Sinful Seduction by Ann Christopher Read Free Book Online Page A

decided it was best not to move her again so soon. So she stayed put on the leather sofa, zoned out on liquor and lost in the dull throb of her injured body and the warmth of the down blankets until a noise woke her.
    She stirred and turned her head on the pillow, opening her eyes and then squinting them against the sudden flare of light. Her pupils adjusted, allowing the large form of Sandro to come into view.
    He was across the room, where he’d started a fire in the fireplace, which was large enough to park a VW Beetle inside. Wood was piled high, crackling and spitting sparks, and the flickering orange glow illuminated the strain in his tight face as he bent to jab at the logs with a poker.
    His head rose, turning in her direction at this sign of life even though she didn’t think she’d made a sound. His brow was lined with worry, his voice soft and anxious.
    “How are you?”
    “’m okay.” She tried to speak clearly with her rusty voice, and also tried to give him a reassuring smile, but it was a no-go on both. Her poor brain was too fuzzy to manage any higher functions. “You should go…to bed.”
    “Nah.”
    “You need rest.” Man, she couldn’t even keep her eyes open.
    “You need to stop talking and go back to sleep.”
    Yeah, he was right about that. Her lids drifted shut, but not before she told him what was on her mind.
    “Thank you…for taking care of…me,” she murmured, fighting the exhaustion. “Sorry I’m such a…pain in the ass.”
    And then she was asleep again, or thought she was asleep again, except that the low murmur of his voice cut through the fog.
    Or was she dreaming?
    “You could never be a pain in the ass, beautiful Sky.”
    Skylar cried out against a particularly nasty throb in her calf, waking herself with a start. The fire was still blazing, filling the room with heat and the comforting smell of hickory, but she was alone with only the pain and the darkness, which seemed to be edging closer.
    A sudden flare of panic made her lever herself up on her elbows, looking for—
    “Sandro!”
    “I’m here.”
    A shadow moved, detaching itself from the nearest armchair, and then Sandro was there, sitting at her hip again and studying her with anxious eyes. One of his cool hands went to her forehead, probably checking for a fever, and it felt good. Reassuring. That hand was just what she needed, and she didn’t want to lose it, so she grasped it by the wrist, holding tight.
    “What can I get you, Sky? What do you need?”
    The pain, exhaustion and lingering scotch buzz all conspired to make her honest. “I need you to sit with me for a while.”
    He didn’t answer. Maybe he’d been hoping she’d ask for something easy, like a sip of water, then go back to sleep and leave him alone.
    His silence shouldn’t matter. It didn’t matter, she told herself vaguely, succumbing again to the oblivion that kept reaching up, grabbing her by the ankles and pulling her under. Except that it did matter, even on this dark and stormy night when she was stranded and injured, and managing the pain should have been the only thing on her mind.
    And the embarrassing confessions just kept coming.
    “It makes me so sad,” she said as her heavy lids slid lower.
    He leaned closer, his thumb now stroking the hair at her uninjured temple, soothing her. “What does, Sky?”
    “That you don’t like me. I wish…you liked me.”
    He stiffened, withdrawing his hand and its comfort, which was, she supposed, her punishment for babbling. The last thing she saw before she fell asleep again was the flash of his gaze, which was dark and unreadable, and the flare of his nostrils as he turned his face away from her.
    The next time Skylar woke, it was to the weak suggestion of a yellow dawn breaking on the other side of the closed plantation shutters. Was it morning, finally? And she’d lived through the night? And the storm had finally blown itself out?
    Glory hallelujah.
    She was still wiped out, though.