Diana Palmer Collected 1-6: Soldier of Fortune / Tender Stranger / Enamored / Mystery Man / Rawhide and Lace / Unlikely Lover. Diana Palmer

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ now. More relaxed, more at ease, much less rigid.

      “Shocked?” he asked wickedly. “Did you expect I’d changed my mind and gone fishing instead?”

      She burst out laughing and her green eyes sparkled. With her long hair piled in an old-fashioned coiffure, she seemed part of another era.

      “Little Miss Victorian,” he murmured, studying her. “How exciting you look. So demure and proper.”

      He looked as if he’d give a lot to change that straightlaced image, and she dropped her eyes before he could see how willing she felt.

      “We’d better get started,” she murmured, easing past him.

      “I like that gauzy thing,” he remarked minutes later as they walked up the front steps of the gray fieldstone church.

      “You can wear it sometimes, if you like,” she said teasingly.

      His eyes promised retribution. She eased her hand into his, and all the fight went out of him. He smiled at her, and his eyes were warm and possessive.

      J.D. paid a lot of attention to the sermon, which was about priorities and forgiveness and grace. He sang the hymns in a rich baritone, and he seemed thoughtful as the benediction was given.

      “Mind waiting for me?” he asked as they rose to file out at the end of the service.

      She searched his hard face and shook her head. “Not at all.”

      He left her and went to speak to the minister who was waiting until the rest of the congregation had left. The two men stood talking behind the rows of pews, both solemn, their voices low. Then they shook hands and smiled at each other. J.D. came back and grasped Gabby’s hand warmly in his for a minute.

      “I’m taking your minister to lunch instead of you,” he said with a mischievous smile. “How about getting into something casual and I’ll pick you up in a couple of hours?”

      She looked hard at him. “Are you all right?” she asked. She was trying to see beyond the fixed smile to something deep and wounded inside him.

      He drew in a slow breath and the smile faded. “You frighten me sometimes, Gabby,” he said softly. “You see too much.”

      She couldn’t think of any response to that. She touched his hand briefly and watched him walk away. Something was in the wind, a change. She frowned as she turned toward her apartment, her steps slow and deliberate. She wondered why he was taking her minister to lunch, if he had something on his conscience.

      She changed into jeans and a button-up blue cotton blouse and then paced the floor for the next two hours. Wild thoughts raced through her mind, the wildest one being that J.D. might decide to chuck it all and go in search of First Shirt and Apollo.

      It was three hours before he showed up. By then Gabby had consumed half a pot of coffee and chewed two fingernails to the quick. Her nerves were raw, and she actually jumped when the knock came at the door.

      She let him in, too shaken to disguise the frightened uncertainty in her wide eyes.

      “I thought you’d stood me up.” She laughed nervously. “I was just about to give up and start watching a movie on TV. Do you want some coffee, or some cake…?”

      He put a finger across her mouth to stop the wild words. His dark eyes looked into hers. “We have to learn to trust each other a little more,” he said softly. “And the first thing you need to know about me is that if I ever give my word, it’s good for life. I’m not going back to Shirt and the others, Gabby. That’s a promise.”

      Tears burst from her eyes like rain from a storm cloud. She put her face in her hands and walked away.

      “I’m sorry,” she choked out, hating the fact that she’d given her feelings away.

      He didn’t say a word. He followed her, and when he caught up to her, he lifted her gently in his big arms and headed straight for the bedroom.

      She had just enough sanity left to realize where they were going. She opened her mouth to protest, and his came down on it, open and moist and tenderly possessive.

      “Jacob…” she whispered into his mouth.

      He smiled against her trembling lips. “What?”

      Her nails bit softly into his shoulders as he laid her down on the crisp white bedspread. “I can’t,” she whispered.

      “Can’t what?” He sat down beside her and calmly removed his jacket, vest, and tie and then unbuttoned his shirt while she watched him, spellbound as the hard, heavy muscles came into view under that mat of crisp hair.

      “I can’t have an affair with you,” she said.

      He leaned over and began to unfasten the buttons on her blouse. “That’s nice.”

      “Jacob, did you hear me? Will you stop that…!”

      He ignored her protests and her frantic efforts to stop his fingers. “Stop what?”

      “Undressing me!” she burst out with an hysterical laugh. “Jacob, I’m wearing nothing underneath, for heaven’s sake…!”

      “So I see,” he murmured with a wicked smile, as he opened the blouse and revealed the pink and mauve rise of her breasts.

      “Will you listen…” she began breathlessly.

      “Shut up, darling.” He bent over her and put his open mouth against one breast, letting her feel the texture of his warm lips and his tongue before he moved closer and increased the ardent pressure.

      She gasped and arched and then moaned sharply, a high-pitched sound that made him lift his head.

      “Did I hurt you?” he asked. “I’m sorry, I thought I was being gentle.”

      Her fists were clenched beside her head, and her eyes were wide with mingled fear and desire. “You know very well it didn’t hurt,” she whispered fiercely.

      His eyes moved back down to her bareness and he smiled slowly, watching her breasts lift and fall with her quickened breathing. “Lovely, lovely creature,” he said under his breath. His fingers traced her rib cage and he held her eyes, watching the recklessness come into them, the deep passion.

      Her breath was coming still quicker now, and the tracing of his fingers was driving her mad. She arched her head back into the pillow, lifting her body toward him in a slow, helpless movement.

      “Want me to put my mouth there again and make it stop aching?” he whispered.

      “Yes,” she moaned softly. “Please.”

      She felt the whisper of his warm breath against her skin, felt his hands go under her to slide abrasively against her bare back. He lifted her, and his mouth moved with delicate precision from one taut breast to the other. His face nuzzled her, savored her softness.

      Her fingers tangled in his thick, cool hair and worked at it like a cat kneading a blanket. Pleasure washed over her in waves, waves that lifted and twisted СКАЧАТЬ