Kidnapping His Bride by Karen Erickson Read Free Book Online

surprise.
    No woman had ever walked away from him before. He left first. Always. Catalina Campioni intrigued him. He’d thought her a simple Italian girl he was going to marry, but there was more beneath the surface. Much more.
    And he’d quickly become determined to discover those mysteries, what she hid, what she was really like. He wanted to get to know her, just as he promised earlier.
    Just before she turned him down.
    Rafe could admit her defiance was a turn on. Sick, twisted bastard that he was, he’d never looked so forward to a challenge before.
    “And go where? As if I would never leave with you. Are you crazy?” she asked incredulously.
    Maybe he was, he didn’t know. He knew one thing—he was crazy for her. Thought he might go crazy if he couldn’t have her. But was it more a case of wanting what he couldn’t have?
    He pushed that ugly thought aside.
    “I might not give you a choice,” he whispered as he leaned down to press his mouth to hers in a searing hot kiss. Her lips parted for him easily, the little moan that escaped her fueling him as he slid his tongue against hers, taking the kiss instantly deeper. He pressed closer, his body hardening when he felt her soft, supple form clad in only a thin nightgown.
    She wrenched her head away from him, abruptly breaking their kiss. “Stop,” she said between panting breaths, her tiny hand resting against his chest. “I don’t want you to kiss me.”
    All lies. Her reaction gave her away. “Stop denying the attraction between us. You know it’s there. The minute my lips are on yours, you open for me. You want this. You want me.”
    She stared up at him, her chest rising and falling at a rapid pace, drawing his gaze to her full breasts that pressed against the thin cotton of her pale pink nightgown. A sinful body covered by a sweetly innocent nightgown with a little white satin bow in the center of the bodice, for the love of God—she was a contradiction he wanted to explore further.
    More than anything, he wanted to bed her. He knew it was wrong, to let his lust for her control him, but damn it, he’d known this woman would eventually belong to him for years. To have her suddenly ripped out of his life made him want her even more.
    “I don’t want what you have to offer.” She narrowed her eyes as she glared up at him. Her fingers curled into his shirt, her nails scraping against his chest. “Is this some sort of trap? Do you want to get caught with me in my room so you have no choice but to marry me?”
    He hadn’t thought of it—and the idea was tempting, as wrong as he knew it was to even contemplate such a thing. “I don’t want to marry you…yet. I want to show you what you want to see. I want to be the one who offers you that taste of freedom you yearn for, Cat. Let me take you wherever you want to go. Whatever you want to see.”
    “We shouldn’t do this.” She pushed at his chest and bucked her hips, nudging against his burgeoning erection. He grimaced at first contact. “Rafe, please.”
    Christ. She said it like that and it aroused him beyond measure. Her soft, sexy voice whispering please, the way she clung to him. He could imagine her begging him in other ways. Sexy ways. Naked ways. “Come away with me, Cat.”
    “No.” She shook her head, her gaze cutting away from his, her fingers still curled in his shirt.
    “Cat.” Reaching out, he gripped her by the chin, forcing her to look at him. “Come. With. Me.”
    “Why? So you can trap me into a loveless marriage and then abandon me? So you can impregnate me and force me to have an endless stream of babies to ensure the Renaldi line will carry on? Where you’ll end up leaving me alone and pregnant and miserable and feeling unloved like my poor, miserable mother? I don’t think so.”
    He blinked, shocked at her words, at the images they brought forth. He had no intention of doing any such thing. His reputation as a charming ladies’ man may have preceded him in his