Suddenly You Read Online Free PDF Page A

face.
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    â€œSomeday I’ll tell you. Someday.” He held her for a long time until she felt steeped in his warmth, every nerve saturated and relaxed. His fingers slid to the high-buttoned neck of her brown-and-orange-striped gown, where muslin ruffles had been stitched to form a small ruff. With great care, and no particular hurry, he unfastened the first few buttons, baring her soft, cool throat. Amanda couldn’t seem to control the rhythm of her lungs as they surged in unsteady expansions, her breasts rising repeatedly. Jack’s dark head moved over her, and she made an inarticulate sound as she felt his mouth press against her throat, lips gently searching.
    â€œYou taste so sweet.” The whispered words sent a shiver down her spine. Somehow, whenever she had imagined this intimacy with a man, she had thought of darkness and urgency and groping. She had not expected firelight and heat and this patient courting of her body. Jack’s lips wandered in a velvet path from her throat to the sensitive opening of her ear, played lightly, and then Amanda jerked in surprise as she felt the tip of his tongue stroke along a tiny inner crevice.
    â€œJack,” she whispered. “You don’t have to play the lover for me. Truly…you are kind to pretend that I’m desirable, and you—”
    She felt him smile against her ear. “You are an innocent, mhuirnin , if you think that a man’s body reacts this way out of kindness.”
    As he spoke, Amanda became aware of an intimate pressure against her hip, and she immediately went still. Her face burned crimson, and thoughts flurried through her head like snowflakes in a wind-ravaged sky. She was mortified…and extremely curious. With her legs entangled in his, and her skirts riding to her knees, she could feel the powerful length of his thighs and the hard shape of his erection. She had never been held against a man’s aroused body before.
    â€œThis is your chance, Amanda,” he murmured. “I’m yours to do with as you like.”
    â€œI don’t know what to do,” she said unsteadily. “That’s why I hired you.”
    He laughed and kissed the exposed part of her throat, where her pulse thrummed in a frantic rhythm. The situation seemed fantastical to her, so completely outside of all her experiences, that she felt as if she were someone other than Amanda Briars. The spinster with her quills and paper and ink-stained fingers, and old-maid’s caps and foot-warming jars, had been replaced by someone who was soft…vulnerable…able to desire and be desired.
    She realized then that she had always been a little afraid of men. Some women understood the opposite sex so easily, and yet this understanding had always eluded her. All she knew was that even in the bloom of her youth, men had never teased and flirted with her. They had talked to her about serious subjects and had treated her with respect and propriety, never suspecting that she might have liked them to make an improper advance or two.
    And now here was this resplendent man, unquestionably a scoundrel, who seemed more than interested in the prospect of getting under her skirts. Why shouldn’t she allow him to kiss and caress her? What good did her virtue do her? Virtue was a cold bedfellow; she knew that better than anyone.
    Bravely she caught at the open edges of his shirt and urged his head down to hers. He complied at once, his mouth brushing softly over hers. She felt a shock of warmth, a rush of pleasure that paralyzed her. His weight settled on her a bit more heavily; his mouth teased and pressed harder until her lips parted. His tongue stroked inside her mouth, and she would have recoiled from the strangeness of it had her head not been wedged so securely in the crook of his arm. Sensation flared in the pit of her stomach and in areas of her body that she couldn’t even name. She waited for