Her Tender Tyrant Read Online Free PDF Page B

the house for the night?”
    She bit her lower lip. “I’ll be there soon. You don’t have to wait up for me.”
    He saw the nervousness in her eyes and knew he should be a gentleman and just leave her alone. But he didn’t feel very gentlemanly. “I’ll wait. What kind of a man would I be if I didn’t walk you back to the house?”
    She snorted out her disgust, a convenient cover for her nervousness. “Please. You don’t have a kind bone in your body. So what’s your real reason?”
    His eyes moved to her lips. “Maybe I’m waiting for something else,” he suggested.
    Juliette felt her lips start to burn with his look. That stupid trembling started right back up and no matter how much she tried to talk herself out of it, the man just did stupid things to her insides.
    She tried to come up with an excuse. “I have a lot of work to do down here. I might be a while.”
    “What kind of work? I’ll help you.”
    She rolled her eyes. “Right. Like you know how to muck stalls and all that?”
    One of those huge, muscular shoulders moved up and down in what she suspected was a shrug. “I’ve done it many times before, but you don’t need to muck the stalls. Butch and Dennis will do that when they come in tomorrow morning.”
    Juliette tried to think of something else that would need to be done down here in the stables. “I’ll just tidy up the hay.”
    Marcus looked around. There was very little hay around. Butch kept things neat and tidy, never wanting hay to float around because of the fire hazard. “Looks pretty clean to me.”
    Juliette was struggling. She simply did not want to walk up to the main house with this man. The darkness along the walkway was just too intimate and he was a bit too disturbing for her peace of mind. “Look, why don’t you just mosey on up to the main house and I’ll be there soon?”
    He moved closer. “Why don’t you just gather up all of your papers and walk with me?” His dark eyes moved over her delicate features, sensing her nervousness. “Or are you afraid of being alone with me?” he asked softly, his voice lowering to a husky level. “I promise I won’t bite.” He let that statement float in the heavy air for a moment before he said, “Hard.”
    She gasped and backed up, but there wasn’t any more space. She was trapped here with this man that could touch her in such a fundamental way with just his words. It shouldn’t be like that, but there it was. “I’m not afraid of you,” she whispered, but her eyes dropped to his mouth.
    “Good,” he replied, just as softly. “You shouldn’t be afraid of me. I’m not the enemy.”
    She looked up into his eyes again, her hands plastered against the rough wood of the stall door. “You act like the enemy most of the time.”
    She almost ducked when his hand moved up to her head. But he was only pushing a lock of her hair back behind her ear, his fingers lingering on her earlobe, causing a shiver to race along her nerve endings. “Then I guess I’ll have to change the way I act, won’t I?”
    She shook her head quickly, both to dislodge his hand as well as to deny what he was offering. “No. You just keep going along the way you have been. I like knowing when I’m going to be…”
    She couldn’t finish that statement because his mouth covered hers. She was so surprised by the kiss, she didn’t have time to react. She just stood there, his big, strong hand coming up to cradle her head, tilting it ever so slightly to give him better access to her mouth. She heard someone moan, had no idea it was her and no idea that her hands were now holding onto his thick jacket. If she’d realized that she was actually kissing him back, she probably would have jerked out of his arms. But his kiss was making her stupid. Her brain definitely wasn’t acting properly or she would have backed up and ran as fast as she could to her room. As it was, she moved closer to him, pushing that thick, cotton jacket out of the way so