Walking The Edge: A Romantic Suspense/Espionage Thriller (Corpus Brides Trilogy Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

chest bare to her appreciative look. Warm, golden rays of sunlight danced over his body, licking at him with flickering shimmers. Hmm, the light of the seaside. Nothing could compare to it—the brilliant sparkle that shone everywhere on the Côte d’Azur. Seagulls screeched outside as they spanned the cloudless sky. Oh, yes, summer proved very nice indeed in this part of the Mediterranean.
    Sighing, she stretched, taking advantage of the proximity of the man’s body to trail her fingers over his warm skin. All firm and lean muscle under her touch... Fire started its slow, consuming burn up her body. Lord, she wanted him.
    Still, he remained silent, keeping his face averted towards the wide glass expanse of the doors. His sandy blond hair still looked mussed from sleep, the muscles in his tense neck corded. The tautness of his clamped jaw alerted her to his contemplative mood.
    Sitting up straighter, she reached out and touched his cheek, making him turn his face in her direction. A soft gasp escaped her when she encountered his eyes. Deep-set and narrow, they shone with a sparkling turquoise hue, making her think of mysterious tropical waters. But worry and some other sobering emotion filled their depths. Not good.
    “What?” she gently asked, afraid to speak lest he should disappear without answering.
    He sighed. “We can’t keep going on.”
    His soft words pierced her heart. “No. Don’t say that.”
    “You know we never expected it to come this far between us. Mi—”
    She placed a finger on his lips, shushing him. “No. Don’t say my name. Don’t taint our moment.”
    He tried to move away, to avert his gaze, but she clasped his face in her palms and kissed him. Breaking the kiss, she pressed her forehead against his and closed her eyes.
    “When I’m with you,” she said, “I’m not her . Do you understand that?”
    “ Putain, ” he cursed softly in French.
    He wasn’t calling her a whore, but simply saying a word that came naturally to him, the way it hung on the lips of every person from Marseille.
    “ Tu vas m’tuer. ” He sighed again.
    You’ll be the death of me. Despite herself, she smiled. She held power over this man, and damn if she didn’t relish the feeling. He belonged to her. All hers.
    And right then, she preferred not to think of the other meaning that could be ascribed to his words—she could literally spell his death, too. If the man she lived with came to know about her lover— No, she wouldn’t think of this. Not now. Not when his mouth had claimed hers and he pushed her back onto the mattress.
    Right now belonged to them, and them alone.
    *
     
    London. Hampstead Heath
    Friday, December 14. 8:36 a.m.
     
    When she awoke, the dream still lingered, vivid in her mind. The face of the other man in it remained so present in her memory, she could draw his features even after she opened her eyes and blinked a few times.
    Who is he, and why do I recall him now?
    He’d spoken French, and his words held a deep accent, a pronounced inflection that turned the crisp language into an almost sensual drawl.
    Peter had mentioned the Côte d’Azur the night before. Could it be where she’d been involved with her mystery man?
    Thoughts of Peter made her dart a hand to her neck, and she rubbed the pad of her fingers against the tiny puncture mark where he had plunged the needle into her skin.
    The damn bastard. He had dared! No matter that he’d also not hesitated to hit her when things didn’t go his way, and that he had a mistress—that he’d felt compelled to drug her into the darkest abyss of oblivion just to be rid of her temporarily spelt the doom of their relationship. Whatever it might have been in the first place. The arse he had become came nowhere close to the man she had remembered.
    Could it be her mind’s way of telling her things were over between them, and had been for a long time? He’d crossed to an irreversible position the night before, a limit the woman in her