Sinful Rapture (The Rapture Series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

himself to recall exactly what those drastic measures had entailed.
    That was a worry for another day.
    “Back to my apartment,” she muttered.
    He bent his neck to brush his lips over her wide brow, savoring the warm scent of vanilla that filled his senses.
    It wasn’t perfume, or even lotion, but just the natural aroma he always associated with her.
    “Is there some pressing business that you have to take care of at this hour?”
    “I just want to go home.”
    “And I want you to stay,” he admitted with blunt honesty. “I’ve waited a very long time to hold you in my arms. I don’t intend to let you go.”
    Her eyes widened, something that might have been panic rippling over her face.
    “Don’t say that.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because…” She struggled to come up with one of her usual excuses. “We can barely stand one another.”
    His lips skimmed down the narrow blade of her nose. “I think we proved we can stand each other just fine with the proper motivation.”
    She turned her head, trying to disguise the way her eyes darkened with need.
    “Sex.”
    He continued to stroke his lips over her face, refusing to be tricked into losing his temper. She was a master at keeping others at a distance. Including him.
    It wasn’t happening again.
    “Sex doesn’t make the earth shake,” he murmured, tracing the curve of her ear with the tip of his tongue. “And don’t even try to pretend that you didn’t just have the best orgasm of your life.”
    She kept her gaze averted, her nails digging into his chest.
    “Arrogant.”
    His lips twisted. Like that was a newsflash?
    “Look at me, princess.” Palming her cheek, he urged her face back so he could study her wary expression.
    She sank her teeth into her bottom lip, grudgingly meeting his steady gaze.
    “This was a mistake.”
    “No. No more pretending,” he rasped. “Tonight we stop the games and speak the truth.”
    “I don’t play games,” she denied.
    Liam snorted. Was she being serious?
    He remembered the first time he caught sight of her across the crowded room in painful detail.
    She’d been dressed in the mandatory little black gown with her hair pulled up to reveal the long, fragile curve of her throat and a meaningless smile on her beautiful face as she tried to disguise the same boredom that was driving him to drink.
    Threading his way across the reception room, he’d hoped to ease the tedious evening with a bit of harmless flirtation. And if she could be convinced to take the party someplace more private…well, so much the better.
    What he hadn’t expected to discover was that she was the illegitimate daughter of Vigo Angeli. Or that the minute he’d taken her fingers into his hands and lifted them to his lips, he would be lost forever.
    “It’s all you’ve done since we crossed paths,” he reminded her, his jaw clenching as he recalled her instant retreat from the sizzling attraction that flared between him. “You knew as soon as our eyes met we could have something special, but the realization made you panic.”
    “I didn’t panic,” she protested. “I was already in a relationship. For some of us, loyalty happens to be an important virtue.”
    His lips curled at the mention of her spineless fiancé.
    “You were dating Ted to please your father,” he said. It’d taken him months to figure out why the exquisite beauty would waste herself on the worthless, narcissistic idiot. “You became engaged to him to protect yourself from me.”
    Her eyes flared with a sudden fire. “It never occurred to you that I might love him?”
    Liam tensed, his chest tightening to the point he could barely breathe.
    “Do you?” he snapped, his voice suddenly as cold as the Artic.
    Dammit. He was tired of Theodore Wentworth Junior being used as a weapon against him.
    Her defiant expression faltered. “I—”
    “The truth,” he warned.
    “I…I cared about him,” she at last hedged.
    “Christ.” He gave a short, humorless laugh. “I