Wicked Paradise Read Online Free PDF Page A

his sweaty body, but didn’t temper the heat of his fear. Or the burgeoning flames of hope. Whipping hair out of his eyes, he searched for the woman beyond the exposed rocks along the reef she’d missed by mere feet. Ryan dove under the water, shoving aside meandering seaweed, scanning the murky depths. He spied her small body floating toward the surface. She appeared dead, but Ryan knew she lived. His blood sang her tune. Magic ebbed and swelled around them, unstoppable even by his iron defenses.
    With sure strokes, he knifed through the water and caught her in his arms. He stood to his full height, the water leveling just beneath his chest, and carried her out of the sea. His searching gaze swept over the woman he’d seduced in his head during the night. Shock riddled him and she suddenly became dead weight in his arms.
    “What the hell?” He whistled, tightening his hold on her before he dropped her. Kneeling on the beach, he cradled her slender, wet body to his chest, offering her the last of his body heat. As she lay limp and frigid in his arms, he scanned the length of her body.
    “No blood. Good.” Relief unclenched the fist around his heart. Seaweed knotted in her black hair, a dark blanket covering the pristine white sand. Fear stung his eyes and he pressed his fingers to the pulse in her neck. The vein beat life against his fingers. He pushed out another sigh. Thick black lashes flickered against her pale face. Taut skin stretched over high cheekbones, and her petite nose twitched above bow-shaped lips.
    “You’re safe now.” He hoped she heard him. “I won’t let anything harm you.”
    Tenderly, Ryan stretched her out on the damp strip of beach between the tide and the baking dry sand. Concentrating on reviving her, he forced himself not to stare hungrily at the clinging blouse accentuating her rounded breasts. Troubled by the physical awareness of the woman from his dream, he ignored the prickly confusion curling in his ribcage.
    He positioned his palms on her chest and started resuscitation efforts. His mouth met her lips, and he wanted nothing more than to give her the life from his lungs, as she had once done for him—the day his sailboat capsized and a bizarre squall had tossed him onto the island. He hadn’t recognized her at the time, had only felt a niggle of magic in her breath before oblivion claimed him. He believed it a hallucination. Until now. The vision pushed through his mind in a senseless stream. Was Fomorian black magic screwing with him?
    Ryan brushed a speck of seaweed off her nose, his warm fingertips pressing into her cold cheeks as if to pop answers out of her mouth. For the first time since he’d sailed away from New Angeles two weeks ago for a safe day of peace on the Pacific, he might find answers to the million questions warring in his brain. “I won’t let you die,” he growled.
    Unbelievably, the world had deposited this treasure in his lap when he believed he’d lost it all again. Vibrant and alive like the island he’d come to both despise for his loneliness and love for its lush life.
    “Come on, breathe,” he demanded. “Wake up!”
    He pinched her nose closed, puffed air into her mouth. “Breathe, damn it.”
    His thumb caressed the creamy damp skin above her breasts, stroked over rough scars welting her flat stomach. Slow and steady, her heart tapped a triumphant rhythm beneath his palm. Her mouth compressed and she sputtered against his lips. Ryan gently turned her head to the side.
    Salt water gushed between her ashen lips, and a final clearing cough heaved up her chest. Then her eyelashes fluttered up, exotic green eyes rounded wide. She croaked out, “By the Goddess, it is you!” Cringing against the sand, her face flushed. Frantically, she tugged at her soaked blouse, crossing her arms over her exquisite breasts. “What monster of insanity has invaded my body,” she murmured in a voice he strained to hear—in a tantalizing British lilt.
    She