The Bridegroom Read Online Free PDF

trust herself to answer.
    Gideon strode across the room again, bent over her, his hands gripping the arms of her chair, effectively trapping her between his arms.
    “There’s nothing you can do to help,” Lydia nearly whispered. She simply couldn’t lie anymore. Nor could she meet his eyes, though the sunlight-and-shaving-cream scent of him filled her nose, and invaded all her other senses, too, and made her dizzy. “Please, Gideon—just go.”
    He didn’t move. His voice was a rumble, low and rough, like thunder on the distant horizon. “I’m not going anywhere—except maybe to find your bridegroom and tell him the wedding is off.”
    Lydia flinched, her gaze rising to collide with Gideon’s now. “You mustn’t do that!” she cried, aghast at the prospect. “Gideon, you mustn’t! This house, my aunts—”
    “ Damn this house,” Gideon growled, backing up now, but just far enough to take hold of Lydia’s shoulders and pull her to her feet. “You are not marrying a man you don’t love!”
    At last, Lydia dredged up some pride. Lies hadn’t worked. Neither had the truth. Bravado was all that was left to her. “You can’t stop me,” she said fiercely.
    She saw his eyes narrow, and his jawline harden.
    “Yes, I can,” he ground out.
    “How?” Lydia challenged.
    And that was when he did the unthinkable.
    He kissed her, and not gently, the way a friend might do. No, Gideon Yarbro kissed her hard, as a lover would, slamming his mouth down on hers—and instinctively, she parted her lips. Felt the kiss deepen in ways she’d only been able to imagine before that moment.
    That dreadful, wonderful, life-altering moment.
    Gideon drew back too soon, and Lydia stood there trembling, as shaken as if he’d taken her, actually made her his own, right there in the parlor, both of them standing up and fully clothed.
    “It won’t be like that when he kisses you,” Gideon said, after a very long time. Then he let go of her shoulders, he turned, and he walked away. He opened the parlor doors and strode through to the foyer, then banged out of the house.
    Lydia couldn’t move, not to follow, not to sit down, not even to collapse. She simply could not move .
    Damn Gideon Yarbro, she thought. Damn him to the depths of perdition. He’d ruined everything—by being right.
    Jacob Fitch would never kiss her the way Gideon had, never send thrills of terrible, spectacular need jolting through her like stray shards of lightning. No, never again would she feel what she had before, during and after Gideon’s mouth landed on hers. In some inexplicable way, it was as though he’d claimed her, conquered her so completely and so thoroughly that she could never belong to Jacob, or any other man, as long as she lived.
    Gideon had aroused a consuming desire within Lydia, simply by kissing her, and simultaneously satisfied that desire. But—and this was the cruelest part of all—that sweet, brief, soul-drenching satisfaction had shown her what a man’s attentions—one certain man’s attentions—could be like.
    He’d left her wanting more of what she could never have—and for that, she very nearly hated him.
    The aunts and Helga rushed into the room, like a talcum-scented wind, pressing in around Lydia, so close she nearly flailed her arms at them, the way she would at a flock of frenzied, pecking crows.
    “You look ghastly! ” one of the aunts cried, sounding delighted.
    “Do sit down,” begged the other.
    “Glory be,” Helga exalted, throwing up her hands like someone who’d just found religion. “That man kissed you like a woman ought to be kissed!”
    Lydia recovered enough to sweep all three women up in one scathing glance. “Were you peeking through the keyhole?” she demanded. It was as if another, stronger self had surged to the fore, pushed aside the old, beleaguered Lydia, taken over.
    That self was a wanton hussy, mad enough to spit fire.
    And not about to sit down, whether she looked “ghastly” or