No Longer Forbidden? Read Online Free PDF

been perversely determined not to fall under her spell, too irritated by how easily everything came to her. At a similar age, Nic had spent his holidays haunting the empty rooms of his boarding school. Olief hadn’t wanted his wife to know about his indiscretion, so Nic hadn’t entered the man’s world until the woman had died and Cassandra had come on the scene. Her indiscretion had had an open invitation to spend school breaks in Olief’s house. Asan afterthought Nic had been asked to join them, but he’d been traveling by then, shedding light on the world’s darkest injustices, inexplicably drawn into following Olief’s footsteps into hard-hitting news journalism.
    When Nic had come to Rosedale after those stints abroad it hadn’t been for happy family time. In one way, at least, Olief had understood Nic. Olief had recognized Nic’s need to retreat somewhere remote and quiet because Olief had experienced a similar need himself when he’d done that sort of work. The island’s tranquility had kept Nic coming here, but the visits hadn’t been comfortable—not when Olief showered affection on Rowan and she dominated everyone’s attention.
    Nic had done everything in his power to ignore and resist her, but she’d still managed to penetrate his shield. He was standing here because of her, wasn’t he? Veering from deep insult that she’d actually thought he would leave her to die to stark fear at how close a call she’d had. That near miss unsettled him more than he wanted to admit. He told himself it was its similarity to the other deaths that made his blood run cold, but on the heels of that thought came the recollection that his blood hadn’t stayed cold. He’d nearly let nature take its course in the form of raw, debaucherous lust.
    His groin tightened in remembrance of the feel of her, the press of her hips.
    Idiot . Revealing his weakness had been a mistake. He hadn’t meant to, but the cork had popped under the pressure of saving her from danger and finally, after two years of reimagining it, holding her.
    Bloody hell—why did she have to feel tailor-made for his form? The perfect height. A slender yet curvaceous shape that could wrap around him without smothering his need for space and autonomy. Her breasts, as natural asGod had made them, had crushed against his chest with nipples so hardened by the cold he’d felt them like pebbles through both their shirts. He clenched his fists, still longing to warm those tight peaks with his tongue until they were both hot all through.
    Naked, and burningly aroused, he tilted back his head and struggled against the foe that had been stalking him for too long. He didn’t recall when the switch had happened. Sometime between hearing she’d been caught with a boy at school and seeing her climb from the pool at eighteen. Suddenly he’d been unable to ignore her, or the singe in his blood whenever he was around her.
    Then she had turned twenty, drunk her way to the bottom of a champagne bottle and, with no other man in the vicinity, turned her wiles on him.
    Nic had tried not to let temptation get the better of him. He’d at least gone to the beach to avoid her. She’d followed, determined to get her man.
    Nic had rules. Drunk women were never on the menu, no matter how willing they appeared to be. She’d sidled up to him, though, and he’d succumbed to a moment of weakness. One kiss. One warning to a reckless young woman who needed a lesson in putting herself at a man’s mercy. One peek through the door into carnal paradise.
    And Olief had seen it from the house. He hadn’t seen Nic push her away, hadn’t heard Nic read her the Riot Act. By the time Olief had reached the beach Rowan had been stumbling her way back to the house, and Nic had finally earned a hard-won moment of privacy with Olief.
    It had been punctured by words Nic would never forget. “What are your intentions, Nic? Marriage?”
    Olief’s appalled disbelief, sharp with disparagement, had