Promise of the Rose Read Online Free PDF

openmouthed and thorough. His hands slid down her back, each palm cupping one of her buttocks. “Let’s try again,
petite,”
he said hoarsely, lifting her up against his raging erection. He moved his mouth down on hers.
    “Nae,” she began, but was cut off. His mouth opened hers quickly. Stephen plumbed her warmth with his tongue,each thrust becoming more and more forceful, more rapacious. Tentatively she met one, and the tips of their tongues touched.
    He could not help himself, his body surged even more wildly, more impossibly, in response to her—he wanted complete, instant surrender. He expected it. He needed it— now. But to his amazement, she suddenly pulled her face away from his. “No—we must not.”
    “Do not tease me now,” he gritted, catching her chin in one hand. He forced her mouth up to his again.
    She cried out in another halfhearted protest. She raised her small fists against his chest, then clutched his tunic. Stephen would have laughed with primitive elation except for the fact that he was too intent now to laugh about anything. Their mouths were fused, their tongues mated.
    Suddenly she tore her face away. She writhed frantically in his iron embrace, as if to escape, yet her every gyration, brushing his manhood, was as artful and agonizing as a whore’s purposeful caress. As an actress, she was superb. For it was almost as if she were not a seductress, as if, knowing the end was near, she was truly panicked. Despite his brief confusion, he could not stop himself now. He managed to reassure himself that she deliberately provoked his confusion to incite him even more wholly.
    Stephen had had enough of these games. He had no desire to spill his seed upon them both, which he feared he might actually do. He pushed her down on the pallet. She continued to play the unwilling woman, her fists bouncing pitifully off of him, making small, fearful sounds. He took her mouth again. When their loins touched as he settled himself upon her, she went still.
    Lightning appeared to have struck them both. “I cannot wait,” he whispered, words he had never whispered before.
    The eyes he gazed down into as he spoke were wide with emotions he could not identify. Her face was flushed pink and sheened with perspiration. She did not move. And her palms curled about his massive shoulders, gripping him tightly.
    Stephen spread her legs wide with his knees, beginning to shake fiercely. He was aware of the drops of sweat thatrolled down his face and onto hers. He flicked her long tunic up to her waist, and for a single moment, was poised above her.
    Their gazes met, held. She opened her mouth but said nothing. Stephen looked at her breasts, heaving beneath her gown, her nipples tight and erect. He touched one. She closed her eyes and sobbed, the sound laden with anguish.
    He looked down at her and could no more help himself from touching her now than he had before. He slid his hand between her legs and found the folds of her flesh swollen and heavy with the pulse of her blood. She was as hot for him as he was for her, spy or not. This was no act. He thrust a finger into her.
    He froze. There was no mistaking the barrier he had come up against. He was shocked. She could not be a virgin—she was a whore sent to spy. But she was a virgin; it was a fact.
    And in the midst of confusion there was a sudden and sweeping sense of elation—she had never known a man; he would be the first.
    This far aroused, he had never denied himself. But he had never taken a virgin before—unlike many men he knew, rape had never excited him. And if she was a virgin, then she was no whore sent to spy upon him.
    Stephen’s mind reached these astounding conclusions in mere seconds. It was probably the hardest deed he had ever done, but he launched himself off of her. Dazed and panting, he lay unmoving on his stomach beside her, wishing that the fur pallet he was pressing himself into was much, much harder.
    Sanity returned swiftly despite the