The Winter Wish Read Online Free PDF Page B

never told me your name,” he continued, his blue
eyes glinting with amusement, “I had no way to find you.”
    “Sarah!”
Her tongue darted out to swipe unconsciously at her lower lip and Devlin’s gaze
lowered, drawn to her lips as a moth to the flame. Hungry desire swept across
his face, and her knees wobbled. “My name is Sarah,” she finished weakly.
 
    His
mouth curved. “Is that what I should call you?” he asked in a husky voice that
had her swallowing back a moan. “Sarah? That does seem very… appropriate. Are
you, Sarah?”
    “Am
I… Am I what?”
    “Appropriate,”
he whispered. He stepped closer to her, close enough to touch, and touch he
did. One arm wound around her waist, his fingertips settling lightly on her hip
while the other hand braced on the pillar behind her head, effectively closing
her in.
    To
any curious onlooker his body was angled so that it seemed there were yards of
space between them, but Sarah felt every one of his breaths as if it were her
own, and a thousand horses could not drag her eyes from the mole she had just
discovered high on his right cheek. It should have been a mar against perfection,
but if anything it only served to increase his rugged handsomeness to a level
her body was having quite a difficult time adjusting to.  
    The
man, she decided then and there, was the devil himself.
    “You
may call me L-Lady Dawson.”
    “Is
that a question?”
    “No,”
she said, even though it had sounded very much like one. “That is my
name. Lady Sarah Emily Dawson.”
    Devlin
repeated it in full, lingering on the Sarah until she felt her cheeks
suffuse with color and she shifted anxiously from side to side. No more than a
few minutes in his company and she was already forgetting herself. A lady did
not allow a gentleman to call her by her first name. Why, even her own mother
was always referred to as Lady Dawson, even by her husband. Now she knew why.
    First
names were much too intimate. They should be spoken in a private place, like a
bedroom… In the bed… Beneath the sheets… Oh dear. Now was not the time
for her colorful imagination to rear its head. In fact, it was probably the
worst time imaginable for her to think of what it would be like to have Devlin
stretched out across her naked body, his hands and mouth doing all kinds of naughty
things to her damp skin while he moaned her name…
    “You
may call me Devlin if you wish,” the Viscount said with a wicked smile, as if
he could read her thoughts and was vastly entertained by them. “In fact, I
insist on it.”
    Fairly
certain her face was the approximate shade of a tomato in mid-August, Sarah
pressed both hands to her warm cheeks in an effort to cool them and shook her
head vigorously from side to side. “Oh no,” she breathed. “I simply… That would
be… No,” she said firmly as she struggled to rein in her emotions. She could
not afford to lose her head, especially considering she had already lost her
heart. “That would simply not do, Lord Heathcliff. Why, we hardly know each
other at all and you would do well to remember your manner—”      
    “Would
you care to dance?” he interrupted, holding out his hand. “Once you dance with
someone I find you know them much more… intimately than you did before. Surely
then we would be a first name basis.”
     Sarah
stared longingly at his offered hand and almost took it, but her own good
manners, instilled to the bone after years of tutoring, stopped her. “My next
dance is spoken for,” she said regretfully.
    A
smile flirted with the corners of Devlin’s mouth as he slowly lowered his arm.
“By whom?”
    “Lord…”
What was his name? Oh, yes. Now she remembered. “Lord Gibson.”
    The
Viscount’s eyes flashed, stormy blue and suddenly full of temper. “Lord Gibson,
the Marquess of Faraday?”
    Confused
by the sudden change in Devlin’s tone and the rigid set of his jaw, Sarah
nodded hesitantly. “Do you… Do you know