Fire And Ice by Diana Palmer Read Free Book Online Page B

length of it. “It’s sexy.”
    She colored and all but jumped to her feet. “Shouldn’t we go on in?” she asked.
    He got up too, lazily, dangerously, and moved toward her like a jungle cat, with a grace of movement that was peculiarly his own.
    “You’re afraid of me,” he said, as he approached her. “Why?”
    She backed away with a laughing shrug. “Not afraid, just wary. You make me feel hemmed in sometimes.”
    “Do I?” he mused, watching her from his superior height. “What an interesting reaction.”
    She glared at him. “I thought you had a meeting somewhere tonight.”
    He chuckled deeply. “Trying to get rid of me, Margie? Yes, I do have a meeting, but not until after dinner.”
    “Business seems to take up most of your life,” she remarked quietly.
    He nodded, lifting the cigarette to his wide, chiseled lips. He was watching her, classifying her, and it made her shaky. “The universal panacea, Margie,” he returned.
    “Do you need one?” she blurted out.
    He searched her wide eyes. “Do you?” he asked. “You spend a great deal of time at that typewriter for someone just doing the occasional article. Does it compensate?”
    “For what?” she asked, resisting the urge to move away.
    “For a lover,” he said bluntly, and smiled mockingly as the shock registered in her green eyes.

Four
    S he felt her breath stop momentarily as she looked up into his dark, laughing eyes.
    “I don’t want a lover,” she said coldly.
    “You make that quite obvious. But you need one,” he said, unabashed. “You look like a woman who hasn’t been touched in years. Or stroked,” he murmured, reaching out to run his fingers down her cheek.
    She jerked wildly away from him, her eyes dilating, her mouth parted. “Don’t…!” she warned.
    He lifted his dark head and studied her with narrowed eyes, the cigarette making a tiny smokescreen between them. “You don’t like to be touched, do you?” he asked. “Which only goes to prove my point. How long has it been since a man kissed you—really kissed you, with passion?”
    She felt as if she were choking. “Sex isn’t everything, Mr. Van Dyne,” she ground out.
    “Spoken like a nun,” he applauded.
    She lashed out at him. “That’s all you men ever think about,” she accused. “What do you care about a woman’s needs?”
    “What do you know about a woman’s needs?” he challenged. His eyes wandered over her taut body. “Tell me something, Silver. Did your husband really die in a plane crash, or did he freeze to death in your bed?”
    She lifted her hand automatically, an involuntary response, a purely passionate act. But he was fast. He caught her wrist in a grip like steel and halted her fingers just inches from his tanned cheek.
    “Lift your hand to me again, wildcat, and I’ll throw you down on the floor and teach you lessons in passion you’ve never learned,” he warned softly.
    “What would you know about passion, you walking business machine?” she threw back, her hair wild as she struggled to free herself, her face alive and desperately beautiful.
    He laughed softly. One big arm shot out to catch her and drag her against his taut body, holding her there with effortless ease.
    She looked up at him with frightened eyes, her struggles intensifying, her face mirroring the apprehension she was feeling.
    “Damn you,” she breathed, trying to kick his shins.
    “Finally,” he murmured. “The real wom-an, under the facade.”
    She pushed at his massive chest and her hands came in contact with his muscles under their covering of curling, crisp hair. She froze at the unfamiliar contact. She had always avoided touching Larry. But her hands liked the feel of Cannon’s flesh, and because of that, she dragged her fingers away as if they’d been burned.
    He caught a handful of her silky hair and held her head where he wanted it. His eyes had gone darker while she fought him, until now they were almost black, and there was no smile in