St. Raven Read Online Free PDF Page B

practical, however, and prided herself on it. Thus she must sleep so that tomorrow she would have all her wits and be able to find a way to fulfill her mission.
    She pulled back the covers to expose clean linen, which drew her like a magnet. Perhaps sleep wasn’t impossible after all.
    She pulled out the hairpins that held her turban in place and lifted it off, false curls and all. The fashion was for bubbling curls around the face, but she’d refused to have her long hair cut at the front. Anyway, her hair was heavy and straight and would need constant use of curling irons to achieve the look.
    She dug out more pins, and her coiled hair slithered down her back. She didn’t have the energy to plait it for the night. She wanted only to collapse into the bed.
    Then she found that she couldn’t unfasten her dress no matter how she stretched and twisted. Even if she managed that, she’d never get the corset off. With a sigh, she climbed into the bed as she was. She was surely tired enough to sleep anyway.
    She tried. She tossed this way and that, seeking a comfortable position, but the bones of her corset dug into her, the shoulder straps bound, and her skirts tangled and trapped around her legs.
    She rolled out of the bed and writhed again to get at the hooks. Impossible. There was nothing else for it. Huffing out a breath, she stalked out of her room and into his—
    He turned from his wardrobe, naked from the waist up, breeches unfastened.
    She had never seen a man’s body before, and stared at lean muscle and visible strength. Her eyes drifted down to lock on his undone buttons…
    He moved. He refastened those buttons while walking toward her. “You should pay a forfeit for that, Miss Wemworthy.”
    Through guilt or simple bedazzlement, Cressida didn’t fight when he pulled her into his arms. Perhaps some vague notion of struggle occurred, because she put her hands between them, but that only meant that they ended up pressed to his hot skin, to the muscles that moved as he lowered his head to meet her unresisting lips.
    Honesty compelled her to accept that since their earlier conflicted kiss, she’d been longing for this, to have those fascinatingly tempting lips playing with hers, to taste that fire with leisure to absorb it.
    And absorb it she did, or was absorbed. Encircled in strong arms, flesh to flesh, mouth to mouth, heat to heat.
    Melted.
    Swirled softly in sandalwood into delicious oblivion.
    Only taste. Only touch. Only smell.
    Blindfolded now by her own closed lids…
    His lips left hers. The press of his body on her hands eased.
    She blinked her eyes open to find him looking at her almost blankly. “Can I hope that you are a nymph of the night after all, come to pleasure me?”
    His wonderful chest was rising and falling under her hands. She could feel his pounding heart.
    To her astonishment, she said, “I wish I were.”
    He laughed and rested his head against hers for a moment. But then he stepped back, though he kept his hands on her shoulders. “If you didn’t return to carry me to heaven, sweetheart, what brought you?”
    The gap between them seemed chill, but she managed a slight, apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. I’m too tired to think. But I can’t get out of my dress and corset. Since you said the servants are asleep…”
    “And all male.” He turned her and unhooked her dress. “This is Nun’s Chase, by the way,” he said as he parted the gown and began on the strings of her corset.
    “Nun’s Chase?” she echoed, holding her dress up at the front. She couldn’t believe she was here doing this!
    “Built on the site of a convent back in the sixteenth century. I’m sure the Chase refers innocently enough to hunting land, but it was too suggestive to resist.”
    Her wanton mind was fixed on his suggestive hands pulling the laces loose bottom to top, on the general loosening of that familiar constraint around her body. She felt as if more was loosening than mere laces…
    “I