From Enemy's Daughter to Expectant Bride by Olivia Gates Read Free Book Online Page A

nullify my thought processes, don’t you?”
    “Not touching you is like holding my breath. I can only do it for so many minutes at a time. So will you stop pulling away? We can discuss whatever you like, for as long as you like, just with you in my arms.”
    Sighing again, she relaxed in his hold, resigned to the fact that she wasn’t strong enough to resist both her need and his.
    His lips curved. “So you think I’d judge those I’m considering for such a vital partnership by spying on them in a party? Would I disqualify them for stepping on their partner’s feet or talking with their mouth full?”
    “I bet you’d see everything you need to make an accurate judgment in observations like those. Just like you always do.”
    His eyebrows rose. “How do you know what I always do?”
    “Are you kidding? The past couple of hours are worth a year of intensive...exposure. And I’m connecting what I’ve just learned about you with what I’ve long known of you.”
    “And what, pray tell, do you think you know about me?”
    “Well, as a virtuoso in your field, you have such nonlinear, multidimensional analytic powers, you have the world begging for your Midas touch. You got where you are by judging every situation and person you’ve dealt with throughout your career perfectly. As perfectly as you judged me from a literal hundred paces.”
    He wove his fingers into her hair, wrapped a handful around his wrist and inhaled it. “Get yourself out of any comparison. Nothing with you had anything to do with anything I’ve ever experienced before. There was no judgment involved on my part, not when you zapped me from a literal hundred paces, too. And you did that to me when I had my back to you.”
    She blinked. “Really?”
    “Really. I was at the mezzanine when your aura lashed me with a thousand volts of delight.” He bent and kissed the tops of her breasts that bulged above the now too-tight bodice. “We’ve already agreed there was magic at work.”
    “Yes.” There was no contradicting him on that point. “So you’re not orchestrating events only to watch the attendees, at least to weed out those who prove to be blatantly unsuitable?”
    “Don’t you think someone as exceptional as you advertise me to be would let résumés choose for me?”
    Suddenly she realized what was going on. They’d moved from blinding passion, bypassing any expected awkwardness in the wake of its temporary sating, and plunged right into delightful banter. The seamlessness of it all had her heart soaring.
    She cupped his jaw, luxuriating in the ruggedness that filled her palm. “I would have thought so, if you haven’t just promised to give my boss preferential treatment if he passes the lamentable level of ‘any good.’ Or maybe I just mess with your thought processes, too.”
    Blistering intensity suddenly filled his eyes, making her heart falter. Then he covered her hand with his. “Do you realize this is the first time you’ve touched me?”
    Her mouth dropped open. “I’ve been touching you nonstop since about a minute and a half after setting eyes on you.”
    “No. You didn’t touch me once. You let me touch you. This is your first voluntary touch.”
    She gaped at him, everything rewinding and replaying.
    And he was right. She hadn’t touched him once!
    She’d just stood or lain there and let him do whatever he wanted, inciting him only by total surrender.
    “I was too overwhelmed to do anything but let you possess me. But let me compensate both of us.”
    Her other hand reached for his face, gliding up his cheek, moaning at the wonder of his feel, before doing what she’d been aching to do. She slipped her fingers into the hair at his nape, and the thick mass slid like living silk between them, urging her to take more. His breath caught as she bunched a handful of his locks, then tugged.
    Next second she was flat on her back, with him on top of her, hips driving between her spread thighs, his febrile,