BargainWiththeBeast by Naima Simone Read Free Book Online

her bout with illness, the sharpness in her blatant
scrutiny threatened to peer too deep, see too much. He turned away.
    “Dinner is almost ready,” he murmured, crossing the room and
pausing at the foot of the bed. “I thought you might like a bath before you
eat.”
    Her delighted sigh made him swivel his head to face her.
Breath trapped in his throat, he thrust his hands in the front pockets of his
pants to keep from reaching out to her. Here was a woman who did not take life
for granted. Not when something as simple as a bath caused her lashes to lower
and the corners of her soft mouth to tilt in a grin of hedonistic bliss. His
heart hammered and he released his pent-up breath. It eased the drumming in his
chest, but did jack shit for the pounding in his cock. He longed to see her
cat-who-just-ate-the-cream smile as he rose from between her spread thighs,
after she’d just come on his tongue.
    “I would give you my firstborn child, Rumpelstiltskin.”
    His spurt of amusement caught him off guard. Laughter had
been in short supply for a long while and the tickle of humor was strange.
How…sad. Had his existence become so solitary, his bitterness so entrenched,
joy was an alien experience?
    He cleared his throat and tugged on the bedcovers. “Not
necessary, since any child of yours would probably inherit your ‘hell on
wheels’ gene.”
    “I was precocious.” Gwendolyn scowled at his snort, eased to
sitting and gingerly swung her legs over the side of the bed. The large T-shirt
he’d clothed her in bared smooth brown thighs and calves to his starved gaze.
With herculean effort, he tore his stare away from her lovely skin, but the
image stayed emblazoned in his mind.
    With more care and gentleness than he would have believed
himself capable of, he grasped her upper arm and helped her stand. After two
bedridden days, her legs trembled and a slight tremor traveled up her body to
the slender, fine-boned hand clutching his forearm. Muttering a curse, he bent
his knees and hooked an arm beneath her knees while the other supported her
back. He straightened with Gwendolyn in his arms, pressed to his chest.
    Her squawk of surprise echoed in his ear as she flung her
arms around his neck as if she dangled from a great precipice instead of
several feet in the air. He rolled his eyes even as he surrendered to a small
grin.
    “Calm down, Gwen,” he said.
    “What are you doing?” she ranted. “You can’t carry me. I’m
too heavy.”
    “Don’t I know it. I think I may’ve slipped a disk.” He
grunted and grinned wider at her outraged gasp. Truthfully, in spite of her
height, she was a negligible weight in his arms. If she realized how much he
savored the crush of her breasts against his chest and the press of her soft
thighs over his arm, she would have demanded he lower her to floor. Good thing
his parents had raised a man intelligent enough not to mention the obvious.
    Her protests continued into the spacious bathroom and didn’t
end until he lowered her to the top of the closed toilet lid.
    “I can’t believe you did that,” she grumbled as he turned to
the large, Jacuzzi-style bathtub and twisted the faucets. Water gushed out and
filled the bottom of the tub in seconds. He wiggled his fingers under the
steady stream, testing the warmth. Satisfied, he whirled on his heel and
exited. It required only moments to gather a fresh pair of pajama bottoms and
one of the tank tops she’d packed, along with the vanilla-scented shampoo and
conditioner. When he returned to the bathroom, her scowl transformed into a
delighted smile as her eyes lit on the articles in his hands.
    “Are you ready?” He placed the clothes and bottles on the
counter and stepped forward.
    “Yes.” Her wide brown eyes dipped to the floor before
lifting to meet his once again. “Xavier, I can’t, um, get undressed with…” She
fluttered her fingers in his direction.
    He grasped what she had a hard time voicing and suppressed
the automatic