Parallel Fire by Deidre Knight Read Free Book Online

he’d give her no quarter. “You were warned, Anna,” he thundered against her cheek, pushing her body fully beneath his. “I told you to back away.”
    â€œYes, Nevin—you did.” She trembled as he sniffed at her face, her neck, her hands. Drawing her scent hard into his own tight body.
    â€œYou don’t know where you’ve brought us,” he warned. “No idea what this life change in me has done.”
    â€œYes, I do…I feel it.”
    He let loose a sputtering of curses, frisking her body, searching for the opening to her pants. He fumbled, missed his mark, then thrust his hands down into her panties, never bothering with the fastenings. With a growling cry, he tossed back his head, making his mating urges known to the forest around them. In the distance he swore he heard a wolf cry in return. He felt wolfish, wild and needy.
    They rolled together on the earth—first he on top, then she, then he again, tumbling and laughing and lusting together. His shirt vanished, her pants crumpled into a heap; one item of clothing after another was discarded until he found himself kneeling before her, gloriously naked.
    â€œYour body,” she whispered breathlessly, gesturing with her hand. “Look at you. I’ve never seen anything quite like you.”
    Self-consciously he stared down at his chest, wondering what she saw. For a moment, he glimpsed himself through her eyes. He was chiseled, completely so. He always had been and in recent months he’d been training harder than ever in a desperate effort to expend just this very energy. It had profited nothing. He was filled to the hilt with sensual stirrings such as he’d never known, not even in his youth.
    â€œLook at you ,” he countered softly, studying the way Anna’s porcelain skin glowed beneath the late day sun. It was as if the sun itself had touched her, she was glorious, curving and full-bodied in a way that caused his erection to leap as he stared at her.
    They each studied the other, kneeling face to face, palm to palm. A sudden stillness fell over them, slowing things, all his crazy need for rutting falling away. There was only Anna…beautiful, graceful, spirited Anna, right before him.
    She seemed every bit as taken with him as he was with her. “I have no words,” he offered softly. “Only my touch.”
    â€œThen give me that.” She arched her back so that her silky black hair fell across her shoulders.
    With his fingertips he drew a line from her collarbone down to her right breast, trailing his fingers hotly across her smooth skin. When he reached her nipple, he circled it with his forefinger in a rough motion, causing it to bead beneath his touch. It had been years since he’d held a woman like this; it had been months since he’d been able to stop thinking of Anna.
    Staring at her lithe body, naked and perfect, he battled himself for one final moment. Deep inside he couldn’t shake the sense that he was all wrong for her; he was past the age of giving her children, of any kind of fertility. And he was seasoned enough to realize that the connection between them was beyond overwhelming—if he made love to her, the compulsion to bondmate would be unbearable. Becoming lovers would lead to becoming lifemates…and very quickly.
    â€œStop me,” he begged hoarsely, still stroking her nipple. “It’s still not too late.”
    She shook her head, trailing her own fingertips low down his abdomen, twining them in the thick, curling hair between his legs, then sliding them around the tip of his shaft.
    â€œOh, Anna.” He growled, shaking off the last vestiges of his self-control. “Gods above…I tried.”
    He bent his head and, drawing her nipple between his teeth, nibbled it. He laved it with his tongue until he felt fire chase down his spine. He licked at first one nipple, then the other; blowing a hot breath across the