The Mighty Quinns: Kellan by Kate Hoffmann Read Free Book Online Page A

with me?”
    “I’m not sure,” she said. “But I do know that I don’t want to leave yet.”
    He brought her lips to his and kissed her, a rush of warmth snaking through his body. It wasn’t enough to possess only her mouth. Kellan pulled her against him, stumbling back against the door and dropping the leather duffel.
    Grabbing her hips, he spun them around and pressed her against the door. Gelsey slipped her hand between them and slowly began to stroke. She’d been right all along. She had a very simple antidote for the cold. In little more than a minute, he was hard and ready and aching to bury himself in her warmth.
    Outside, the weather raged, the wind roaring up from the sea and the rain pelting at the windowpanes. But inside the cottage, they found the storm between them just as powerful and overwhelming.
    Kellan’s mouth savaged Gelsey’s and he felt himself losing all sense of control. The last time had been gentle and slow, but this time he didn’t want to wait. For Kellan, there was no longer any point in pretending. Since he’d held her body against his on the beach, he’d known this moment would come. It felt as if he’d been waiting for this his entire adult life—waiting for a woman who could make him feel real raw passion.
    “Condom,” he murmured.
    She reached down and picked up his duffel and he rummaged through it until he found the box. Saying a silent prayer that it wasn’t empty, Kellan opened it. A single foil packet fell into his palm. “Stroke of luck there,” he murmured.
    Gelsey grabbed the packet and tore it open, then quickly sheathed him. She drew him along to the sofa, then pushed him down, straddling his hips with her knees. Gently, she guided him inside her. He wanted to slow down, to just take a moment and enjoy the anticipation. But the instant he felt her warmth close around him, Kellan was lost. He held his breath, marshaling his control, trying to fix his mind on something other than the woman above him.
    Programs, he thought to himself. He had to do those damn wedding programs. Ribbon and little red jewels, Nan had said. He didn’t know what the hell she’d been talking about, but as long as he focused on his brother’s wedding plans, he’d be all right.
    “Do you want me to move?” she whispered, her words soft against his ear.
    “No,” he said.
    “It works better if I move.”
    He leaned back and found her smiling down at him. “I know. I have done this before.”
    “Really? It’s hard to tell.”
    Chuckling softly, he clasped her hips and moved. “Better?”
    “Do it again,” she said with a laugh.
    He did as she asked and she groaned softly. “See how good that feels?”
    She leaned over him and touched her lips to his. “You were right,” she whispered.
    “About what?”
    “You are very good at this.”

3
    GELSEY SNUGGLED into the soft covers of the bed. It was still warm with the heat from Kellan’s body, even though he’d gotten up an hour before. She was beginning to feel almost normal and attributed part of that to the passionate interlude she’d shared with her rescuer.
    Sex had always been an important part of Gelsey’s life, but never for the right reasons. According to a long string of therapists, she used sex to create a false sense of security, the security she’d never enjoyed as a child.
    Her early childhood had been spent with her nanny, Marie, a wonderful Frenchwoman who had been more of a mother than Dorothy Trent Woodson had ever been. And Gelsey had been happy with that life, even if she rarely spent time with her parents.
    But after the divorce, Marie had been sent away, there one day and gone the next. And Gelsey had been packed and shipped off to a Swiss boarding school, a place where she was to be well educated and carefully prepared to take her place in society as some billionaire’s charming wife.
    At first, she’d accepted her fate and done her best at school. But then, she’d discovered boys. And along with