Devil at Midnight Read Online Free PDF Page B

emperor’s. His slash of a mouth was cruel—or it would have been if she hadn’t seen for herself the depth of attachment he was capable of. Her own anger bled away as she remembered him cradling the poor slain dog.
    “Maybe you could consider me company. I mean, I know what it is to want to be alone with your troubles—”
    “Do you?” He cut her off scornfully. “Do you really?”
    Grace pulled herself straighter. “Doubt what you like about me. That I’m an expert in.”
    Their gazes locked together, both narrowed, both certain of their own rightness. Grace wasn’t accustomed to staring directly at other people. She’d been trained young not to issue such challenges. Keeping her eyes on the floor was safer, but she forced herself to hold Christian’s gaze. No point not to, since she no longer had a body that could be hurt. Something passed between them as their standoff lengthened, thickening the air with electricity. Grace had the fleeting and strange sensation of increasing weight in her limbs.
    Whatever he was feeling, Christian’s lean cheeks darkened. “You bear the hair of a witch,” he said.
    “Fine,” she countered, searching her brain for some period-appropriate insult. “You have the manners of a toad.”
    She wasn’t sure he cared about his manners, but his nostrils flared. “I want you gone.”
    “I’d rather not be dead. Looks like we’re both doomed to disappointment.”
    “You refuse to depart?”
    “I’m not refusing,” she gritted in exasperation. “I don’t know how to leave. Someone else sent me here. And since I am here, maybe you could put something on!”
     
     
    C hristian spun away from her in frustration, stubbornly ignoring the wild pounding of his pulse. He was arguing with a ghost. An honest-to-goodness specter had taken up residence in his room.
    Like anyone, Christian had heard tales of supernatural beings: sirens and succubi and beautiful death omens who collected soldiers’ souls on the battlefield. He simply did not comprehend why he would meet one—or why his ghost had to look like this.
    If she had been more ghastly, maybe he could have run. Instead, she was young and pretty and, apart from her raiment, all too innocent looking. She was, in truth, precisely the sort of female he did not let himself dream about. He was a damned soul, a mercenary who killed for coin. By his very nature, women like that were not meant for him.
    His member thickened, deepening his resentment as he yanked his hose up his legs. With no doublet to tie the points to, the garment drooped, but he saw no reason to dress more formally for a shade. If she disliked the look of his body, she could go back where she had come from!
    He braced himself before he turned to her again.
    The girding did no good. Her beauty hit him harder the second time. Her witch’s hair was as dark as rubies, its shining waves spilling down her arms. Her eyes were a clear light green, wide in their frame of lashes, big in her creamy-skinned, sculpted face. He could not fathom by what means she appeared so solid. Her lush red mouth looked perfectly kissable, light glinting off the edge of one pearly tooth as her lips parted.
    His gaze slid lower, helpless not to take in the rest of her. By heaven, her breasts were lovely, full and round and sitting high on her rib cage as if begging to be cupped. In contrast, her hips were narrow, almost boyish ... until they ran into long, shapely legs. Whether a man be saint or sinner, he would have to be dead not to want to be wrapped in those silky thighs—wrapped and squeezed and clutched in amorous congress until the very last of his breath gasped out.
    Christian swallowed at the thought of that. He was young and such things happened, but even he was taken aback when his pike hammered up in the space of two hard heartbeats. Her linen shift did little to shield the dark red triangle at her queinte.
    If, as she implied, an angel had dressed her, the creature must have had