One Wicked Night by Shelley Bradley Read Free Book Online Page B

held her. Moved by his unexpected show of emotion, she cautiously wound her arms about his neck.
    She fingered the dark hair that had grown over his collar. At her touch, he arched his neck, sending her fingers through the soft mass of his hair and a whirl of awareness through her body.
    “Are you as beautiful inside as you are outside?” His voice was a whisper, but Serena heard it.
    Serena swallowed. “I’m human, like everyone. I have faults.”
    Lucien stroked her cheek, his eyes so bleak and unshielded, Serena swore she could see into his soul. And what a sad soul it was. “Not to me. Not tonight.”
    He claimed her mouth in another kiss, this one more tender—and desperate—than the others had been. The thorough, gentle contact, accompanied by the caress of his fingers down her spine, made her soften against him in acquiescence.
    After the kiss, he reached for her hand, then he led her out of the library, down the shadowy hall. At the end of the corridor, he pushed open the last portal and stepped aside. She brushed him as she passed. The light contact tantalized her as she entered his fire-lit bedroom.
    The large, high-ceilinged room had wide floor-to-ceiling windows. The room’s sparse but striking decor was done in rich hues of burgundy, deep blue, and cream, but seemed inconsequential surrounding his bed. The gleaming old piece was giant, covered with intricate hand carvings up its massive, cylindrical posters. A powerful mahogany tester, also exquisite in its etching, lay like a ceiling atop those posters.
    “It’s beautiful,” she breathed, staring at his bed.
    “It was my parents’. They collected antiquities. This was constructed around 1580 and brought from a castle in Shropshire.”
    Unable to resist, Serena wrapped her palm around one of the posters, her fingers stroking its carvings.
    Lucien walked to an adjoining sitting room and poured liquid into a glass. He returned with a measure of the same wine they had sipped in the library and dipped one finger into the alcoholic liquid before skimming it across her lip. A drop beaded, threatening to run down her chin. Reflexively, her tongue peeked out to catch it. She tasted the wine as it mixed with the intimate tang of his skin. Another ribbon of desire wound through her.
    Her gaze caught his an instant before he bent to devour her mouth again. As his tongue penetrated and engaged hers in an impossible-to-resist dance, her emotions whirled within her like autumn leaves on a windy day. Her breath caught in her throat. She clutched his shoulders, hanging on so that her weak knees did not sink to the carpet.
    He bent down, his arm reaching behind her legs. In a single sweep, he lifted her and turned, then set her on the massive bed. She felt the soft coverlet beneath her fingertips—and incredulity rushing throughout her. Sweet mercy, whatever he was doing to her, the sensations he roused felt heavenly.
    Her resistance to stop him dissolved.
    With expectant eyes, she watched him remove her shoes one at a time, kissing each instep as he exposed it. She shivered as he caressed her ankles, fingertips teasing her calves. Up the length of her stockinged leg, his mouth followed his hands. Closing her eyes, Serena opened herself to the tingling sensations he aroused.
    “How perfect,” he whispered. “The blush of your stockings matches the blush on your cheeks.”
    Perhaps the wine had made her bold. After all, she had consumed the whole glass in minutes. But she didn’t care. This stranger, her rescuer with devilish good looks, seemed straight out of a young girl’s dreams, dreams she had put away when she married Cyrus.
    Yet more than his appearance drew her. He possessed magnetism and need, a combination that made him nearly impossible to turn away. As his fingertips toyed with the sensitive skin behind her knee, arcing pleasure up her thighs, she acknowledged part of her attraction to him might be the wondrous new desire he had roused within her from