Married by Morning Read Free

kneeling position. After polishing the spectacle lenses with the edge of his sleeve, he said, “Hold still.”
    “Give them to me.”
    “Let me do it, hardhead. Arguing comes to you as naturally as breathing, doesn’t it?”
    “No, it doesn’t,” she said immediately, and colored as he gave a husky laugh.
    “It’s no fun to bait you when you make it so easy, Marks.” He placed the spectacles on her face with great care, running his fingers along the sides of the frame, viewing the fit with an assessing glance. Gently he touched the tips of the earpieces. “They’re not fitted well.” He ran an exploring fingertip over the upper rim of one ear. She was remarkably pretty in the sunlight, her gray eyes containing glimmers of blue and green. Like opals. “Such small ears,” Leo continued, letting his hands linger at the sides of her fine-boned face. “No wonder your spectacles fall off so readily. There’s hardly anything to hang them on.”
    Marks stared at him in bewilderment.
    How fragile she was, he thought. Her will was so fierce, her temperament so prickly, that he tended to forget she was only half his size. He would have expected her to slap his hands away by now—she hated being touched, especially by him. But she didn’t move at all. He let his thumb brush the side of her throat, and felt the tiny undulation of her swallow. There was something unreal about the moment, something dreamlike. He didn’t want it to end.
    “Is Catherine your real name?” he asked. “Will you at least answer that?”
    She hesitated, fearful of yielding any part of herself, even that scrap of information. But as his fingertips slid along her neck, the light caress seemed to disarm her. A bloom of color rose from her throat.
    “Yes,” she choked out. “It’s Catherine.”
    They were still kneeling together, her skirts having billowed and settled everywhere. Folds of flower-printed muslin had been caught under one of Leo’s knees. His body reacted strongly to her nearness, heat sliding beneath his skin and gathering in inconvenient places. Muscles tightened, thickened. He would have to put an end to this, or he was going to do something they would both regret.
    “I’ll help you up,” Leo said brusquely, making to rise. “We’ll go inside. I warn you, however, I’m not through with you yet. There’s more I—”
    But he broke off, because as Marks had tried to struggle upward, her body had brushed against his. They went still, caught front to front, their breath mingling in uneven surges.
    The dreamlike feeling intensified. The two of them were kneeling in a summer garden, the air weighted with the perfume of hot crushed grass and scarlet poppies … and Catherine Marks was in his arms. Her hair shimmered in the sunlight, her skin petal-soft. Her upper lip was nearly as full as the lower, the curves as delicate and smooth as a ripe persimmon. Staring at her mouth, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck lift in reflexive excitement.
    Some temptations, Leo decided hazily, should not be resisted. Because they were so persistent that they would only keep returning, time and again. Therefore such temptations absolutely had to be yielded to—it was the only way to be rid of them.
    “Damn it,” he said raggedly, “I’ll do it. Even knowing I’ll be annihilated afterward.”
    “You’ll do what?” Marks asked, her eyes huge.
    “This.”
    And his mouth descended to hers.
    At last , every muscle in his body seemed to sigh. At last. The sensation was so pleasurable that for a moment Leo couldn’t even move, just felt her mouth with his mouth. Sinking into the feeling, Leo let it take him. He stopped thinking altogether and did everything and anything he wanted … tugging at her upper lip and then her lower one, sealing their mouths together, touching his tongue to hers, playing with her. One kiss started before another had finished, a chain of erotic strokes and skims and nudges. The delight of it went all