The Call of the Desert by Abby Green Read Free Book Online Page B

desire so intense that it obliterated any kind of rational thought. Her hands had gone automatically to his chest, but instead of pushing him away they clung. The feel of powerful muscles under his shirt was intoxicating.
    Time stood still. Everything stood still except for their two hearts, beating fast. Blood was rushing through veins and arteries, pumping to parts of Julia’s body that hadn’t been stimulated in a long, long time.
    Kaden was seduction incarnate. His hands moved over and down her back, cupping her bottom in the tight jeans, floating sensuously over the silk shirt. With an easy expertise he certainly hadn’t displayed when she’d known him before he coaxed her mouth open and his tongue stroked along hers, making a faint mewl come from the back of her throat.
    Through the heat haze in her head and her body Julia felt something urgent trying to get through to her. Kaden’s touch was all at once achingly familiar, and yet so different from how she remembered. They’d been so young, and their passion had been raw and untutored. The man who held her in his arms now was not raw and untutored. He was a consummate seducer, well-practisedin the art. His body was different too. Muscles were filled out and harder.
    It was that realisation that finally broke the spell cast around Julia. Plus the fact that within a mere hour of meeting Kaden again she was kissing him like a sex—starved groupie.
    Wrenching herself away in one abruptly violent move, Julia staggered backwards, looking at Kaden’s flushed face and glittering eyes. “I don’t know you. You’re a stranger to me now. I don’t do this … I don’t make love to strangers.”
    Something dark crossed Kaden’s handsome features. He drawled, “From what I recall, you found it remarkably easy to make love to relative strangers.”
    With the memory of that incident so vivid, Julia lashed out. “It was just a kiss, Kaden. A stupid kiss. It meant nothing … It was just—” She stopped abruptly. Had she really been about to blurt out that she’d only allowed that man to kiss her because she’d felt so desperately insecure after days of silence from Kaden? That she’d pathetically wanted to try and prove to herself that his touch alone couldn’t be the only touch she’d ever crave?
    She clamped her mouth shut, burning inside. This man would never know that her experiment had backfired spectacularly—on more levels than one.
    She had to claw back some sense of sanity. Some sense of the independent woman she’d become. Her voice was shaky. “This is not a good idea, Kaden. The past is the past and we should not be revisiting it.”
    Kaden felt tight and hot inside. With ruthless effort he excised the image of her kissing that man from his mind. What on earth had prompted him to bring up that kiss?The last thing he wanted was for Julia to know that he remembered the incident. And yet it was like the stain of a tattoo on his memory, the jealousy fresh.
    She was avoiding Kaden’s eye. He might have appreciated the dark humour of the situation if he’d been in a better mood: merely
kissing
her just now had had a more explosive effect on his libido than anything he’d shared with a woman in years. If ever. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly. Some more buttons had opened on her shirt, exposing the shadowy line of her cleavage, and his erection just got harder. If that was possible.
    The fact that what she said was right irked him beyond belief. He knew with a soul-deep certainly that to explore this desire with
this
woman had danger written all over it. He had a sense of having escaped the fire years before, only to be standing right on its edge again.
    But stronger than that was this life-force rushing through his veins, along with the very carnal urge to sate himself. It was heady, and it made him feel as if he was awakening from a long sleep. He could no more turn back from it than he could stop breathing. He struggled to control himself. The