Rare and Precious Things Read Online Free PDF

coherently take stock of the present moment, she was lying on top of me, still holding me within her body, breathing deeply. My mouth was glued to a spot on her neck, sucking softly and soothing with my tongue.
    I pulled back and focused. Quite the mark on her elegant neck that I’d just made. It looked like I’d bit her, which I’d done before, and would probably do again. I couldn’t help some of the things I did to her when I lost myself in her. Thankfully, she never seemed to be bothered at all by the marks I made on her skin. I always felt guilty for losing control with her though, but realized the capability for it to happen was unique to her specifically. Brynne was my only experience with losing control like that during sex. She was the only one who had ever brought me to such a level of soul-baring exposure. She was the only person I trusted enough to even dare to take a step toward that place.
    “I’ ve given you one huge love bite this time, baby. I’m so sorry for marking—”
    “ —I don’t care, you know that,” she cut me off, lifting her head up to me.
    “You might care this time,” I hedged, “because we have to go down to the big house and g reet all those overnight guests that stayed at Hannah and Freddy’s.” I brushed my thumb over the sucking bruise that bloomed between the base of her neck and her ear, wondering what she would really say when she got a good look at it. “I’m a beast, what can I say?”
    “You’re my lovely beast and I’m sure whatever you branded on me is fine. I’ll just cover it over with my hair.” She laid her head back down and nestled against me with a sexy yawn.
    “Somebody is sleepy.”
    “Well, yeah, that happens when you don’t spend much time actually sleeping the previous night,” she returned without a pause, bringing a hand to my ribs like she was going to go for another tickle.
    I took her hand in one of mine and neutralized her potential attack, grabbing a lovely handful of her prized arse with my other , and squeezed. The feel of her soft curves in my hands made everything feel right with the world. “But we should probably get moving, baby,” I reminded gently, annoyed that we couldn’t just stay here in bed together and sleep for a few more hours.
    “Now wait a minute, am I hearing you correctly? Whose idea was this wedding weekend extravaganza with a morning-after breakfast anyway, because I sure as hell know it wasn’t mine.”
    She had a point. Our wedding had been much more of an event than either of us would have preferred, but when the plans were put into motion, the reasoning behind everything was very valid. As the ideas were laid down, I’d wanted as much exposure for her as possible; the higher profile the celebrity of a society wedding would bring, the better the insulation at protecting Brynne from her stalker. At the time none of us had known he was a rogue crazy named Karl Westman. I’d feared much higher levels were involved…and they were on the clean-up end. Of that I was certain. Westman had been taken down by US Secret Service. Threat eliminated and extinguished…by expert professionals who could make a person just disappear if they want to.
    By the time Westman was out of the picture, our wedding plans were already deep in motion, and press releases gone out to the gossips rags. Too late to call any of it back, or change the guest lists, so we’d just gone along with what had been originally scheduled. Big wedding, numerous parties, weekend guests, a noisy send-off to our luxurious Italian honeymoon—all carefully constructed to publicize Brynne’s status as the wife of elite security, connected at the deepest levels to the British government.
    And apparently, the trend of inviting select members to stay overnight to wish the happy couple off the morning after, was the “in thing” at the moment. I suppressed the urge to scoff at the idea. I couldn’t wait to get away with her. Just us. Alone in our own