Sorcerer: A Loveswept Contemporary Classic Romance Read Online Free PDF

his helmet.
    Jill’s traitorous heart constricted in her chest. Bareheaded, with his usually immaculate hair tousled into a dark tangle, the doctor looked more impossibly handsome than ever. She felt a sudden urge to run her fingers through those curls, a quick, foolish image that opened a Pandora’s box of other desires. Dammit, she was supposed to be angry with the man!
    “Ms. Polanski, my
arbitrary
rules are designed to save your pretty little—” He paused, his eyes narrowing as he gave her figure a bold once-over before adding, “… neck. I require cybernauts to stay together because there’s always a chance a person’s reasoning won’t last the full hour … not to mention the other hundred things that could endanger someone whose mind is linked to a synthetic environment.”
    He started to walk toward her, his slow, deliberate movements making her silently add another danger to the ones he’d already mentioned. Lord, maybe her reason
was
beginning to deteriorate. Otherwise, how could she explain the crazy images that flashed through her mind—of her, and him, doing … oh, Lord! She closed her eyes, shutting out his advancing figure, knowing instinctively that she had to get away—fast. She twisted around, struggling so violently against the brambles that they began to tear the material.
    “Jillian, keep still.”
    Sinclair? It couldn’t be. She’d never heard him sound so gentle, so patient. She opened her eyes,slowly at first, then finished with a wide stare of disbelief. Sinclair knelt before her, painstakingly un-hooking her velvet dress from the hundred angry prickers. His touch was as gentle as his words.
    Jill’s wonder was quickly eclipsed by horror. “Dr. Sinclair, you shouldn’t … I mean, you don’t have to—”
    “Help you?” he said, glancing up at her with his wry grin. “I suppose it does go against my Dr. Doom image.” He finished pulling away the thorns, then rose to his feet and held out his hand to assist her out of the bush. “We’ll just keep this between ourselves, shall we?”
    Swallowing her apprehension, she placed her hand in his. Warm fingers clasped her own, reminding her of the other time he’d held her, at Griffith’s party. She recalled the humiliation, but somehow that stern, cold-eyed stranger seemed less real than the virtual man who stood beside her.
    “Thanks,” she said shakily, attempting to put her feelings into words. “I didn’t expect you to be so … good at untangling skirts.”
    Sinclair’s dark brows arched up in a humor that did not reach his eyes. “I suspect that’s a compliment. Thank you.”
    The edge of self-deprecation in his voice stabbed her heart.
It’s not real
, she told herself. Dr. Sinclair had a hide of iron and a heart to match. Yet as she looked into the depths of his eyes, she caught a glimpse of the soul behind his stainless-steel personality, a soul as uncertain and easily wounded as herown. It was probably an illusion, as counterfeit as his gleaming armor and his jewel-encrusted sword. Yet, illusion or not, his gaze captured her, drawing her in like a wandering comet caught in the gravitational pull of the sun.
    Forces far stronger than her human will closed like a fist around her heart. The virtual world faded, leaving only his questioning eyes and her overwhelming need to answer those questions. Stepping closer, she brushed her fingers gently against his cheek. His eyes darkened at the slight caress, the hard silver turning molten at her touch. She felt the heat of his gaze quicken in her own body.
Illusion
, her reason warned. Yet in the deepest, truest part of her, she knew that this was the most real thing she’d ever felt in her life—
    “Ten minutes,” Parker warned.
    Jill’s hand dropped to her side, her common sense rushing back like air into a vacuum. It had happened again! She’d let herself be seduced by the image of the man she wanted Sinclair to be, rather than seeing him for the cold