The Pleasure King's Bride by Emma Darcy Read Free Book Online

had to be what she’d yearned for in the darkness of other nights, countless other nights that had been filled with endless loneliness.
    Take me, she begged in her feverish mind. Take me....
    And he did, his arm sweeping around her waist and scooping her against him, plastering her against him as his other hand thrust through her hair, entwining tresses around strong, determined fingers. His chest heaved against the soft squash of her breasts. His thighs felt rock-hard. Then his mouth took hers, pleasuring it with a passion that excited her beyond anything she had known.
    He aroused and kept stirring explosive sensations, kiss after kiss, feeding a deep, seemingly bottomless hunger that demanded a feast, not just a taste but an intense savouring of every taste there was. It was so absorbingly wonderful, Christabel revelled in every moment of it, consumed by the sheer power of the greed that seized her, the greed to experience everything there was to be felt with this man.
    Her hands were in his hair, clinging to his head, urging the intoxicating intimacy to go on and on. Her body exulted in the hard heat of his, and when he grasped her bottom to lift her into fitting closer to him, it felt so right, so good, knowing how excited he was, wanting the ultimate connection with her, yearning for it every bit as much as she was.
    “Stay with me tonight.”
    He breathed the words over her tingling lips, words that throbbed their passionate need past the fuzzed edges of her mind, stirring a momentary confusion at the interruption to the silent flow of more immediate needs.
    “Stay...” he repeated with raw urgency. “Alicia can be put to bed here.”
    Alicia! Where...? Her mind worked sluggishly. Gone with Vikki Chan to clean her hands.
    “You want this, too, Christabel.”
    His hand on her bottom, pressing recognition of how aroused they both were. There could be no denying what was so self-evident. They both knew it. She wished he hadn’t spoken, wished they had just gone on to...but there wasn’t time now. That was what he meant. Alicia... Vikki Chan bringing the next course of their dinner...How long had she and Jared been locked together like this?
    He lifted his head back from hers. “Look at me!”
    His eyes were like black coals, glowing at her. He slid his hand from its enmeshment in her hair and gently cupped her cheek. He spoke slowly, softly, using his words like seductive tentacles, winding around her, binding her to him.
    “We want each other. There’s nothing wrong in that so just let it be, Christabel. Time to ourselves, doing whatever pleases us, being free of everything else, taking the night and making it our night.”
    Being free...just for one night...
    “Say yes, Christabel. Say you’ll stay with me.”
    “Yes,” she said, impelled by more than Jared would ever know to snatch this time from the life she had to lead, the life that was forever burdened by her blindly naive decision to marry Laurens Kruger. “I want this night with you, Jared.”
    One stolen night.
    What harm could there be in it?
    No harm...just pleasure...with the pleasure King.
    And he kissed her again to show her how it would be.
     

CHAPTER FIVE
    What they had started had to be put on hold until later. They were not alone yet, not in any practical sense, but Christabel felt oddly disconnected to being a mother or a guest in the aftermath of losing her long-held guard against the desires Jared King stirred in her.
    It seemed strange, sitting at the table again as though nothing momentous had happened, secretly harbouring the excitement that continued to buzz through her body while Vikki Chan wheeled out the traymobile, reloaded with the next course for dinner. Alicia followed her, holding a cone of chocolate chip ice-cream, and she skipped over to Jared to thank him for the special treat.
    Christabel couldn’t stop looking at Jared, imagining what they might do when they were absolutely alone together. Was he still aroused?