AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Elizabeth paused. There was no way to answer his question. She was a terrible liar, and she certainly couldn’t tell him the truth. Oh, he’d have a fine time with that—learning that she wanted to spend one last week, or if she was lucky a whole fortnight, in his company. She wanted to hear his voice, and breathe his scent, and catch her breath when he drew too near. She wanted to fall in love and pretend it could last forever.
No, the truth was not an option.
“It doesn’t matter why I’ve accepted,” she finally replied.
He stood. “Doesn’t it?”
Without even realizing it, she took a step back. It was so much easier to fake bravado when he was sitting down. But at his full height, he was the most intimidating male specimen she’d ever come across, and all her recent ramblings about feeling so comfortable in his presence seemed rather foolish and premature.
It was different now. He was here. He was close. And he wanted her.
That easy feeling had fled—the one that allowed her to be so true to herself in his company, to say whatever was on her mind without fear of embarrassment. It had been replaced by something infinitely more thrilling, something that stole her breath and her reason and her very soul.
His eyes never left hers. The rich brown color smoldered and darkened as he closed the distance between them. She couldn’t blink, she couldn’t even breathe as he drew ever nearer. The air grew hot, and then electric, and then he stopped.
“I’m going to kiss you now,” he whispered.
She couldn’t make a sound.
One of his hands settled at the hollow in the small of her back. “If you don’t want me to, tell me now, because if you don’t…”
She didn’t think she moved, but her lips parted in silent assent.
His other hand slid behind her head, and she thought she heard him murmur something as his fingers sank into the silk of her hair. His lips brushed against hers, once, twice, then moved to the corner of her mouth, where his tongue teased the sensitive skin of the edge of her lips until she was forced to gasp her pleasure.
And all the time, his hands were moving, caressing her back, tickling the nape of her neck. His mouth moved to her ear, and when he whispered, she felt it every bit as much as she heard it.
“I’m going to pull you closer.” His breath, and his words, were hot against her skin.
Some barely conscious part of Elizabeth realized that he was according her an uncommon respect, and she managed to find her voice long enough to say, “Why are you asking me?”
“To give you the chance to say no.” His gaze—hot, heavy, and very male—swooped down over her face. “But you won’t say no.”
She hated that his confidence was not misplaced, hated that she could refuse him nothing when he held her in his arms. But she loved the crackling awareness that washed over her—a strange sense that for the first time in her life, she understood her own body.
And when he pulled her close, she loved that his heart was racing every bit as fast as hers.
His heat seared her, and she felt nothing but him, heard nothing but the rushing of her own blood, and a softly worded, “Damn.”
Damn?
He pulled away.
Damn. Elizabeth stumbled backward, plopping into a chair that got in her way.
“Do you hear that?” James whispered.
“What?”
A murmur of voices. “That,” he hissed.
Elizabeth shot up like a bullet. “Oh, no,” she groaned. “It’s Susan. And Lucas and Jane. Do I look presentable?”
“Er, almost,” he lied. “You might want to…” He made vague “fixing” motions around his head.
“My hair?” She gasped. “My hair! What did you do to my hair?”
“Not as much as I would have liked,” he muttered.
