The Hostage Bride by Janet Dailey Read Free Book Online

going?” He caught hold of her elbow when she started to walk away from him.
    “Home. I told you.”
    Bick felt her straining against his hold in a mute resistance. In the flash of her blue eyes, he read defiance. The evening was ahead of him, promising nothing. She was beside him, which in itself was a promise of something. He didn’t intend to let her slip away from him yet.
    “If you won’t have dinner with me, you can at least permit me to give you a ride home,” Bick stated.
    “I can catch the bus at the corner. One will be along shortly,” she argued, but not very forcefully.
    “Shortly? Or twenty minutes from now?” His mouth slowly curved into a smile as he noted the acknowledgment in her expression that he might be right. “My car is parked in the lot. A short, comfortable ride in it would surely be swifter, wouldn’t it?”
    “Yes,” she agreed with a reluctant nod of acceptance.
    “This way.” With one obstacle surmounted, Bick was confident he could handle any other barrier she might place in his path. He kept a guiding hand on her elbow as he walked her to his car. “If you won’t have dinner with me tonight, then have lunch tomorrow.” He paused to unlock the passenger door.
    Bick sensed her hesitancy before she answered. “It isn’t necessary.”
    Another obstacle was crumbling. He hid a smile as he opened the door and held it for her. “It is. There is a little matter that has to be cleared up.”
    “What?” Halting abruptly, she went pale. At the same time, there was a leap of fear in the blue eyes that scanned his face.
    It puzzled him. He reached out to touch the vein pounding wildly in her throat and felt its frantic throbbing under his fingertips. Desire surged through him, not a lusting one, but an overwhelming desire to protect. Her parted lips held a mute appeal for something—Bick didn’t know what—but he sought to reassure them.
    “Don’t be afraid.” He bent his head to brush his mouth across her lips.
    When they quivered beneath the gentle contact, a more elemental emotion claimed him. His kiss became exploring, igniting a hesitant and almost unwilling response. Curving his hand to the shape of her slender neck, Bick resisted an urge to free her pale hair from the pins that held it in its smooth coil and wind his fingers into the silken mass. He didn’t want to incite a sudden rush of vanity, not when he was making such delightful discoveries.
    His hand sought her waist, then slid beneath the silk shawl up to her shoulderblades. She pliantly arched closer at its pressure until the soft tips of her breasts brushed against his shirt front, his unbuttoned suit jacket swinging open. The kiss, warm and stimulating though it was, was just a taste. He wanted more, but an inner voice cautioned him not to rush it. Bick sensed that something was holding her back, preventing her from responding as fully as she was capable of doing, so he submitted to the reasoninginstinct. His mouth moved over her lips to savor the softness of them in a slow release.
    Straightening from her by degrees, Bick studied her reaction through half-closed eyes. There was a vague shock when he discovered her features were expressing the same confused curiosity he was experiencing. An inner questioning of what made her so different from a half a hundred other women he’d held in his arms and kissed much more intimately? Yet he couldn’t answer that any more than he could define what had made the embrace seem special.
    An invisible door closed between them. Bick suddenly wasn’t able to read her thoughts in her expression. Irritation flickered through him. If it was the last thing he did, he was going to shatter that poise of hers forever so she could never hide behind it again. There was a savage urge to do something about it that very minute, but he fought it down.
    “I’m not going to apologize for kissing you,” Bick declared in a smooth murmur. “Only for, perhaps, doing it too soon.”
    She