The Price of Scandal by Kim Lawrence Read Free Book Online Page B

this she could still see the disturbing—on so many levels—image of his strong hands, the long fingers moving against her skin.
    She tried to think through the swirl of conflicting emotions in her head. Why did this man affect her this way? There had to be a perfectly logical explanation for all this weirdness.
    Sex-starved and desperate would have fitted the symptoms had it not been for the fact she had never had a strong sex drive. It was probably why she’d never had a real boyfriend. Resisting uncontrollable burning lust had never been a problem for her, possibly because her lust had never even ignited. When it came to sex all she had felt was mild curiosity about what she was missing, but so far she’d refused the offers of men who had been eager to show her. The idea of sex without any emotional connection just didn’t work for her.
    She caught her breath sharply and flinched as she felt his long brown fingers move a little higher over the bare flesh of her thigh.
    He angled a questioning look at her face.
    ‘That hurts,’ she lied.
    This, she told herself, was clearly some mild form of posttraumatic stress, not that it felt particularly mild or, for that matter, post anything—his touch was causing her stress to reach unprecedented levels.
    ‘It’s meant to hurt. Do not be a baby.’
    Her lips tightened at this bracing advice.
    ‘I’m trying,’ he continued, his voice, it seemed to her, slightly strained as he concentrated on the task in hand, ‘to get your circulation moving.’
    His own circulation was very active.
    ‘Make up your mind. I th…thought you didn’t want me to be b…brave.’
    ‘I want you—’ Severo’s head lifted, his eyes brushing her face as he broke off, appearing to lose his drift midsentence.
    His fixed hypnotic stare was so intense that it had an oddly paralysing effect on Neve. She was tempted to give herself up to the enervating heat that seeped through both her body and mind as the silence stretched.
    She was tempted to stop fighting.
    Stop fighting what? Or who? asked the voice in her head.
    ‘You can’t count them. I’ve tried.’ She forced the croaky words out but was unable to produce a creditable grin to accompany them.
    He angled a dark brow.
    ‘My freckles.’
    Without responding to her feeble effort at humour, he reached for a towel from the stack he had fetched and continued his task, using it instead of his bare hands. This actually did hurt, but Neve found it infinitely preferable to the more disturbingly intimate skin-to-skin contact.
    Still disturbing enough though. His ministrations were clinical but her reaction to them was not. She only managed to bear it for a few more uncomfortable moments before she blurted, ‘Thanks, that’s much better now, Mr…?’ She stopped, realising she didn’t even know his name.
    The half-naked man had just been responsible for the most erotic experience in her life—possibly making her the saddest twenty-four-year-old on the planet—and she didn’t even know his name!
    He stopped, studied her face for a moment, then nodded and rose to his feet with a fluid grace that typified all his actions. ‘Severo. Severo Constanza.’
    Neve had never seen the appeal of the Latin male; she wished she still couldn’t.
    ‘We had lunch at an Italian restaurant today before the snow started. I don’t think I saw you there?’
    It took him a few seconds to realise that she was asking him if he was a waiter. Severo had been anticipating his name eliciting a reaction but not this one!
    His sense of humour reasserted itself. ‘No, you would not have.’
    ‘Are you laughing at me?’ she asked, suspicious of his grave expression, but relieved that some of the tension in the air appeared to have dissipated.
    ‘No, myself. If ever I feel in danger of believing my own press releases I shall know where to come to have my ego deflated.’
    Her lashes fluttered wider. ‘You have press releases?’
    He shrugged. ‘A figure of