Chained Read Free Page B

never said that aloud
to her before. But he must have thought it.
    That knowledge made her heart leap.
    “Yes,” she admitted. “And I wanted to kiss you,” she added,
thinking it was a bold admission. But it was only to a ghost. Or a phantom in a
dream.
    “We both longed for what was forbidden,” he answered, just
before she felt the pressure of his lips against hers.
    It was a light kiss, his mouth brushing back and forth
against hers.
    But it stirred her senses. Finally, after all these years,
it was happening.
    She knew it couldn’t be real, yet she wanted to pull him
closer. Still, she kept her arms at her sides, because she understood deep down
that if she reached for him, she would spoil the wonderful illusion.
    Heat burst inside her, overlaid by fear.
    What was she doing? And with whom?
    As though he sensed her uncertainty, he increased the erotic
quality of the kiss, his lips moving over hers with the expertise she’d always
known he would possess.
    Her heartbeat quickened at the sensuality of the encounter.
    She wanted more. So much more. Everything she had been
denied with him in the past.
    And he must know that. Must feel the same.
    “Open for me,” he murmured, and this time he spoke in the
warm, sexy voice that she remembered.
    She did as he asked, allowing the kiss to deepen, feeling
his tongue play with the inside of her lips, then the serrated line of her
teeth, before plunging farther in to stroke along the side of her tongue.
    When he caught her lower lip between his teeth and gently
nipped at her, she heard a small moan rise in her throat.
    “You like that.”
    “You know I do.”
    “And you don’t want me to stop?”
    Without waiting for an answer, he touched her then, his
fingers stroking her cheeks, her jawline, her neck, moving downward, sending
tingles of sensation over her skin.
    His lips came back to hers and then feathered soft kisses
over her closed eyelids, her brows, the tender line of her jaw.
    Enveloped by the arousing spell he was weaving, caught
between fantasy and reality, she tugged at the covers, pulling them down to her
waist to give him better access to her body.
    He accepted the invitation, his hand skimming over her
breasts, his touch light and playful and at the same time sensual, flooding her
with need.
    She felt her nipples bead under her T-shirt, felt his thumbs
stroke back and forth across the crests.
    Yet even as she responded to him, doubts stirred in her
mind. When she’d arrived here, the ghost had frightened her. Talking to
Matthew, touching him, kissing him had pushed the fear into the background. Now
it leaped to the front of her mind again.
    She must be under some kind of spell, and she was the only
one who could release herself.
    She brought her hands up, pushing at his broad shoulders.
They felt solid. More solid than they had appeared when she had seen him
standing across the room. It was like he was really here, but what would happen
if she opened her eyes?
    She didn’t want to find out, and she knew this encounter had
gone too far. At least for her own sanity.
    “Don’t,” she whispered.
    “ Why not ?”
     She asked herself the same question. Why not? Was it
because this was wrong? Or because it stirred feelings she could never satisfy?
    She heard a sigh ease out of him as his weight lifted off of
her. His tone changed as he said, “Tell me why you came here.”
    “Men from San Marcos tried to ambush me at my house in
Phoenix.”
    “How do you know who they were?”
    “Who else would it be?”
    “Describe them,” he said, his voice all business now. The
Decorah Security agent on assignment.
    She thought about the man who had faced her in the alley.
    “Dark hair. Dark eyes. Medium height. Muscular. I couldn’t
see much. They looked like Lopez’s hombres .”
    “Okay,” he answered, and it sounded like he had left her
bedside and was standing across the room. “I’ll guard you while you’re here.
Nothing more and nothing less.”
    Then