Susan Johnson Read Online Free PDF

springlike on this stormy winter night, unblemished,like the woman who reminded him too vividly, even in his pleasantly brandy-warmed state, of a young child. Suddenly he wasn’t sure why she struck his sensibilities so, for her body was very unchildlike. It was, in fact, very rich and womanly, like one of Lily’s extravagant twenty-course dinners that provoked every bodily sense with tantalizing guile. It was her eyes, he finally decided—they were frightened and much too large with apprehension. So he said without thinking, “Don’t be frightened. I don’t have Jake Poltrain’s tastes.”
    His cryptic words were anything but soothing, he realized immediately, for her hands trembled slightly at her sides. But her chin came up like it had downstairs, and he recognized the same intrepid mettle. As if some small, inner voice indomitably resisted the fear. “I won’t hurt you,” he said very softly. “You’re perfectly safe.”
    Whatever inner anxiety had prompted the fright was apparently resolved, for she replied calmly while she reached for a towel hung near the fire, “Safe, I suppose, only if liberally interpreted, Mr. Braddock-Black. But warm and clean, certainly.” And tossing the towel over her head, she bent over and began rubbing her hair dry.
    Crossing the distance separating them in three swift strides, Trey pulled the towel away, tossed it aside, and said in a level voice, graphic with self-control, “I
won’t
hurt you, I mean it.”
    Straightening, she stood before him, unabashed in her nudity, and raising her emerald eyes the required height to meet his so far above, she said with Byzantine inflection, “What
will
you do with me, Mr. Braddock-Black?”
    “Trey,” he ordered, unconscious of his lightly commanding tone.
    “What
will
you do with me, Trey?” she repeated, correcting herself as ordered. But there was more than a hint of impudence in her tone and in her tilted mouth and arched brow.
    Responding to the impudence with some of his own, he replied with a small smile, “Whatever you prefer, Empress, darling.” He towered over her, clothed and booted, as dark as Lucifer, and she was intensely aware of his power and size, as if his presence seemed to invade her. “You set the pace, sweetheart,” he said encouragingly, reaching out to slide the pad of one finger slowly across her shoulder. “But take your time,” he went on, recognizing his own excitement, runninghis warm palm up her neck and cupping the back of her head lightly. Trey’s voice had dropped half an octave. “We’ve three weeks.…” And for the first time in his life he looked forward to three undiluted weeks of one woman’s company. It was like scenting one’s mate, primordial and reflexive, and while his intellect ignored the peremptory, inexplicable compulsion, his body and blood and dragooned sensory receptors willingly complied to the urgency.
    Bending his head low, his lips touched hers lightly, brushing twice across them like silken warmth before he gently slid over her mouth with his tongue and sent a shocking trail of fire curling deep down inside her.
    She drew back in an unconscious response, but he’d felt the heated flame, too, and from the startled look in his eyes she knew the spark had touched them both. Trey’s breathing quickened, his hand tightened abruptly on the back of her head, pulling her closer with insistence, with authority, while his other hand slid down her back until it rested warmly at the base of her spine. And when his mouth covered hers a second time, intense suddenly, more demanding, she could feel him rising hard against her. She may have been an innocent in the ways of a man and a woman, but Empress knew how animals mated in nature, and for the first time she sensed a soft warmth stirring within herself.
    It was at once strange and blissful, and for a brief detached moment she felt very grown, as if a riddle of the universe were suddenly revealed. One doesn’t have to love a