White Satin by Iris Johansen Read Free Book Online

your expression I’d given myself away. I thought I had made a complete fool of myself.”
    He shook his head. “It was either send you away or ruin everything I’d waited for.” His voice was harsh with frustration. “You were only fourteen, for heaven’s sake! If I’d kept you with me, you’d have been my mistress by the time you were sixteen. I wouldn’t have been able to help myself.”
    No, Dany thought, and she wouldn’t have been able to help herself either. She’d been trying to blot out that painful memory from her consciousness for the last six years, yet he had only to touch her as he was doing now and she remembered the deep throbbing ache for completion she’d known that afternoon when she’d crossed the boundary from childhood to womanhood. “It won’t work, you know,” she said, closing her eyesas she felt the waves of heat wash over her. “We can’t found a relationship on something as insubstantial as desire. As you said, we’re complete opposites.”
    “We can start there.” His thumb was beneath her tongue, urging it to venture from her lips. “I feel a hell of a lot more than desire, but I can accept that from you and build on it.” He slowly lowered his head, his warm lips rubbing sensuously against her tongue. “I’ll try to make it so good for you, it won’t matter to you if you can’t feel anything deeper for me.” He inhaled deeply. “Now, hush. I want to kiss you, taste you.”
    His lips closed slowly, carefully on hers, fitting and blending with a gentleness that was all the more moving for the leashed savagery she could sense beneath it. His breath was warm and minty. His tongue, as it licked teasingly at the corner of her mouth and then traced the fullness of her lower lip, was exquisitely arousing. He raised his head and drew a deep, shaky breath. “Do you know how often I’ve wanted to do that? How I’ve lain awake and wondered how you’d taste? How you’d feel? I’ve known your body so well over theyears. I’ve handled you, held you in my arms, even made a parody of love to you on ice, but I’ve never felt you respond to me as a woman.
Respond
, Dany. Lord, I need that.” She could feel his heart thundering under the rough wool of his sweater as he drew her head to rest against it. “I want my hands on you,” he whispered into her hair. “Will you let me touch and learn you?”
    Her heart jerked. “I don’t know.” It was all happening too swiftly. She felt as if she were drifting through a sensual dream. The warmth of the fire, the roughness of his sweater against her cheek, the scent of clean soap, the
feel
of him. How long had she wanted him to hold her like this and suppressed it into oblivion? It seemed as if it must have been a lifetime. Now he was here, not remote, not cold, wanting her. It was too much. “I think you’re right. I think I
am
afraid of you.”
    “That’s why you should let me love you.” His hand was moving deftly in her hair, removing the pins that held her bun in place. “Then you’ll know there’s nothing to be afraid of. The last thing I want to do is hurt you.” Her auburn hair tumbled down her back in a shimmering cloud, and hethreaded his hands through it with lazy sensuality. “I’m not going to rush you. I know what pressures you’re going to be under for the next month, and there’s no way I’m going to ask you for a final commitment until you’re clear of that.” One hand was beneath her hair, massaging the coiled tension at her nape. “We’re just going to learn each other’s bodies.” His lips touched her temple. “You’re going to find out how much I want you and you’re going to want me too.” His teeth nibbled at her ear. “You’re going to sleep naked in my arms so that you’ll know you belong to me as I belong to you. And that there’s no possibility of either one of us belonging to anyone else from now on.”
    His teeth moved down to pull gently at her lower lip. “I wanted to wait