Transcendent Read Online Free PDF Page B

idea what she saw in his eyes, but he prayed it was something like
You can own me and I can own you if you just let down those goddamn walls.
    â€œI don’t like being vulnerable,” she said finally.
    No fucking doubt.
“You’re vulnerable every time we meet,” he said, encircling one wrist with his fingers.
    â€œI’m not,” she whispered.
    He lifted that wrist to his mouth and pressed a kiss into the inside. “Ten inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier, remember?” he said, then grasped the other.
    â€œYou wouldn’t hurt me,” she said, but he was kissing that wrist as she said it, then nibbling at the tendons under the skin.
    Her eyes were closed, her voice low and distracted as the words tumbled into the air. As they dissipated into the room she opened her eyes and looked at him, the battle between wants and fears playing out in every line of her body.
    With her he could be wholly himself. He wanted to offer her the same freedom.
    â€œI won’t hurt you in any way,” he said. “Trust me, Marin.”
    He knew what he was asking her to do. For someone who experienced life deeply and had the talent to translate it into an intense, physical art, wild emotion felt dangerous. Threatening. Marin used the discipline of dance and their meetings to channel her strongest, wildest emotions—lust, anger, desire, love, need—into all-encompassing, explosive release. She’d never kissed him, never let him kiss her, and he wanted her mouth on his more than he’d ever wanted anything else in his entire life. Not for himself, so he could “claim her,” although no lie, he would do that.
    He wanted this for her. He wanted to give her the complete freedom to experience and show everything, no fear, no boundaries, no restraints, no roles. Just him and Marin.
    She had to want to do this. He could strategize and maneuver, make her come a dozen different ways and times, but he couldn’t make a kiss meaningful unless she offered it to him.
    When she lifted her eyes to his, it was his turn to freeze. Everything lashed deep down in her soul was glinting in her green eyes, turning them a stormy sea green. He braced himself, waiting for her to come to him. Then she rose just enough to bring her face level with his, tilted forward, and brushed her lips across his.
    He’d asked for one kiss, and one kiss only, but she didn’t pull away. Instead her breath eased from her in a shuddering little sigh that soothed the sparks popping under the skin of his mouth. Delicate and sure, she stroked her tongue along his lower lip, then paused, as if evaluating the taste of him.
    Barely daring to breathe, he stayed silent and still. A moment later she gave him another kiss, this one with more pressure, her mouth open against his, then her tongue dipped into his mouth. The faintest trace of coppery blood dissipated with the kiss. The instant when her tongue stroked over his, when the floodgates opened and she let everything she felt flow through her, into him, the brilliant, nuclear heat of the sun shot through his veins.
    He cupped the back of her head with one hand and wrapped his other arm around her waist, pulling her naked body to his. He’d never felt so alive, not under machine-gun fire, not under the daily stress on the trading floor, not in Lady Matilda’s shadowy boudoir with Miss Banks. There was adrenaline, and there was Marin, mouth open under his, tongue to tongue, trading gasps.
    More.
    She might have said it, he might have imagined it, but they both felt it. Breathing hard, he backed off the bed and shoved his jeans down, then grabbed a condom from his nightstand. He sheathed himself by touch because he couldn’t take his eyes off her, sitting back on her heels in the middle of his bed all pale skin and white blond hair, transformed into a white-hot column of flame.
    He crawled back to the middle of the bed, pushed her on her back, and