Yuletide Enchantment Read Online Free PDF Page A

She didn’t turn her head away when his lips brushed hers. No, she sank farther into the down pillow and opened her mouth to him, allowed him to teach her how to kiss, his tongue tangling with hers. When her hands entwined through his long silky hair, he took it as an invitation to explore her body. He fondled her breasts, traced her curves as he lifted the gown slowly up her legs, past her hips. She moaned into his mouth, and he deepened the kiss, circled her hard, pulsing nipple with the pad of his thumb.
    Knowing it was only a dream, she let him take what he wanted.
    “Just a feel of you,” he whispered. “A small taste.”
    His hand skimmed along her belly, down to her curls. Her own hand wrapped around his wrist—not to stop, but to ensure that he would continue. When she felt the first brush of his blunt finger parting her, her eyes closed and she arched, wanting more than just that soft brush.
    His strokes were slow, thorough. She could hardly bear it, the pressure deep within her, the ache to be filled with his fingers.
    And then his mouth had kissed her there , and he had whispered darkly, Open to me.
    “Issy? Issy?” Fiona called.
    Isobel struggled back from her dream and into reality. How she wanted to relive that part, when her dream lover had slid along the length of her body and insinuated himself between her thighs, kissing and touching her for hours. He had made her cry out, tear at her sheets, beg for something she didn’t know how to name.
    “I’m sorry?” Isobel asked, trying to hide the huskiness in her voice. “You were saying?”
    “Not me. You were the one speaking. Then you just stopped.”
    Isobel flushed. “Oh yes. I was wondering how long you have known about the earl?” she asked, refusing to think of how she had awakened that morning, thoroughly aroused. Her nipples had been hard little points against her nightgown, and her thighs had been wet. In the dream, her stranger had kissed and touched her until she had shook and wetness had leaked from her. He had liked it. Had told her so. Those hours had awakened a pleasure and passion she didn’t realize could exist between man and woman.
    Just a dream, she told herself. She’d only had it because she was angry at her father and Stuart for drawing up a contract with St. Clair. There would be no love, no warmth with the earl. There certainly would not be the intimacy she’d known in her dream. She could not imagine the earl caressing her so tenderly, putting his fingers against her most intimate place, lapping at her and whispering to her as her stranger had.
    “Issy?” Isobel shuddered, realizing Fiona was looking at her strangely. “Are you all right? You’re positively flushed!”
    “Fine,” she muttered, and resolved to put the dream out of her mind. Reaching for a strand of shimmering gold braiding, she wove it in and out of the bough. “The gas lamps will add a nice effect to this braiding, don’t you think?”
    “I think you’re avoiding my question.”
    Isobel sighed and dropped onto the brocade settee. Boxes of Christmas decorations were strewn beside her. Even now, one of the downstairs maids was up in the attic searching for more.
    Normally, decorating MacDonald Hall for the annual Christmas ball was the highlight of the season, but this year, her heart wasn’t in it. She half wondered if St. Clair celebrated the holidays. He’d certainly never put much effort into making merry on the occasions that he had traveled to the hall for Christmas.
    Isobel couldn’t imagine being married to such a boring man. Handsome or not, the Earl of St. Clair was not who she would have picked for her lifelong partner.
    “And who would you have picked?” Fiona asked.
    Isobel groaned. “I hadn’t realized I said the words aloud,” she muttered. Lord, she really was out of sorts today.
    “Well?” Fiona asked again as she placed some candles among the greenery. “What sort of man would you wish for?”
    “One who loves me,”