My Fallen Angel Read Free

squeezed him harder, then almost completely lost her train of thought. Her breath escaped in a rush as she hugged him tighter, rather enjoying the feel of him pressed against her.
    “Thank you,” she murmured. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She kept squeezing, just to make sure his muscles felt as firm as they looked, then said in a quavering voice, “I was too frightened to drop back down to the branch, and then I couldn’t pull myself up, and when I looked down I couldn’t even see the ground, not that I could see anything what with it being pitch black outside, but I thought for sure I was dead …” She pulled back, her words trailing off as she got her first good look at him in the light.
    Her breath escaped in an awe-filled rush as she studied the features candlelight illuminated to perfection.
    He was beautiful.
    No, beautiful was not enough; he was, well,
magnificent.
With his Nordic-like cheekbones, golden hair, white lawn shirt, sea blue eyes made even more blue by the copper color of his skin, and his buff-colored breeches tucked into black boots, all he’d need was a patch over one eye and he’d be the spitting image of a high-seas pirate, a swashbuckling hero come to rescue her.
    “Oh my,” she breathed softly, a strange mushy feeling surging through her insides, the same feeling she’d gotten after drinking that bottle of wine she’d snuck into her room on her thirteenth birthday.
    “What the devil do you mean by climbing up here?” he hissed, pushing her away from him.
    “You left me behind.”
    “I told you to stay behind on
purpose.”
    All Lucy could do was nod, still staring up at him in giddy bemusement. His expression grew thunderous. She gave him an undoubtedly wan smile in return. It was obvious by his lack of response that he couldn’t see her face with the candles behind her. Those candles revealed what appeared to be a sitting room.
    A sofa, its long back against a wall, squatted on claw-footed legs to her left; two matching rose and whitechairs sat to her right. It was a feminine room with floral patterns on everything: the furniture, the wall hangings … good heavens, even around the perimeter of the hardwood floor. Mr. Wolf looked distinctly at odds with such a backdrop, still sinfully handsome, but out of place.
    Suddenly he tensed, and before she knew what he was about, he stepped past her, reached for the candelabra on the floor behind her, and blew out the candles. Lucy wanted to protest. She would have been happy to stare at him all night.
    When he tugged her away from the window, she didn’t argue, happy to follow wherever he went. Not even when he scraped the sofa away from the wall, then pushed her down behind it, did she say a word. Actually, she was a tad bit disappointed he hadn’t placed her
on
the sofa, then lay down with her. She’d always wondered what it would be like to be kissed by such a man—a man who was tall and masculine and virile, the opposite of her short and somewhat chunky soon-to-be-fiance, Lord Harry Harrington.
    She sighed. A man such as this would never want her, not with her clumsy nature. She’d been lucky dear Harry had agreed to take her on. Once again she squelched a familiar pang of longing to have been born tall and graceful and blonde. Perhaps then she would…
    The door opened. “Who’s there?” a voice asked. It served to snap Lucy back to the world of reality far faster than if a bolt of lightning had zapped her.
    Secret fantasies forgotten, she tensed as boot heels clicked on the floor. A shadow flickered against the wall and her eyes widened. She heard a step, then anotherand another. When the footsteps got too close for comfort, Lucy turned and knelt on all fours, then hastily started crawling toward the other end of the sofa, grimacing at the layer of dust she could feel beneath her hands. Actually, she had rather a lot of experience skulking about in such a way. Apparently so did her companion, for he made hardly a