Threshold of Pleasure (Mills & Boon Nocturne Cravings) Read Free

Eventually, the dark man stood over her, staring down, his eyes shining with emotion.
    As he smiled, he held out one long, elegant hand toward her. “I can make the pain go away, Eden. Just take my hand.”
    She wanted the pain to recede. Too long had she lived with the emotional turmoil that the woman’s death had induced. Daylight hours brought too many sobering feelings, and the night brought agonizing nightmares, just like the one she replayed almost every night.
    Eden wasn’t sure how long her mind could survive her inner torment. Not much longer, she was sure.
    Raising her head to meet his gaze, Eden felt a sexual tug. The man invoked sensations she had long ago dismissed as unimportant. She wanted him to take her pain. She wanted him.
    He grinned as she raised her arm. But before she could touch his hand, Eden saw red flames dance in the black of his eyes....
    “Eden.” His voice was a caress, touching her in places she hadn’t been touched in far too long. “You want to forget.” He smiled and she spied a pair of fangs jutting from his upper jaw. It sent a shudder down her body, but she didn’t pull away.
    “You want so many things. I can give them to you. Will you let me?”
    Her hand moved toward him as if it wasn’t her hand at all. No! She shook her head and snatched her hand back. Frantically, she looked around. Everything was wrong. Where was the woman she’d been unable to save? Where was the blood?
    Where was she?
    She was no longer in the alley surrounded by death and carnage—she was in a room, a bedroom, facing a bed with red satin sheets and candles. Hundreds of candles. Candles everywhere.
    Someone stood behind her—she could feel his presence and she both wanted to lean back into that solid mass and surrender to him and she wanted to spin around and shove her gun beneath his chin.
    “Eden.”
    It was him. The dark man. The one from the alley. She’d have recognized that voice anywhere. Deep, potent as the smoothest scotch, faintly accented. He had the kind of voice that spoke to her on more than one level.
    “Eden, I want you. Please, let me touch you, for both of our sakes.”
    His voice didn’t just sound like scotch—it had the same effect on her. Numbing her senses, dulling her inhibitions. She turned around to face him, fully intending to tell him off, but one look at him and all intentions evaporated.
    She’d been with men before but never with one who looked like him. He wasn’t real. He couldn’t be. He was too perfect, standing there with his silk pajama bottoms riding low on his hips and nothing else. His feet were bare. His chest was bare and smooth and sculpted like that of an elite athlete. But it was his face—his rugged jaw, his patrician nose, his dark, dark eyes—that pierced her with desire and longing, that affected her most.
    And those fangs. They weren’t long—were almost invisible among the rest of his teeth—but she saw the curve of them, and the sharp tips.
    “You want me, too. I can see it.” He approached her with the fluid grace of a panther and Eden was mesmerized by the unconscious play of muscles across his torso as he neared.
    It took effort to lift her eyes, but she somehow managed, and when she met his gaze, she caught her breath. The intensity of his stare stole the air around her.
    “How badly do you want to forget?”
    “Very,” she whispered.
    He touched her face, the softest of caresses. “Will you permit me to help?”
    “How?”
    “Like this.”
    Up until that moment, everything had been happening as if in slow motion. But the minute the dark man said like this , time sped up. His hand whipped out to circle her neck, pulling her closer. His other hand lifted her chin, tilting her face toward him.
    One second he was looking down at her, the next his lips were on hers. No, not on hers—they were a part of her.
    If what he was doing was kissing her, it was like no kiss Eden had ever experienced. His kiss was hungry and desperate and