming? I spoke to one young boy, at your request.”
    “Yes, but you were distracting him from his duties. This ship requires the constant attention of my crew. You cannot be a diversion for them.”
    “It was not my intention to be.” She placed her hands on her hips. “I was simply scrubbing the deck, as you ordered me to. You were the one who told Robbie to bring me this hat in the first place. We were merely having a civil conversation as people tend to do when they—”
    “Stop talking.”
    Juliette was so taken aback by his command that she ceased speaking in midsentence. He stepped closer to her. Losing all sense of what they had been arguing about, she stared up at Captain Harrison Fleming.
    He leaned in toward her and tore the straw hat from her head, her long black hair spilling around her. Stunned, it seemed her heart stopped and she could not draw a breath. As she sensed what he was about to do, a ripple of exhilaration raced through her entire body. In a quick movement, Harrison pulled her against his chest, lowered his mouth over hers, and kissed her.
    Juliette could not breathe. She could not think. She did not laugh. She did not wriggle away, nor could she. His arms were wrapped around her like a vice. For the first time in her life it seemed she could do nothing. Nothing except kiss him back. In an instant, she lost herself completely in the feel of his warm lips upon hers. It was like nothing she had ever known or expected. Juliette had been kissed before, certainly. Many times, in fact. But this…
    Kissing Captain Harrison Fleming was something else altogether.
    She felt herself spinning, her pulse racing, her world careening around her. His lips were insistent, pressing against her, playing with hers. There was the faintest hint of sea salt on his lips. His tongue ran across her lips sending a shiver through her. Her head tilted back and her mouth opened, and he slipped his tongue within her mouth. All reason fled from her. Her tongue met with his and the intimacy shocked her to her toes.
    Perhaps she had never truly been kissed after all.
    Perhaps those stolen kisses with eager young gentlemen were not real kisses. They had seemed impersonal and well, inconsequential , in comparison to the magnitude and intensity of this kiss with Captain Fleming. Those kisses had not made her