Man of My Dreams by Johanna Lindsey Read Free Book Online Page B

the stable. Two stalls, wasn’t it? And with Caesar in one of them, he was surprised the stallion wasn’t snorting in disapproval at the disturbance.
    Devlin felt like doing more than snorting. In fact, he was getting damned angry that his sleep had been interrupted by the feminine voice that was beginning to sound familiar, though he couldn’t quite place it. He was even more angry at the effect it was having on him, because it did sound so familiar.
    “That tickles.” A giggle. “So you like that, do you? I thought you might. Sir Ambrose loves it.”
    Devlin shot out of his bed, in the grip of an inexplicable rage now that a face had finally come to him to go with that softly purring voice. He yanked the already open door wide, but abruptly halted at that point. No loverscavorting in the one empty stall. No man to beat to a bloody pulp. Just Megan, standing in a pool of lantern light, with Caesar nibbling sugar out of her cupped palm. She was dressed in a jade-green riding habit, her bright copper hair in a thick braid lying like a flame down the center of her back. She hadn’t heard Devlin, her full attention lavished on the animal she’d been seducing with her soft words and edible enticements.
    Even with her innocence before him, the rage didn’t leave Devlin completely. It couldn’t. It had been too hot to begin with. He wasn’t even aware of its cause, since jealousy wasn’t in his sphere of normal emotions. But he’d classed this female as virginal, which put her off limits for himself—and accounted for a good deal of his previous irritation with her. So that brief, damning conclusion he’d drawn when he finally recognized her voice, that she wasn’t virginal after all, was in fact sharing her exquisite little body not just with the lucky fellow she was presently with, but also with the soon-to-be-jealous Sir Ambrose—that had sent him over the edge, especially since he’d been lying there with a full arousal caused by thoughts of the same female.
    He realized that he’d made a mistake—a ridiculous one, to be truthful—but that didn’t help to calm him either. He decided he’d had good reason to be annoyed—a mild word for what he’d felt—after he’d denied himself the pleasure of seducing her himself, only to thinkshe was actually quite free with her favors. But she wasn’t, he’d still have to deny himself, and, perversely, that was what was keeping his emotions on an upper level.
    “What are you doing here, brat?” His sour tone matched his mood.
    Megan didn’t turn around, but her back straightened stiffly, telling him she recognized his voice. Her hand dropped slowly to carelessly wipe the remaining white crystals on her skirt. Caesar didn’t appreciate that, his head coming completely out of the stall in search of more sugar.
    “I will thank you to address me properly—”
    “So don’t thank me.”
    “—or not at all, preferably the latter.”
    She whirled around then, about to say more, but no words came out other than a silent “Oh” as her eyes took in the sight of Devlin wearing no more than his trousers, and those had been half unfastened for comfort, revealing a considerable amount of skin below his navel. Helplessly, curiously, almost compulsively, her eyes moved over all that bare, golden skin, skimming the wide shoulders, the long, muscle-defined arms, the broad width of chest that narrowed down in his hard leanness to a flat stomach, then hips that flared out only minimally from his waist. Black hair lay thickly over his upper chest, with only a few strands swirling about his nipples, none at all on his smooth middle, but just below the navel it grew again in a straight line that disappearedinto his trousers. And below that—a thick bulge straining at the bit of material still fastened on his trousers.
    Her eyes went no farther, stayed fixed with a bemused intensity on that most private area of his anatomy, and Devlin watched her breathlessly, felt his