Man of Ice by Diana Palmer Read Free Book Online Page A

it, he’d played along.
    “Go ahead,” he’d murmured in a deep, tender voice. “Untie it, Barrie. I want to look at you.”
    She remembered looking into his eyes and seeing the lazy sensuality in them, the calculating narrowness of them.
    “Why the hesitation?” he’d taunted. “You’re drawing attention because you’re being so damned conservative. None of the other women have any hang-ups about their bodies.”
    He nodded toward two young women about Barrie’s age, dancing along the beach with only bikini bottoms covering their womanliness.
    She bit her lip, hesitating, turned just sideways from him, toward the beach.
    He’d been beside her, facing her on his knees, his lean hands resting on his muscular thighs. “Barrie?” he’d coaxed softly. And when she looked at him his voice softened and deepened. “Take it off.”
    He hypnotized her with forbidden longings, with long-buried needs. Her hands fumbled with the single tie at the back of her neck and she loosened it. Her fingers reached around to the other single fastening under her shoulder blades. She looked into his pale green eyes, trembling with new sensations, flushing at the enormity of what she was doing. And she let the top fall away.
    She remembered even now the feel of his eyes, the soft intake of his breath as he’d looked at her. She had high, firm, full breasts, pale pink, with darker pink crowns that went rigid under the impact of his level gaze.
    She trembled helplessly as he looked his fill. There was a dark flush along his high cheekbones, and he made no pretence of not staring.
    Unexpectedly his eyes lifted to hold hers. Whatever he’d seen there must have told him what he wanted to know, because he’d made a sound deep in his throat and stood up. He seemed to vibrate with some violent emotion. Suddenly he’d bent and slipped his arms under her knees and her back and lifted her off the sand. His eyes stared into hers as he slowly, exquisitely, brought her upper body to his so that her breasts flattened gently in the thick hair that covered his broad chest. His skin was as cool from the breeze as hers was hot from the feelings he aroused in her virginal body. She’d stiffened at the shock of the contact.
    “No one is looking,” he said roughly. “No one gives a damn. Put your arms around me and come closer.”
    It was shocking, the need she felt. She obeyed him, forgetting her shyness as she ached to feel his body against hers. She remembered burying her hot face in his throat, drinking in the scent of him, feeling his heavy, harsh pulse against her bare breasts as his arms tightened and he walked toward the water with her.
    “Wh…why?” She choked.
    “Because I’m so damned aroused that I can’t hide it,” he said half angrily. “The only escape is right into the ocean. Or don’t you feel it, too, Barrie? A burning deep in your belly, an emptiness that wants filling, an ache that hurts?”
    Her arms contracted and she moaned softly.
    “Yes, you feel it,” he breathed as he began to wade into the water. His face slid against hers and his mouth suddenly opened as it sought and found her parted lips. She didn’t remember the shock of the water. There was nothing in life except that first, burning sweetness of Dawson’s hard mouth on her lips, nothing more than the feel of him in her arms, against her bare breasts.
    Vaguely she was aware that they were in the warm water, that his arms had released her so that he could pull her into an even more intimate embrace. His long legs tangled with hers, and for the first time, she felt the force of his desire for her. They kissed and kissed, there in the water, oblivious to the whole world, to the line of hotels above the shore, the other swimmers, the noise on the beach.
    He moved her, just enough to let his lean hand find and swallow one swollen breast. His tongue eased into her open mouth. His free hand lifted and pulled her, fit her exactly to the hard thrust of him. And she