Cattleman's Choice by Diana Palmer Read Free Book Online Page B

turned and had to force herself to look away again. He’d obviously just come from a shower. He was fully dressed except for the shirt he was shrugging into, a blue printed one that matched his eyes. She got a wildly exciting glimpse of broad, tanned muscles and a thick pelt of hair running down past the buckled belt around his lean hips, and her heart started beating unexpectedly hard. She’d seen Carson without a shirt before, for God’s sake, she told herself, why was it affecting her this way all of a sudden?
    â€œYou look elegant even in jeans,” he murmured drily. “Couldn’t you find anything worn?”
    â€œThis is worn.” She pouted, turning to find him closer than she’d expected. She took a slow breath and inhaled the scent of a men’s cologne that was one of her particular favorites. “You smell good,” she blurted out.
    â€œDo I?” He laughed softly.
    His hands had stilled on the top buttons of the shirt and he looked down at her in a way that threatened and excited all at the same time. His chiseled mouth was smiling in a faint, sexy way and his blue eyes narrowed as they studied her.
    â€œWhy are you so nervous?” he asked with his head lifted, so that he was looking down his crooked nose at her. “You’ve been alone with me before.”
    â€œYou were always dressed before,” she said without meaning to.
    â€œIs that it?” He watched her face and deliberately flicked open the buttons he’d fastened. “Does this bother you?” he asked in a deep, lazy tone, moving the shirt aside to let the hair-roughened expanse of his chest show.
    Her breath caught and she didn’t understand why. Her lips went dry, but she barely noticed.
    He lifted her hands with slow, easy movements, and brought her fingers to his cool skin, letting her feel the hard muscles.
    â€œNo flab,” she laughed unsteadily, trying to keep things light between them, but her legs felt shaky.
    â€œNot a bit,” he agreed. “I work too hard for that.” He pressed her fingers hard against him and moved them in a slow, sensuous pattern down the center of his chest and back up again. “I don’t suppose you brought a fishing pole?”
    â€œI don’t…own one,” she replied. Incredible, that they were conducting an impersonal conversation while what they were doing was growing quickly more intimate.
    His chest rose and fell unevenly. He pressed her palms flat against his hardened nipples and she could hear his heartbeat, actually hear it. He moved, so that he was closer than ever, and his breath stirred the hair at her temples.
    She couldn’t look up, because she wanted his mouth desperately, and she knew he’d see it. She didn’t understand her own wild hungers or his unexpected reaction to her nearness and her touch. She didn’t understand anything.
    The room seemed dark and private. There was no sound in it, except for his breathing and the loud tick of the mantel clock.
    He drew his open mouth tenderly across her forehead, his breath hot, his chest shuddering with the harshness of his breathing. Impatiently, he took her hands in his and guided them down the hard muscles of his chest and around to his lean hips. She protested, a stiff little gesture.
    â€œDon’t fight me,” he whispered unsteadily, moving her hands down the sides of his legs and back up to his hips. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
    But there was! Her own reaction to him was terrifying. She felt his legs touch hers and she made an odd sound in her throat, one that he heard.
    His head moved nearer. Her eyes closed and she felt his warm breath at her forehead, her nose, the open softness of her mouth. Unaware of her response, she opened her mouth to invite his, tilted her head back to give him full access. And waited, breathing in his scent as his mouth came closer. Would it be gentle this time, she wondered, or