Lady of Seduction by Laurel McKee Read Free Book Online Page B

shouldn’t go to the tower?”
    His stare snapped back up to her face, and his hands tightened on her upper arms. “Why would you want to go to the tower?
     There’s nothing there.”
    “Nothing at all?”
    “It’s practically a shell, and it’s not safe there, either.” He suddenly pulled her up against him; her body pressed to his
     as he drew her onto tiptoe.
    She could feel every hard angle of him against her softness, the strength of his lean body—his erection through her wet skirts.
     Whatever this insanity was, he felt it, too.
    He leaned his head down to whisper in her ear, his hot breath stirring her hair. “Don’t make me lock you in again, Caroline.”
    “Do you lock all your guests in their rooms?” she murmured. She laid her hands on his chest, curling her fingers into the
     damp shirt to try to find her balance. The feel of his smooth skin and the strong beat of his heart under her touch only made
     her dizzier.
    “Only the troublesome ones,” he said, and for the first time a smile touched the corner of his lips.
    “Am I a troublesome prisoner, then?”
    “Most assuredly you are.” He kissed the soft, sensitive spot just below her ear and touched her there with the tip of his
     tongue.
    Caroline gasped at the rush of lightning-hot sensation. Her fists closed convulsively on his shirt, and her eyes closed. His
     lips slid slowly along her neck, open and warm. He bit lightly at the curve of her shoulder, and her knees collapsed under
     her.
    His arms came hard around her waist, lifting her up high. He braced her between his body and the wall, and Caroline instinctively
     wrapped her legs around his waist to keep herself from falling. She had never felt so weak, so strange. Something primal and
     instinctive grew from deep inside her, overwhelming all her senses.
    His lips met hers roughly, urgently. She felt the sweep of his tongue against her lips, and she opened to him. He tasted of
     the rain, and of something dark and secret that she craved so much. She tangled her fingers in his hair, loosening it from
     its tie until it spilled over her hands like silk.
    He moaned deep in his throat as her tongue tangled with his, and the sound drove her to even dizzier heights of maddening
     desire. She pushed his shirt out of her way so she could touch his naked skin and feel the hot, vivid life of him under her
     hands. The roughness of the old scars abraded her palms. The lacy pattern of them traced from his face, along the side of
     his neck, all the way to just below his breastbone, marring his otherworldly perfection.
    She remembered the flames and the terrible crash of the warehouse roof as it caved in. The way Grant lay so still on the icy
     pavement after Conlan dragged him from the inferno, barely breathing, his skin blackened.
    Somehow all that horror, which had been so vivid to her for years, seemed the distant dream now. For here Grant was, in her
     arms, the most
alive
person she had ever known. He made her feel alive, too, as if she had beenasleep all her life, trapped in some kind of gray stasis and now she was free.
    He moved her hand roughly away from the scars, like he couldn’t bear her touch on them, and his kiss deepened. There was no
     seductive art to it, as she would have expected from a man who was once the most notorious seducer in Dublin. There was only
     a hungry, desperate need that matched her own. She fell deeper and deeper into him, drowning in him.
    But he suddenly tore his mouth from hers. Caroline gasped and tried blindly to pull him back to her, to seek more of these
     new, intoxicating feelings. He resisted her, all his muscles tense, and she opened her eyes to stare at him in hazy confusion.
    He looked back at her with horror in his eyes, as if he had never seen her before until she landed here in his arms. Caroline
     felt like a freezing wind suddenly washed over her, chilling the heated passion into terrible, sick shock.
    He lowered her to her feet and stepped