Heiress Behind the Headlines Read Online Free PDF Page A

happens when you get bored.” He let out a small laugh. “The whole world has, I imagine.”
    “I’m very easily bored, and just as easily photographed, it’s true,” she agreed, forcing the breathlessness back into remission. Covering the hurt she shouldn’t allow herself to feel with a sniff. “I’m bored right now.”
    He only smiled.
    “While you’re here so unexpectedly,” he said, his fingers drawing out an intoxicating rhythm inside of her, making it pulse deep into her core, “we might as well remind ourselves of the one thing we’re really, really good at, don’t you think?”
    She had the urge to play dumb, to ask him what he meant, but the glittering light in his gaze stopped her. She was afraid he would demonstrate what he meant, and how could she possibly survive that? He thought she was the same person she’d been eight months ago, the same person she’d been five years ago. Brittle, hard. Empty. Capable of withstanding anything without truly letting it touch her.
Numb.
He would treat her like the girl he’d known then, that ghost of herself, that walking shadow. And in so doing,he would ruin whoever she was now, softer and quieter and certainly no match for the likes of him.
    She couldn’t allow it. She wouldn’t.
    But she also couldn’t let him see that she’d changed. It would end the same way, and she would lose so much more. He would assume it was a trick, a game. He would accuse her of ulterior motives. And Larissa couldn’t defend herself, could she? She couldn’t explain what had happened to her, much less who she’d become—she was still in the process of figuring that out.
    And she was so deathly afraid of the answer.
    “I thought you said one taste was more than enough,” she tossed back at him lightly, surprised to find that the words still stung. She knew they shouldn’t. What was one more low opinion? She smiled up at him, mysterious, unknowable. The Larissa Whitney promise. Her impenetrable armor. “But no need to worry. Most men, like you, can’t even begin to handle me.”
    His smile bordered on feral. She felt it hard in her belly, like a kick, and then his eyes went dark.
    She stopped breathing.
    “Watch me,” he said hoarsely.
    And then his hands were on her shoulders, warm and sure. And she was lost.
    He pulled her close, his lips twisting slightly into something too hard to be a smile, and then he took her mouth in a searing, impossible kiss.

CHAPTER THREE
    I T WAS worse than she’d remembered, when she’d allowed herself to remember him at all. It was better.
    So much better.
    Hotter, sleeker, rolling through her like a tornado, tearing her apart, making her shake as the wild passion claimed her. Her hands found his narrow hips, the taut, smooth muscles of his back, and despite herself, she clung. His skin was so warm, so firm, blazing through the tight shirt he wore, making her long to reach beneath it.
    She felt him everywhere.
    He kissed her again and again, as if he was as swept away in this fire, this madness, as she was. As if he never meant to stop. Her toes curled against the floorboards. Her eyes fell shut, her back arched, bringing her closer to his drugging heat. She ached everywhere he touched her, and ached even more where he did not. She melted. She burned.
    She was in so much trouble.
    She was not drunk this time, feeling daring and careless and out of control after a long night at a chaotic party. She was not numbed and halfway to dead inside. There was nothing to dull the exquisite force of him or her own helpless, needy reaction, and however dangerous she had believed him to be before, she knew now she had greatly underestimated his power over her.
    She was such a fool.
    And still she kissed him back, angling her mouth for a better fit, moving closer in his arms, pressing up against the hard wall of his chest. She couldn’t seem to help herself. It was as if he’d been created just for her, carefully constructed to make her lose her