Parallel Fire Read Online Free PDF

leadership.
    She focused on the rocks along the shore, tossing them into the water one by one.
    â€œYou shan’t do that forever, I hope?” he called to her, ever his formal self.
    â€œYeah? What else you got in mind, sir?”
    At first she thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then a wicked grin filled his face and he rose to his feet, beckoning her toward him with the crook of his index finger. “Come over here, Anna.”
    â€œOh—I better not.” She laughed nervously, sliding backward on her bottom.
    He took another step closer, to the very edge of the embankment. “Anna,” he told her intensely, leveling her with his midnight gaze, “I said to come over here to me.”
    She shook her head, a soft sigh blowing across her lips. “Why?”
    â€œI need you to understand something.”
    Slowly she stepped to her feet, and surveyed the flowing water below. It was shallow, but she’d get her boots wet.
    â€œWait!” he called, and swung his legs over the edge, dropping down onto the damp rocks. With a bold leap, he crossed the water, stopping just beneath where she stood. “I forgot my manners for a moment. Forgive me.”
    He had to squint as he gazed upward because of the late day sun, and he lifted a hand to shield his eyes. With his other he reached for her. “Jump down to me,” he urged huskily. “I’ll catch you so you won’t get wet.”
    She slid, more than jumped, into his arms, and found herself braced between a pair of powerful, bulging biceps—pinned against an even firmer and more powerful chest. Frozen for several bottomless seconds, she could only stare into his thick-lashed eyes, aware of the intense beating of his heart, of the feel of heat radiating off of his body.
    Then with a slight laugh, an almost self-conscious one, he swung her down beside him onto the rocks where he stood.
    She smoothed her uniform out—as if anything could help it after the hiking and desperate climbing—and then looked up into his eyes. “You wanted to show me something?”
    Without a word he bent his head, lowering it until his face was pressed right up against hers, until they were cheek to cheek. She felt the rough sandpaper of his unshaven face, smelled the woods on him and she stiffened. Waiting. What the hell was he going to do? He moved his lips right up to the tickling spot behind her ear and sucked in a long, staggered breath; then blew it out, whooshing right into her ear. He was scenting her! The bastard hadn’t asked—he’d tricked her.
    She lifted both hands, ready to shove him away from her. But he reached out and pulled her palms tenderly against his chest. “Wait, Anna. Give me a moment. Please.”
    It was all in the way he said please. As if everything in his world depended upon her granting the request, as if he couldn’t live or take another breath if she wouldn’t just let him stay close to her for another moment. She could have melted into the earth right on the spot.
    â€œOh-okay,” she whispered, and once again he drew in a long, hungry breath, pushing his mouth right up to the side of her face, moving it upward along her hairline, then back down to her cheek, nuzzling. He gasped when he finished, making a tight, barely controlled noise in the back of his throat.
    â€œNow me,” he urged in a voice she hardly recognized. Its timbre was that of pure, unmitigated lust. “Scent me, Anna.” Then he added, almost with a touching innocence, “It’s all right.”
    Reaching upward, she clutched both of his shoulders and with a nod of understanding, she pressed her face against his chest and gave a light, tentative sniff—just the shortest little burst to test his scent. It was the very first of the Refarian mating rituals, that need to drink in your potential lover’s aroma. To see if it aroused you.
    That one light burst and he totally infused