'Til the End of Time Read Free Page B

worried about me while I’m gone.”
    “I’ll take care of it.”
    She began to wander casually in the general direction of the French doors leading to the terrace.
    Sandor hadn’t expected her to be tall. Jannot’s terse description had brought to mind the image of a Bardot-type sex kitten, but there was nothing kittenish about the woman slowly making her way toward the terrace doors. Alessandra Ballard was close to six feet tall, built on queenly lines, and every inch radiated voluptuous earthiness. The aura of lushness she projected filtered through the sheer Austrian drapes of the French door and reached him clear and vibrant as a siren’s call. No wonder Fontaine had been sure she was Bruner’s mistress. Though she was probably twenty-seven or -eight and Bruner rapidly approaching seventy, Sandor doubted that even Methuselah would have been immune to her sexuality.
    There was certainly no question of his own arousal, he realized half incredulously. His bodyhad responded the moment he had seen her, and now he felt it hardening to near-painful readiness as she walked toward him. Hell, what was wrong with him? It hadn’t been that long since he’d had a woman, and Alessandra Ballard couldn’t even be termed pretty. Her shining nut-brown hair was worn in a severely simple bun on the top of her head. Her features were definitely irregular. Large, wide-set dark eyes glowed serenely beneath winged brows. Her nose was a trifle long, and her lips were a little too full. However, her neck and shoulders were truly magnificent, and the sight of the full globes of her breasts springing from the low-cut square neckline of her white gown made a simmering heat start to tingle through him.
    He stepped back into the shadows as she opened the door and stepped out on the terrace. She closed the door behind her.
    “Karpathan?” Her voice was a mere thread of sound, but clear and unafraid. Her eyes, searching the shadows beside the door, were also free of fear. “Let me see you. You’ve obviously been out here watching me. It’s my turn now.”
    His surprise was instantly replaced by amusement. He stepped out of the shadows into the moonlight. “Miss Ballard.” He bowed mockingly. “I assure you it wasn’t my intention to deprive you of your feminine rights. I’m afraid it was an instinctive act of self-preservation to cling to concealment. Shall I revolve like a runway model to make amends?”
    “That won’t be necessary. I can see you quite well now.”
    Perhaps more than she wanted to see, she thought suddenly. She was experiencing anunaccountable tension that had nothing to do with fear. She could feel it in the contracting of the muscles of her stomach and the tightness of her chest. She had seen newspaper photographs of Sandor Karpathan and knew he was good-looking, but now she saw he was more than handsome. The perfection of his classic features and the crispness of his dark hair were overshadowed by the force field of strength surrounding him. He was wearing a dark sport jacket over a long-sleeved dark shirt and close-fitting trousers, and his tall, sinewy body looked hard and fit.
    Hard. Why was she so conscious of the unflinching masculinity of the man? She was suddenly excruciatingly sensitive to the soft fullness of her own body—the swell of her breasts against the chiffon of her gown, the teasing brush of the material against her thighs as the gentle summer breeze pressed the skirt against her body. She drew a deep breath and ignored the urge to scurry into the shadows from which she had called him. The instinct for self-preservation, he had said. She knew that particular instinct well enough to recognize it when she felt it, and it was here throbbing between them. “May I ask why I’m honored by your attention?” With an effort she managed to keep her tone light and slightly mocking. “When I received the note, I wasn’t sure if it was a threat or a warning. Fontaine said it was a