Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ public or private, that would make me want that—or you,’ she denied vehemently.

      ‘No!’ Luke contradicted her firmly. ‘That isn’t the way I remember certain events—far from it. In fact, while I hate to call you a liar,’ he drawled unkindly, ‘there have been at least two occasions I can call to mind when you evinced anything but reluctance to demonstrate just the opposite.’

      Bobbie glared at him. ‘If you’re referring to the way you forced yourself on me ... the way you kissed me totally against my will...’ She stopped, her face flushing as she saw the way Luke was looking at her. ‘I...I’ve told you before,’ she started to protest defensively. ‘I was thinking about someone else.’

      Wildly she started to head for the half-open door, knowing that she was on unsafe ground, very unsafe ground indeed, but she was still unable to resist one final act of defiance in the face of his accusations.

      ‘Under normal circumstances,’ she raged furiously, ‘there’s just no way I’d respond to you and anyway I wasn’t responding to you ... I was...’ She shook her head. What was the point in arguing with him? The sensible thing to do would be quite simply to walk away from him right now.

      But unfortunately she had left it a little too late. Luke’s gaze was already mercilessly fixed on her and as she measured the distance between them and the narrow doorway he was blocking, he sprang into action, catching hold of her as she tried to run past him and imprisoning her easily in his arms despite her attempts to struggle free. Kicking the door shut and enclosing them both in the semi-darkness of the room, he pushed her back against the closed door.

      ‘You’re sure about that, are you?’ he demanded mockingly.

      ‘Of course I’m sure,’ Bobbie lied through gritted teeth. ‘And even if I wasn’t, I don’t get any kicks from...from physical violence,’ she told him bitingly.

      She could feel Luke’s anger as he absorbed the impact of her angry remark, and her own body tensed in wary response. How much, after all, did she actually know about him? How much did she...?

      ‘Neither do I,’ she heard him telling her curtly and with so much distaste in his voice that she knew he was speaking the truth. ‘But I don’t like liars,’ he continued. ‘When I kissed you, you responded to me.’

      ‘I responded to being kissed,’ Bobbie protested. ‘It had nothing to do with you. You were ... I thought you were someone else,’ she lied again.

      ‘Is that a fact? Well, let’s just put that to the test, shall we?’ Luke told her and she could tell from the deceptive softness of his voice that he was very, very angry, indeed, far more angry in fact, than he had been when he had physically stopped her from leaving.

      The panic that flared inside her and had her struggling and trying to break free from his imprisoning grip had nothing to do with any fear or horror at the thought of being kissed or even touched by him. No, it was the fear, her fear, of what she might do, how she might react when he did that was urging her to struggle so desperately to break free of him, Bobbie acknowledged. But all her struggles could not break his firm hold of her. All they were doing, she had to admit, was exhausting her strength and bruising her ego far worse than his strong hands on her wrists were likely to be bruising her flesh.

      He waited until she paused to draw a deep lungful of air before releasing her wrists so that he could use his arms to bind her tightly against him, so tightly that she could feel the hard imprint of his body against her own, even through both their layers of clothing, Bobbie realised. So closely that...

      ‘Look at me, Bobbie,’ she heard him commanding her grimly, and to her own self-disgust she found that she was obeying him, lifting her gaze to meet his. ‘Good,’ he told her mock-softly. ‘Now we both know that this time you know exactly who I am, don’t we?’ And before she could argue or object, he did what she had known he intended to do all along and what she had told herself she would resist with every ounce of her mental, emotional and physical strength. He bent his head and started to kiss her.

      It was a bruising, hard, angry kiss that cerebrally Bobbie realised should have left her completely cold and unmoved, a kiss of icy, arrogant male passion, born of a male need to dominate and conquer, the kind of kiss a conquering warlord would give a captive victim and yet, the moment his mouth touched hers, Bobbie knew she was lost.

      Oh, she still felt angry—bitterly, furiously so—still resented what he was doing, resented him. She still rejected with her mind, her reason, everything he was, everything he was doing to her, but her body, her senses, had urges and needs of their own and to them the hard possession of Luke’s kiss had nothing of the gloating male triumph her mind flinched from, none of the sense of subjugation that her feminine pride fought so hard against. No, they saw and felt only a heady sense of power and heat; a sweet, soaring obliterating surge of feminine triumph that she...they, could make this man, who resented her so much, who disliked her so much, ache so much for her that he couldn’t stop himself from touching her, kissing her, wanting her and most empowering of all, reacting to her. And wantonly they played on that reaction, teasing it, enticing it, inciting it, so that without being able to do a thing to stop herself, Bobbie discovered that she had raised her own arms to wrap them tightly around Luke as she opened her mouth to the demanding pressure of his probing tongue, that the anger fuelling her was making her body ache and yearn, that the low growl of sound Luke made deep in his throat as she raked his tongue passionately with her teeth and pushed herself even closer to his body so that she could feel the powerful surge of male arousal that jolted through him, made her emit a small, purring, femininely feline sound of triumphant pleasure of her own.

      As she felt his hands on her body, a fierce, wild thrill of hunger swept through her, banishing logic and reason and even reality; they were man and woman, yin and yang, cause and effect, two primitive forces that when combined together...

      When Bobbie felt Luke’s hand covering her breast, pushing aside her clothes with savage urgency to reach the soft warmth of her flesh, she moaned a sharp protest beneath her breath, but the protest wasn’t because he was touching her. She was trembling from head to foot, the sheer force of the desire that had erupted inside her from out of nowhere making her body ache with something approaching an actual physical pain.

      She had never dreamt that physical desire could generate such an intense and immediate reaction, such a sense of urgency and aching, teeth-grinding immediacy.

      ‘Luke...’ She neither knew nor cared what she might be betraying as she dragged her mouth from his to whisper his name in female need, the look in her eyes as they met his, his flashing a message of intense pride and equally intense desire.

      She could see Luke’s response in the way his pupils dilated, feel it in the unexpected tremor that passed through his body as he responded as though by telepathy to the need conveyed in her husky moaning of his name to run the hard pad of his thumb over the soft curve of her breast until he found her nipple and then to circle it and go on circling it as Bobbie gasped her physical pleasure in his touch and instinctively pressed herself even closer to him. And she could hear it in the harsh sound of the air escaping from his lungs as he muttered something unintelligible under his breath and then, leaning back against the wall, urged her between his parted thighs. Then, under the protective shadows, he dragged her clothes completely free of her breast so that he could satisfy the need pounding through both their tormented bodies by fastening his mouth over the swollen point of her nipple and sucking rhythmically on it.

      It was the sound of a child crying in the hallway outside that broke the dark spell that was binding them together, causing them to spring apart and watch one another breathing harshly, confronting one another not as lovers but as warriors, foes, enemies, Bobbie recognised СКАЧАТЬ