The Duke's Cinderella Bride by Carole Mortimer Read Free Book Online Page A

moonlight. ‘My name is Hawk,’ he explained harshly.
    She looked up at him questioningly.
    Hawk?
    The Duke of Stourbridge had been named for a bird of prey?
    A dangerous bird of prey. Jane dazedly recalled her assessment of him earlier today even as she stared up at him in shocked fascination.
    ‘A fanciful notion of my mother’s.’ His tone was grim as he held Jane easily against the hard strength of his body.
    Jane didn’t care at that moment how he had come by his unusual name. She was only concerned with the factthat the Duke of Stourbridge—the haughty and arrogantly aloof Duke of Stourbridge—was holding her tightly in his arms as he moulded the softness of her curves against his much harder ones and his gaze became fixated on her mouth.
    In fact, everything about the high and mighty Duke of Stourbridge gave every indication that he was about to kiss her!
    It was unthinkable.
    Unimaginable…
    And yet Jane found she could imagine it. Could already feel the hardness of those perfectly moulded lips on hers as his mouth plundered and claimed. Possessed. For surely any woman the Duke of Stourbridge chose to kiss would know the full force of the ardour he was normally at such pains to hide from his fellow beings, but which Jane could now see so clearly in the fierce glitter of his eyes? Just as clearly she could feel the tense hardness of his body as it pressed intimately against her own…
    ‘You should not have come here alone, Jane.’ The Duke’s gaze, that fiercely golden gaze, moved searchingly, hungrily, over the pallor of her face. ‘You should not, Jane!’ He began to lower his head towards hers.
    Jane was held in motionless fascination for several long seconds as her lips parted instinctively to receive his.
    A kiss.
    One kiss.
    Her first ever kiss.
    Surely it was not too much to ask? To take for her own? After twelve long years of being denied the touch, the warmth, of another human being?
    But a deeper, more knowledgeable instinct told her that Hawk St Claire, the powerful and forceful Duke of Stourbridge, would not stop at one kiss. His years and experience would demand he take more, much more. He was a man who would take and take again, while giving nothing of himself in return.
    ‘No!’ She turned her head away to avoid his kiss and at the same time pushed against his restraint, fighting to escape the steely band of his arms, but only succeeding in pressing herself more intimately against him. ‘No!’ Again she protested, fearing the desire that she could clearly see still held him in its grip. ‘You must not! Please, Hawk, you must not…!’
    Her pleas pierced the fierce desire that raged through Hawk’s body, causing him to pause, to blink dazedly as he stared down at her in stunned disbelief.
    This woman—this girl—was the ward of his host. The unmarried ward of his host.
    He released her abruptly to step back, jaw tight, eyes gleaming a glittering, inflexible gold. ‘You should not have come here alone, Jane,’ he repeated harshly.
    Her throat moved convulsively in the moonlight. ‘No, I should not. But I had not expected anyone to follow me—’
    ‘No, Jane?’ Hawk’s voice was hard, inflexible. ‘Are you sure that your present indignation is not due to the fact that it was the wrong man who responded to your invitation?’
    She looked bewildered by his accusation. ‘The wrong man? I do not understand—’
    ‘Was it not James Tillton who was supposed to attend you here tonight rather than myself?’ Hawk had realisedbelatedly, as he remembered the flirtation he had witnessed during dinner, that this must be the case—that Jane’s dismay when he had joined her here had really been due to the fact that her lover—James Tillton?—had not arrived for their arranged tryst.
    ‘Lord Tillton?’ Jane gasped at his accusation. ‘I detest Lord Tillton! He behaved most disgracefully towards me during dinner—to such a degree that in the end I had to pierce his wrist with my