RIPPED: A Dark Romance (Killer Lips Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

the edge of the massive five hundred year old door like she's scared of breaking it. She's as divinely fragile as the moment we first saw her.
    Thank the devils she's jumpy and out of her realm enough that her tripping and almost falling into the canal allowed me to pull her into my arms at the exact moment I was contriving a plan to get her there.
    In this huge room papered with red silk, the glow of a flame turns everything rosy. II lit the fire in the huge iron grate along with a hundred candles because women love them. Perhaps they know the flame makes their skin glow warm and golden.
    They seem even more vulnerable by candlelight. I opened a bottle of Brunello, a very good red and left it to breathe while I waited for her. But he came in and went right to the old oak buffet to fiddle with the glasses. So I know it's starting again.
    He wants her too.
    I hope it's not going to be a battle to the death this time. But why would it be any different than all the others?
    This one is not the same though. Her lips quiver just enough that I want to suck the lower into the strong pull of mine. Something about Riley is unlike any other woman I've ever met. She stirs my deepest needs and I will make sure this time that she doesn't get burned.
    Even her voice is soft sweet and so vulnerable.
    “Or a fairytale,” she continues and her cheeks flush pink as I'd like them to be when I rip her clothes from her luscious body.
    “I knew you'd choose the silver studs.”
    “They're so, you know, daring,” she whispers with a huge smile like she's reached the summit of some Himalayan trek.
    “Like you. That's why I knew you'd want them,” he tells her. Just to have the pleasure of watching the heat rise and prickle her cheeks and the tops of her amazing breasts.
    “Sorry, I don't mean to gush but it must be so amazing to wake up here every day.”
    “It is very special. Although we do prefer it when others are here.”
    We have to let her know how much we really need her to be with us and that she's more than welcome to stay. And she will.
    “Beautiful things are so much better when shared with someone else,” she says, looking at me as though we share sadness. “I've really come to believe that especially since being in Venice.”
    Our eyes are held together drowning into each others pools and I know she feels something from the twitch in her face, the flush in her cheeks and the way she crosses her legs as she casts her eyes down. Then he had to step in.
    “Chin, chin. Let's toast to a Siberian snowstorm and a fine Italian red to keep us warm on a cold night.”
    We raise the heavy crystal goblets and chink.
    “Eyes,” he says.
    Riley looks between us, from one to the other, meeting our eyes in turn. The candle flames reflect in her large sad pools of confusion.
    “Do you know why people say cheers?” he blasts into our moment again. “It's from medieval times when you could never be sure whether your companion had put poison in your goblet.”
    I interrupt him before he takes over the evening as usual and recapture her wide gaze.
    “Because when you meet a man's eyes you know the truth inside him.”
    She colors slightly again as the flush rises to her cheeks and has to look away from me, proving she's hooked.
    And proving I was correct about her.
    It was difficult enough to find her. Well not that part, since we knew where she was staying but then the storm blew in and we almost lost her. But fate played it well in the end, the storm gave us every reason to bring her here without resorting to the usual methods.
    And it may seem crazy- and what isn't in this world- but now she's here I don't ever want her to go.
    A man knows what he wants in the instant he spies it.

Chapter FIVE
    Riley
    I sit at the dining table built for giants. The thing must be twenty feet long and still it doesn’t fill the room, not even close. I'm on one side of and opposite from the two most unbelievably handsome, divine rugged men I've ever