AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Luke,” she began, then stopped. She wouldn’t tell him that she wished things were different. That they’d met under different circumstances. Instead, she told him the most basic of truths. “No matter how I feel about you, I will do my job.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?”
She tilted her head up to look at his face. “It doesn’t seem to bother you overly much.”
“You will do what you must,” he said. “As will I.”
She swallowed, knowing that as a prosecutor she should push, try to determine if he was intending to run, and if so, how. As a woman, though, she didn’t want to know. Didn’t even want to think about it. Because if he stayed, he would undoubtedly be executed for murder. And if he left, she would never see him again. Impossible.
“We met at the wrong time,” she whispered.
“When would you have preferred?”
She laughed, considering the question. “I don’t know. The thirties? Odds are good I wouldn’t have been a lawyer back then.”
“Except that you would not have been born,” he said, his fingers lazily stroking her back. “And as inconvenient as it may be for us, I am fond of the woman you are.”
“I am, too,” she admitted. “Still, it would have been nice. To be with you, without all of this noise surrounding us.” She thought back, enjoying the game, the fantasy. “Then again, maybe not the thirties. Maybe the 1800s, and I could have worn fabulous gowns.”
“Ah, but then we would have to work so very hard to free you from the corset.”
Her breath hitched as she imagined him undressing her. “If it was your fingers doing the unfastening,” she admitted, “I’m not sure I would mind.”
“Nor I.”
It struck her suddenly that he surely had actual experience with actual corsets, and the realization was both fascinating and overwhelming. “Were you here during the Civil War? The American Revolution?”
His laugh seemed to rumble through her. “If I tell you that I was, will you run?”
“No,” she whispered, trying to imagine all that he’d seen, that he’d experienced. It made her expected eighty or so years seem inadequate and puny. “It’s overwhelming, you know. Thinking about all that you’ve seen and done.”
“Then we are even,” he said, “because you overwhelm me as well.”
His words seemed to trip over her skin, a skimming rock on a pool of water, sending little ripples of pleasure outward over her body. She wanted him—there was no point in denying it—and yet she knew damn well that taking this any further would be a bad, bad idea.
“Luke—”
“Hush.” He brushed his lips over her hair, then tucked a finger under her chin and tilted her face up to his. She drew in a breath, knowing she should protest, even going so far as to form the words in her head. But they didn’t come, and when his mouth brushed hers, she moaned with the pleasure of it.
The kiss was slow and gentle, a promise of future delights, and her body fired in anticipation, her breasts aching and her thighs gathering warmth between them. She clenched her hands, gathering his shirt in her fingers, and opened her mouth to his.
“Sara,” he whispered, his lips brushing her ear in a wonderfully arousing manner. “I would have you in bed.”
He didn’t give her time to answer, simply slanted his mouth over hers even as he drew her close until their bodies pressed together, and she could feel every inch of him, including his growing arousal. She moaned, her lips parting with the sound, and he took full advantage, his mouth sliding greedily over hers. His mouth was both soft and firm, and he slid his tongue over her lips, between them, deepening the kiss as her body warmed under his ministrations.
Every inch of skin tingled, and her panties were damp with need. She shifted, wanting, and pressed harder against him. “Luke.”
He stole his name from her lips with a kiss, hot and demanding. His hands were on her shoulders, and he pushed her back, hard, onto the bed, and the slow burn of passion transformed into something desperate and demanding.
She moved beneath him, wanting to feel him, to have more of him, and she heard herself moan, her body overwhelmed by the simple, exquisite touch of his lips upon hers.
When he added his hands to the mix—when he shifted to straddle her and his hands slipped inside her robe and beneath her T-shirt—her mind seemed to snap. There was no way—no possible way—that she could survive the onslaught, this bliss.
“I want to see you.” Roughly, he shoved her shirt up. His mouth closed on her, teasing the erect nipple through the thin cotton. Sending delicious shocks through her body, loosening her. Readying her.
“Naked,” she whispered. “Why aren’t you naked?”
“I think I can remedy that oversight,” he said, then eased back to work the buttons of his shirt.
