Paradise Found by Dorothy Vernon Read Free Book Online

on what should have been your wedding night, the first night, as it used to be delicately called. Rather an obsolete expression in these days of anticipating marriage. Perhaps you did the same and so your disappointment won’t be as keen.’
    â€˜Perhaps.’ She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing otherwise. ‘Anticipating marriage—that too has a deliciously, old-fashioned flavor to it in these days of sexual freedom. It’s late,’ she said, springing to her feet. ‘I think you should go.’
    â€˜If that’s what you want,’ he said, setting down his coffee cup and lazily standing up.
    He stood facing her but made no offer to go, just looked into her eyes for a long tormenting moment. She knew he was going to kiss her, she wasn’t going to be let off without that; and to her horror it came to her that she didn’t want to be.
    â€˜I never before realized how very sensuous a woman could look entirely covered up to the neck. It’s much more seductive than a neckline slashed to the waist, the kind that leaves little to the man’s own imagination.’
    â€˜Cut the talk, Matt.’
    â€˜You prefer the action?’
    â€˜No, that’s not what I meant. Stop it, Matt.’
    â€˜Stop what? I’m not doing anything.’
    â€˜You do more when you’re not doing anything than any man I know.’
    â€˜Don’t you like the way I look at you?’
    â€˜No, I don’t.’ Neither did she like the husky pitch of his voice; it grated on her senses. Nor the way she wondered if his sons would inherit his dark good looks and proud way of standing with his shoulders back, hips tilted slightly forward and powerful legs splayed at an angle, wondered with a tiny ache low in her stomach that increased as she remembered that the obligatory wife to provide legitimate sons was not in Matt’s plan.
    She pressed her lips tightly together, catching the fullness of her lower lip in her teeth. She did it to ease the dryness; she saw his eyes narrow on the movement but only wondered if he found it provocative when she saw him lift his arm and drag the back of his hand across his own mouth.
    Instead of replacing the hand by his side, he let his fingers curl round her neck to draw her gently forward, and although the intolerable wait was over, the teasing had only just begun.
    His parted lips moved over her forehead, glancing down her temple and following the outer curve of her cheek. Her lips moved compulsively to meet that kiss, but he defeated them by dropping his own lower to brush across her throat in a series of butterfly caresses that left her insensible. She twisted uselessly to nullify the intensity of what she was feeling. When she felt that she couldn’t take it a moment longer the teasing stopped and his mouth clamped over hers. It was like a promise fulfilled, and she reveled in it. Her whole being was centered on the joy of that kiss, and his strategy went unnoticed. Her mind was closed to everything but the sensation of his lips on hers, and so she was barely aware of the hand creeping under the looseness of her blouse to close over her breast. It seemed to swell at his touch, its thrusting tip delighting at the abrasion of his thumb. She knew she should push him away, but she couldn’t. Nothing else mattered but this ecstasy. His free hand roved over her back, tingling her shoulders and her spine, exciting her hips and bringing her so deliriously close to him that her physical need was almost too acute to bear.
    â€˜You don’t have to be alone tonight. You don’t have to be deprived.’
    His voice was barely audible through the mists of her desire. Mists of insanity, more like it. She slumped in his arms, all that intensity of feeling shriveling into a tight knot in her throat.
    â€˜No, Matt.’ Could that cold voice possibly belong to her?
    â€˜No?’
    â€˜There’s something you seem to have