The One in My Heart by Sherry Thomas Read Free Book Online Page B

Innocence . The walls were papered in a soft, faded gold, the furniture American antiques of the Federal style. Pots of pale narcissus bloomed everywhere, delicately fragrant and delicately beautiful.
    The only splash of color came from a huge portrait that hung over the fireplace. The subject was a woman in a gown of bold carmine, with a king’s ransom of rubies glittering over her throat and breast. The signature belonged to John Singer Sargent. A small plaque on the frame of the painting said, Her Ladyship the Marchioness of Tremaine, 1894.
    “My great-great-grandmother,” said Bennett, noticing the direction of my gaze.
    “She was pretty hot,” I said, unbuttoning my coat.
    “She was also pretty scandalous back in the day. Almost divorced my great-great-grandfather.”
    “What stopped her?”
    “I’m not sure. Rumor had it he was too good in bed.”
    I laughed—because it was funny, and because I was more than a little jittery.
    “Hey, I must have inherited it from somewhere.”
    All I could think of was the sensation of him inside me, driving me to one brink after another. “Don’t look at me. I’ve never been to bed with you. Now, where’s my vermouth?”
    He led me into the living room, which was less Gilded Age than the entry, and cooler in feel. The floor was bamboo. The curtains on the floor-to-ceiling windows were blue with a subtle undertone of grey. A pair of antique chairs upholstered in pale rose flanked a sizable blue-grey leather chaise.
    Bennett poured vermouth for me and tonic water for himself. “Would you like something to eat?” he asked as he handed me my glass. “I have enough food on hand to feed two.”
    I supposed we might as well talk about whatever it was he wanted to talk about over dinner. “Sure.”
    He went to the kitchen and came back a minute later. “The soup needs to warm up in the oven for half an hour. Want to see the view?”
    “It’s just the skyline, right?” I said, setting down my drink.
    “It is. But I’ve been away long enough that I still get excited about it.”
    He flicked a switch; the lights turned off. Another switch and the curtains rose on the Manhattan skyline. I gazed at the silhouette of my great city, a blaze of luminosity against a pitch-black night. Bennett’s footsteps, soft and sure, came up behind me. His fingers were gentle as they brushed against my jaw. Then he lifted my hair and kissed me underneath my ear.
    Our first encounter had been incredibly hot, but it had also been one of those things that happened largely because of a random intersection of circumstances. This time I was not a rain-soaked woman at her most vulnerable in years; this time I was put-together and poised; this time I would know how to handle myself.
    The ferocity of the sensation that hurtled through me dwarfed anything I’d ever experienced, a pleasure so sharp and vivid…it was as if months of simmering, unspoken desires had become a magnifier that turned the slightest touch to chaos and upheaval.
    I clenched my fingers so I wouldn’t gasp out loud.
    He kissed a different spot. I shivered.
    This was coming to resemble my fantasy too closely. In real life I was supposed to slip out of reach, and maybe laugh a little while wagging a finger with playful reproach. In real life I wasn’t supposed to be swept away by raging needs, like a canoe dragged over the edge of a powerful cataract.
    “I thought…I thought you were going to discuss something that had nothing to do with this.”
    “We’ll discuss it over dinner, which isn’t for at least another twenty-five minutes.” He punctuated his answer with a nip at my shoulder.
    I swallowed a whimper. “I told you, I’m saving myself for marriage.”
    “Then why do you keep leading me astray?” He kissed me on my earlobe. “I think about you every time I masturbate.”
    Did my knees buckle? I wouldn’t know, because he picked me up at that exact moment.
    “You see this?” he asked as he laid me down on