Stone-Cold Lover Read Free Page B

your dad is more worried than ever about your indiscretions.”
    She moved down a step, now eye-level with him. The light rain clung to her hair and moistened her skin, glazing droplets of silver over her sleeveless jade dress. Yet heat warmed her from the inside out, passion running lava hot in her blood and warding off the cold.
    Head high, she forced a serene expression while unclipping the diamond studs holding it together at the front.
    “Better to have this one night than nothing at all,” she whispered. Slipping the dress from her shoulders, she tossed it aside. She wore no underwear beneath. She’d planned her attack. The trick was all in the execution.
    “You’ll catch your death with cold,” Cray murmured, even as his eyes flared. He stood stock-still, his shadowed expression doing little to conceal the tic of a muscle along his tight jaw. He’d seen her naked plenty of times and had resisted her even when hunger had scorched his gaze.
    Not this time. Please , not this time.
    She leaned forward, cradling his wet face with outspread hands. Her lips merged with his and she closed her eyes, savoring the taste of raindrops and masculinity, of barely restrained passion.
    Yearning swelled as she sank against him, her bared breasts rasping against his sodden clothes. When bolts of pleasure shot straight to the throbbing ache at her core, before seemingly liquefying her bones, it was all she could do not to crumple in a heap at his feet.
    His hands were suddenly on her waist, bracketing her in place with so very little effort. And even in his human form she was aware of his latent strength, was totally turned-on by the leashed power that wasn’t just physical.
    Could he taste her passion, her need, the burning for him that seared her soul?
    Time seemed to slow and she held her breath. Then everything quickened to double-speed as he groaned and his set mouth softened and opened beneath hers.
    Desire hit her like a shock wave, an electric current that sizzled the nerve endings along her lips and everywhere he touched. She gasped, opening her eyes and jerking back her head.
    His veiled stare of frostbitten indifference was no more. His eyes glowed like a flame heated blue, snapping with fierce desire and longing.
    Cray sucked in a breath, slow and deep. He should get the hell away from her while he was still able. Instead, he drank her in as if he couldn’t get enough, everything within him aching as it hadn’t for almost a century. With her parted lips and rivulets of water cascading between her perfect breasts, he was reminded why the last three years had been a torture worse than being frozen in stone.
    He’d held on to his honor by sheer force of will. But no longer.
    It wasn’t her naked perfection that undid him, but the stirring of wonder and need in her eyes. A wonder and need for him—the man.
    Her desire had never been subtle. Except, this time was different. She’d let down her guard and shown real hunger. Not just for his body, but for him, the person inside. And the realization touched him far deeper than anything physical.
    Scooping her into his arms, he growled, “You win.” Long strides took them indoors, where he laid her down on a soft cream rug in front of a blazing hearth.
    The minx really had gone all out to seduce him. Flames crackled and spat, throwing light and shadow on the log walls and caressing Loretta’s slender form with yellow warmth.
    He knelt beside her. She reached up, her eyes full of wonderment as she silently traced her fingertips along his brow, down his cheekbones and under his jaw, as if memorizing every line.
    He sucked in a breath, forcing calm. Lord, she made him feel almost…beautiful. How tragic could he get! Loretta was sex on a stick and innocence all rolled into one, her beauty incandescent, the very antithesis to his twisted stone form.
    Her hands fell as he bent low, pressing featherlight kisses to her smooth temple before moving down one side of her throat and