Dream's End by Diana Palmer Read Free Book Online Page B

don’t think you can get away with it here. Nobody backtalks me, not on my land.”
    â€œOh, no, they wouldn’t dare,” she returned, even though the effort to talk was choking her. “Mr. God Almighty Matherson doesn’t take anything from anybody!”
    â€œAs you’re about to find out,” he said ominously. The half-smoked cigarette went flying out into the yard, and both lean, steely arms went around her slender body, crushing her softness against the length of him.

Five
    T he sudden, unexpected contact made her panic, and she fought him, struggling to put distance between them, to escape those arms that felt like steel bands, the crush of his chest hurting her.
    â€œLet me go!” she cried wildly.
    â€œMake me,” he said in a voice she couldn’t recognize.
    She threw her head back and looked up at him defiantly, her pale eyes throwingoff sparks as she panted with the unsuccessful effort to free herself. Her body felt like metal, stiff and icy, in the first brutal embrace she’d ever endured.
    â€œDid you expect to win?” he demanded, and his eyes burned with suppressed fury. “I could break your young body like a matchstick.”
    â€œAll right, I’ll admit that you’re physically superior,” she panted angrily, “now will you let go of me?”
    â€œNot until I give you what you’ve been begging for ever since I came up those steps,” he said in a low, dangerous voice.
    Before she could ask him what he meant, his head lowered and she felt the crush of a man’s lips against her mouth for the first time in her young life.
    She stiffened at the hard, moist contact, at the urgent way he was trying to force her lips apart under the warmth of his, at the brutal way he was holding her so that she felt powerless against anything he might do.
    He was making no allowances at all for her innocence, her inexperience. He was kissing her with a violent passion, his tongue running along the edge of her trembling mouth, his teeth nipping sensuously at her lower lip as his hands slid down her back to her hips and arched her against him.
    A frightened moan broke from her throat. She pushed against his massive chest with all her might, feeling with a sense of terror the cool bare flesh with its light covering of curling hair against her fingers.
    He tore his mouth away suddenly and looked straight into her wide, shocked eyes, dark with the fear she was feeling. Her face had gone white and even as he looked at her he felt the shudder race down the length of her body pressed so intimately against his.
    The truth registered with a flash in his silvery eyes. “My God, you’ve never been kissed before!” he exclaimed, as if he couldn’t believe what he was saying.
    Her lips trembled as she tried to speak. “No, I haven’t,” she whispered shakenly, “and if…if that’s how it feels, I never want to again!”
    His arms loosened and she took advantage of the momentary reprieve to tear loose and run. She didn’t stop until she reached the safety of her room.
    All through the long night, she lived that kiss over and over again. The first time should have had something of tenderness in it, consideration. She’d dreamed of kissing Curry, of being kissed by him, but that brutal assault was more of a nightmare than a dream.
    He’d meant it as a punishment, and that was what it had been. A way to show her how weak she was, how vulnerable she was to his strength. She’d learned the lesson, but in a way that became more painful with every passing second. What had he thought of her? That she was easy, that she was really Jim Black’s woman? Her eyes closed on the harsh memory.Perhaps he had thought that, until he kissed her. A man with Curry’s experience would hardly mistake a novice’s reaction to his passion. She remembered with a tremor just how expert his demanding mouth had been. She