His Christmas Captive Read Online Free PDF Page A

family's power for centuries. He didn't care that she was the most
inappropriate bride he could possibly have chosen and that she had used his
honor against him. He didn't care about any of it.
    He only
wanted her—badly—and if they had to fight in order to light that spark between
them…he was happy to fight.
    He was almost
smiling in anticipation when he swung into the master suite, expecting to find
her once again tucked away in the small sitting room she preferred. But instead
he stopped dead, his heart hammering against his chest in a manner he refused
to examine too closely.
    She was
curled up on the far side of the great bed, fully dressed, her hands beneath
her cheek. From the doorway, he could see only the shape of her in the low lights
that spilled from the dressing room. That perfect hourglass that called to the
male in him, that delectable shape that had inspired artists and lovers
throughout the ages. The beauty of a woman's curves— his woman's
curves—nearly took his breath.
    He moved to
the side of the bed and looked down at her, aware that he was scowling again,
though he could not have said why. In sleep, she appeared younger than she
ought to, and infinitely more fragile. He saw not a scheming tramp who'd set
out to ensnare him, but an exhausted, beautiful woman. His gaze shifted to her
mouth, that wicked, deliciously carnal mouth.
    His hand
reached out of its own accord and he watched it as if it belonged to someone
else, watched his fingers trace a pattern over the flushed, warm satin of her
cheek. She murmured something in her sleep, incoherent and soft, and then
settled against the bed.
    He should not
have felt that clutching sensation in his chest, as if his heart were involved
in this. He should not have felt the quiet of the room and the blanketing
silence of the snow outside as some kind of sacrament. The lust that had
spurred him into coming here melted into something else, something far more
dangerous.
    But he could
not seem to help himself. He crawled onto the bed beside her, yielding to a
compulsion he did not dare study too closely. For a while he lay next to her,
soaking in the peace of it. The quiet sense of belonging that he now admitted
had always existed, no matter what betrayals were piled on top of it.
    And still she
slept. Even when he moved closer and pulled her into his chest. Even as he held
her, stroking her hair and freeing the wild golden curls from the tight bun
she'd kept them in. Even when his lips gently brushed the crown of her head.
And even as he drifted off himself, holding her as if the only thing that had
ever been between them was this.
    ***
    Lucy was
deliciously, impossibly warm. She woke slowly, savoring the heat, and it took
her a long time to realize where it was coming from. She was sprawled across Rafi's
chest like a cat in a sunbeam.
    Gasping, she
reared back—to find Rafi wide-awake and watching her.
    "Let go
of me." But her voice was the barest thread of sound. His fascinating
mouth quirked.
    "I am
not holding you," he pointed out, entirely too rationally. Very nearly
amused. "You are lying on me."
    "I only
lay down for a moment," she began, but then he shifted beneath her. The
slide of his body against hers made her shiver, as a heat of a different kind
washed over her, humming into something molten and incandescent. Nor was he
immune. She could feel the evidence of his desire, hard between them. She could
see the flare of passion in his dark gray gaze.
    It would be
so much easier if she didn't want him, too. If she didn't love him.
    "I
cannot divorce you," he said then, his hands moving to tangle in her hair.
"I cannot let you leave. Qaderis keep their vows. They do not bow to the
whims of modernity and merrily divorce."
    Lucy couldn't
seem to catch her breath. She couldn't seem to pull away. She felt caught in
his eyes, suspended. Her breasts were too full, pressed against the hard wall
of his chest.
    "What do
you know about vows?" she asked. "You keep