One Night of Sin by Gaelen Foley Read Free Book Online

gallant tenderness. “We’ve all been down on our luck, my love. This isn’t the end. Don’t lose heart.” He kissed her head again. “Come home with me tonight. As a gentleman, I cannot leave you out here alone to fend for yourself. I’m sure there must be some way I can help. You’re very beautiful, you know. You’ll find no shortage of protectors. Yes, you’ll make your fortune, my girl, and when you do—” He pulled back, gave her a roguish smile, and chucked her gently under the chin. “I hope you shove it down your parents’ throats.”
    Becky stared at him with fresh tears in her eyes. Tears of gratitude. He had it all wrong, of course, but she smiled tremulously at his defiant encouragement, one rebel to another. No meek sufferer, it was very much in the spirit of the way she looked at life.
    Maybe he was not entirely uncaring.
    She managed a taut nod and took a deep breath. “Thank you,” she whispered as she blinked her tears away.
    His smile turned wily. “As for the fool who caused your ruin, I can guarantee you one thing: He never pleasured you as I can.” He moved closer, and then he touched her mouth, running the pad of his thumb slowly across her lower lip. “You look hungry,” he whispered. “I could feed you.” He lowered his head as though to kiss her, but Becky found the breathless strength to turn away, her heart pounding at his velvet beguilement.
    “Why do you resist?” he asked, his murmur rich with decadent sensuality. He stroked her cheek. “Come home with me. We’ll take it nice and slow. I’d never rush you, sweet babe. I won’t do anything you don’t want. I’m going to make you feel so good, Becky. Let me take care of you tonight.” He tucked her hair gently behind her ear. “You won’t regret it.” Her heart raced; his silken touch was maddening as he caressed her cheek and the curve of her neck. “What is it you desire?” he breathed. “Just tell me. Anything you want.”
    She swallowed hard, trying to hold on to her defenses as he made her body tremble. Well, that sounded terribly sincere, she thought. Yet his practiced seduction proved powerfully intoxicating.
    Intoxication often brought with it a fool’s courage, and Becky, in a surge of daring, decided to play along for a moment, perhaps out of simple fascination to find out how all this business worked. Or perhaps because he had already succeeded in arousing her. “Anything?” she countered skeptically.
    “Well,” he amended with a languid half smile. “Within reason.”
    His hand wandered lower, trailing slowly down the center of her chest.
    She glanced down at it. His gold and onyx pinky ring glinted in the distant lamplight. Such deft, expert hands. No man had ever touched her there before. A few had tried. She had slapped them.
    She did not slap Lord Alec.
    She didn’t even want to. He was too fascinating, too gorgeous, too charming, too smooth. Her mind felt drugged with his coaxing; she had a feeling she was in deep over her head with this man, but at the moment she didn’t even care.
    “You see, if it’s plain riches you want, you’re better off with Draxinger,” he purred, drawing little shapes on her breastbone with his middle fingertip. “I daresay you’ve won his heart already, aside from the small matter of knocking his tooth loose.”
    “You’re not rich?” she ventured boldly, lifting her chin.
    “Sorry, no,” he answered in amusement.
    “You seem rich.”
    “I try.” His eyes danced as he shook his head sadly. “I made a fortune gaming and I lost it.”
    “Ah, that’s a pity.” Her voice sounded a trifle breathless despite her playful bravado.
    “I know.”
    “So, make another.”
    “Good idea,” he said dryly. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
    “Why not? If you can do it once, you can do it twice, can’t you?”
    “When one falls down a deep, dark hole,
cherie,
one must crawl out of it as best one can. After that, one isn’t so inclined to throw caution