The Lady and the Lion by Kay Hooper Read Free Book Online

gentleness. "It wasn't the truth. Look at me, Erin."
    Tumbling from one emotion to another since she had first seen him, Erin was by then almost numb. The arm holding her so close to him was hard but not painful, the hand on her face gentle, and his deep voice softer than she'd ever heard it. She wanted to cry, but obediently raised her eyes to meet his.
    "It wasn't the truth," he repeated quietly. "If you don't know you could never be so reckless, well at least I do."
    "Then why did you say it?" she whispered.
    A nerve throbbed at one corner of his mouth. "Maybe I wanted it to be true. Maybe I hoped it would shock you enough that you'd realize how insane this is and tell me to go to hell."
    She conjured a rueful smile. "I don't seem to have enough pride to tell you to go anywhere at all."

Three
     
    The arm around her tightened, and his hand slipped down to enclose her throat. Fleetingly, Erin thought that he could break her neck quite easily. She might have been forgiven for wondering if he meant to because his face looked as stony as it had when she'd slapped him, almost cruel in its fixed expression of grim anger. But Erin didn't wonder. She met his glittering eyes with no fear in her own, and she reached out to touch his lean cheek.
    "Don't be angry," she murmured. "I can't help it." For the first time in her life, she felt totally comfortable in revealing her own emotions, and if there was surprise in that, she didn't think about it, because everything seemed so natural with him. Talking to him, fighting with him, touching him—it all felt incredibly familiar. Her deepest instincts told her their tranquil dawn interludes had woven a link between her and this man, and a certainty beyond reason insisted the connection was terribly important to them both.
    For an instant after her soft words, his face remained unyielding, but then something changed. It wasn't a lessening of intensity, but a shifting. Anger was replaced by another emotion that gleamed in his eyes.
    "Dammit, Erin," he said roughly, his hand slipping to the nape of her neck, beneath her thick hair. He lowered his head and covered her parted lips with his own.
    He had stated with utter certainty that she wasn't reckless enough to sleep with a stranger in order to prove a point to her father, but Erin knew she was reckless enough to follow blindly wherever this might lead. Or maybe it wasn't recklessness. Maybe it was conviction. All she knew for sure was that she had to be in his arms. She had to.
    It wasn't a first kiss, a seeking, tentative thing; he kissed her with stark desire, the force in him that was vital and compelling, sweeping over her in a tidal wave of demand. She had believed she wanted no demands, no expectations, but everything in her rose explosively now to meet his passion.
    Her arms slid around his lean waist as she pressed herself even closer, something in her delighting in the sensation of being small and enclosed in his powerful embrace. His body was so hard, and hers fit so well against him. Heat spread through her in pulsing bursts and all her senses seemed to come rawly alive as though nothing had ever touched them before.
    If she had been granted a moment to think then, Erin might well have run from this, from him. She was, ordinarily, a woman of mild feelings, unaccustomed to violent highs and lows; if it had been otherwise, she could never have accepted her father's control over her life for so long. She had never understood turbulent emotions because she had never felt them, had never believed herself capable of such wildness, and the very thought of losing control emotionally was frightening to her.
    But she was given no time to feel wariness or fear, no chance to turn away from this and run. The force of him overwhelmed everything except the instant, searing strength of her own response.
    With her senses so vibrantly alive, she heard a faint little sound and felt it in her throat, a purr of pleasure that was alien and dimly