Scandal in the Night Read Online Free PDF

not England, who is full of interesting intrigue. It seems people are always getting shot at when you are involved.”
    There it was, finally—the mention of murder.
    He had not come to charm and amuse her. He had surely come to accuse her.
    But his low voice was full of a strange sort of gentle, exasperated wonder, and he was regarding her through those dangerous, soot-dipped lashes, with such minute attention, as if she looked as strange and foreign as he. As if she were the map of a place he had forgotten he had visited.
    No matter how hard her heart, or how turbulent her mind, what remained of her vanity could not withstand the onslaught. She put a hand up to push the messy wisps of her flyaway hair out of her face.
    He shook his head silently, a slow negation, before he reached across the gulf between them and ran his thumb along the line of her cheekbone.
    “You’ve dirt,” he murmured, as he smudged something off her skin, “on your face. And you’ve done something to your hair to make it darker and duller. Such a crime. And you are still attiring yourself in that horrid gray. Always gray. But somehow, despite all that, you look so lovely, I have the strongest urge to kiss you.”
    That way lay madness. Or at the very least, bad, bad, regrettable decisions. He was no longer Tanvir Singh. He was no longer her friend.
    She squelched it all down—the vanity and whatever unmet longing was attempting to stir itself back to life. “I beg you would suppress it.”
    “No.” He shook his head again even as the corner of his mouth hitched into a single lovely, bittersweet dimple. “I think not. I think I’ve come a deuced long way to find you, and I’m done with polite, English caution.”
    Yet, he took her face in his hands cautiously, slowly and carefully, in the way a man raised a too full glass to his lips, bringing his mouth to hers. Even as she told herself she should not—she should push him away, and run as fast as she could in the opposite direction and not stop until she had reached the ocean—she let him come nearer and nearer. She watched, her eyes open wide, searching his face, helpless with the need to reconcile this handsome Englishman with her memories of Tanvir Singh.
    The first touch of his lips was soft, almost tentative, as if he, too, were tasting and comparing. As if he, too, were feeling his way across the passage of time and miles. She prayed fervently for a moment that she might be spared, that she might feel nothing for him, that her well of frustrated longing for him might have finally run dry.
    But his lips were still the texture of ripe fruit, smooth and taut, and tasting of plums. He pulled back for a moment, his eyes closed, and took in a deep breath, as if he could take her in. As if she were as necessary to him as air.
    In response, her own mouth dropped open, parched and thirsty, longing foolishly—so foolishly—for another taste of him. And like a dying woman in a desert who will drink even the deadliest brine, she took another sip, pressing her lips to his.
    He slanted his mouth across hers and kissed her more deeply, searching her out, pushing his hands into the tight constriction she had made of her hair, pulling apart the low fist of the bun, scattering pins into the ground. And she was falling or melting, or going somewhere far, far away, dissolving into nothingness, and everything-ness, all at the same time. With his thumbs fanned along her cheeks and his big hands wrapped around the back of her head, drawing her into him, he kissed her with heat and abandon, drawing her out with lips and tongue, and with the very breath from his body, as if she were his air and his water.
    A part of her mind told her she must think, she must use his lust and desire to her own ends, but she could not sustain the thought. Everything else faded, until there was nothing but the longing for the feel of his mouth on hers, and the pleasure so sharp she could not tell it from pain. Catriona was