[Barbara Samuel] Night of Fire(Book4You) by Unknown Read Free Book Online

had never seen fog like this. It was thin and silvery, draped around the tree limbs in wisps. Mufflers hid the tops of the mountains and the greens and blues of the landscape were deepened, intensified. But what made it so beautiful was the promise that it would not last. The heated, buttery sun pressed down upon that mist, breaking through here and there in soft pillars that illumined a tree or a hidden valley or the path to the sea, glittering in full sunlight between the breaks in hills. A noise from below caught her attention and she looked down to the courtyard to see Basilio come out, wearing only a simple white shirt with those extravagantly full sleeves and a pair of breeches. In her excitement, she cried, "Good morning!"
    He lifted that extraordinary face, and Cassandra saw his startlement, his pleasure, before he smiled and waved. "Come down! Have breakfast with me."
    She felt like Juliet, daring and wild and free in her sleeping attire, with her hair uncombed on her shoulders. She leaned on the rail, feeling her hair tumble over the edge. "Will you feed me more of your plums?"
    He laughed. "Yes! And more besides. Hurry!"
    She raced inside, splashing water on her face, tossing off the nightrail as she searched for some easy thing to don. She tugged a chemise over her head, and a simply cut shepherdess's gown over that. Later she would call her maid to help her into all the proper accoutrements of a lady, the corsets and stockings and other fripperies.
    For now, she brushed her hair and left it loose, stuck her bare feet into her slippers, grabbed a shawl against the chill, and hurried down to join him.
    The sensation of her unconstrained breasts moving inside her chemise as she raced down the stairs made her feel deliciously free. She embraced the slightly wicked pleasure of her loose hair on her arms, and her skirts swishing around her bare ankles. When she sailed through the glass doors into the courtyard, breathless and happy, a burst of sunlight suddenly cut through the mist to fill the square with a golden wash—a beneficent approval of this new lightness in her, this new spirit of joy. She halted and tilted her face into it.
    "Open your mouth," Basilio said, close to her ear.
    She startled, dropping her shawl as she spun to look at him. He stood dose, a hint of a smile on his lips, and appreciation in his eyes as his gaze brushed over her face and throat and even her breasts. She realized suddenly that she had wanted to see that look in his eye, that darkening, that faint flare of the nostrils.
    I want him.
    She didn't even question that fierce whisper in her mind, only gazed at him for a long moment, letting him see that she wished to put her hands in that glossy tumble of black curls, wanted to taste his lips. Then she closed her eyes and opened her mouth. She hoped it would be his tongue she tasted, and the thought sent shocked but delicious anticipation through her.
    Instead he pressed a supple roundness against her lips, and she bit into a plum with a happy laugh, sucking on it for a moment before she opened her eyes.
    He wants me.
    It was there in the piercing focus of his atten-tion, a naked expression of longing as he looked at her mouth. With a little shake of his head, he said, "You must have left a path of shattered men in your wake."
    A ripple of disappointment touched her, but she could not have said why. Because he had allowed his desire to show, when she just had done the very same thing? Unsettled, she bent to capture her shawl and moved away, speaking over her shoulder. "To the contrary. They're quite terrified of me." She bit again into the plum she'd taken from him. "Men do not like a woman who is smarter than they are."
    His hands settled on his hips. "You are not smarter than me."
    She grinned. "We shall see, won't we?"
    He inclined his head with measuring eyes and a hint of a smile. "So we shall."
    After breakfast, they rode down a narrow track to the sea. The sun had burned through the