Intimate Strangers Read Free Page B

constructed facial features. The graceful arch of her eyebrows, the mink–thickness of her eyelashes, and the flush in her cheeks fascinated him, but not nearly as much as the shape of her lips—ripe fruit.
    A shudder ran through him. Air gusted free of his lungs, and he felt compelled to sample that mouth in order to discover if she tasted even half as delectable as she looked. Nicholas froze. One taste of this woman would not suffice.
    He reluctantly acknowledged the wisdom of erring on the side of caution and avoiding the temptation she posed. Instead, he leaned forward, and he permitted himself the singular luxury of stroking the side of her face with the blunt tips of his fingers.
    Her skin reminded him of warm satin, and he felt his body respond to the image of her that flashed in his mind—naked, vulnerable, and writhing beneath his hands and mouth. She reached out to him in his thoughts, welcoming his sensual campaign.
    Hannah groaned, the sound like an invitation to a solitary man starved for true emotional and physical intimacy. His heartbeat accelerated, and he trembled as his blood rushed hotly through his veins. Hunger assaulted him like the fiercest adversary, making him ache, filling him with a soul–deep need that stunned him. He’d lost his damned mind, he thought as he stared down at this woman.
    His thigh muscles strained, and his sex pulsed with heat and hunger. He sucked in enough air to fill his lungs before exhaling raggedly. Then, he closed his eyes, his struggle for control etched into his hard features as he slowed his respiration.
    Determined to exercise his legendary control, forty year old Nicholas Benteen remained still. He very reluctantly acknowledged far too many years spent in a state of self–imposed emotional isolation—his penance for dispensing death to those who preyed on the weak and vulnerable across the globe. His penance for survival.
    Finally and quite deliberately, Nicholas settled atop her, his loins lodged in the cradle of her thighs, his knees bracketing her lower torso. He felt her shift against the press of his weight, and he knew exactly what would happen next.
    Tightening his grip on the ten inch steel blade he’d carried since becoming a man, he curved his free hand over the lower half of her face. And then, he waited.

2
    Hannah murmured a sound of protest in her sleep. She stirred beneath the unexpected sensation of weight pressing down on her hips. She blinked, frowned as she focused on the unforgiving facial features of a man she didn’t know, and then went totally still.
    She stared up at the crazy man crouched over her in the back of her van. She paled as she registered the masculine contours of his muscular body. For a terrifying moment, she wondered if anything but skin separated them.
    Hannah floundered, mind going blank, muscles rendered slack, and shocked to her core. Then, she struggled for a calm she doubted she would ever feel again. As she looked into his cold, remorseless eyes, she ransacked her befuddled mind for some semblance of coherency. Instead, disbelief continued to dominate her thoughts and emotions.
    The man lifted his other hand into view, exposing the weapon he gripped. A raw, panicked sound escaped her. She bucked beneath him, stilling when he shook his head and settled even more intimately against her. Hannah stiffened. Wary and alert now, she followed his lead as her heart stuttered in her chest and then began to beat again, this time so wildly that she almost blacked out.
    They stared at each other for several long minutes. His body, she realized, was as lethal as the knife he held, his facial features as hard and unforgiving as granite. His eyes were the part of his face that captured her attention—glacial slate gray eyes that looked as old as time and just as weary, too old and far too weary for a man so obviously in his prime.
    Hannah couldn’t recall a single one of the rules she’d learned in the self–defense course she’d