The Thorn in His Side. Kim Lawrence

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СКАЧАТЬ your funeral.’ Immediately wishing she could retract the childish retort, she began to ease herself backwards; she was finding the confines of the car were increasingly claustrophobic.

      ‘I can see you find the thought appealing.’

      Libby flushed and protested, ‘Of course not!’ If she didn’t get some air soon she’d be the one needing an ambulance. ‘I’m trying to help.’ Pointless, as he obviously never listened to anyone, she brooded darkly as she continued to edge towards the door.

      ‘I’d feel a hell of a lot safer if you didn’t.’

      ‘I’ve said I’m sorry, and I am, but under the circumstances I think—damn!’ Libby slung an exasperated glance at her skirt, which appeared to have caught itself firmly on the gear lever. ‘Stupid thing.’ She was forced to lean in closer to try and free the tightly stretched fabric.

      ‘Let me—’

      His fingers, long, brown and tapering, brushed hers and Libby pulled her hand away as if burnt. She sucked in a deep breath and thought, Massive overreaction, Libby.

      She could feel his gaze but did not lift her head as she mumbled, ‘I can manage.’

      The frisson had passed but it had left her uncomfortably conscious of her own skin to the point where she could feel the individual hairs on the nape of her neck.

      ‘We should—’ she gave a heavy sigh of relief when her skirt came free ‘—play it safe.’

      Rafael ran a hand across the stubble on his chin. ‘We?’ he echoed, his attention drawn to the exposed nape of her neck. Rafael had never previously considered this part of a woman’s anatomy sexually attractive.

      ‘Good point,’ she conceded with a cool smile that had earned her the name of ice maiden in her teens. ‘However, you’re the one bleeding.’ And I’m the one who is getting a bad headache, she thought, conscious of the telltale pressure behind her eyes.

      ‘You’re tough, I get it, a regular man of steel and I’m impressed, believe me,’ she continued, delivering a smile of brilliant insincerity. ‘But watching someone bleed to death is not my style. Even someone as …’ Libby registered the flash of stunned disbelief in his eyes and brought her tirade to an abrupt halt.

      ‘Someone as?’

      Libby shook her head, then gave a fractured gasp when without warning he reached out and casually took her chin between the long fingers of his right hand.

      She was too startled by his action to resist as he tilted her face up to his. He was so close that she could see the gold tips on his sooty lashes and feel his warm breath on her face.

      He moved a thumb in a lazy circular motion along the curve of her cheek and Libby’s stomach went into dramatic free fall as every nerve ending in her body began to thrum.

      Ignoring the small whisper of sanity in his head, he took her face between his hands and watched the brilliant blue of her sapphire eyes vanish as her pupils dilated rapidly.

      He groaned something harsh on his own tongue as his eyes dropped to her lips.

      ‘You’re in pain!’

      ‘How right you are.’

      Libby struggled to fight her way out of the strange lethargy that crept over her; her limbs felt as though they didn’t belong to her. ‘Let me get help.’ She started to pull away.

      ‘You have a beautiful mouth.’

      Libby stopped pulling as she thought, So do you.

      He frowned suddenly. ‘What is your name?’

      Libby’s throat was so dry her voice was barely above a whisper, barely audible above the pulsating thud of her heart as it tried to climb its way out of her chest. ‘Libby.’

      She’d read somewhere that head injuries could make people act totally out of character—so what’s your excuse, Libby?

      ‘Libby?’ He rolled the word around his tongue experimentally.

      She nodded, hardly recognising her name when he said it, but finally placing his accent as Spanish.

      ‘Look, this is silly—’

      His mouth lowered, close but not quite touching, a whisper above her trembling lips.

      What the hell are you doing, Rafael?

      Rafael would have responded to the last-minute reassertion of sanity had she not at that exact moment given a choky little gasp and pressed her warm lips up against his.

      A split second later with a scared little gasp she pulled back, but the damage was done.

      Shame burned her cheeks as she met his eyes. ‘That was so—’

      ‘Not bad,’ he inserted in a low sexy growl that did further serious damage to her already demolished nervous system. ‘But I think we can do better.’

      And he did.

      His lips moved with slow sensuous skill across the trembling curve of her mouth; she heard herself whimper as he ran his tongue along the sensitive inner flesh of her lower lip and tugged the flesh gently between his teeth.

      Libby, who had not moved a muscle, pulled back with a horrified gasp, breaking the connection before proceeding to fall out of the car in her haste to escape.

      CHAPTER THREE

      LIBBY stood there, hand pressed to her mouth as the horror of what she had just done hit home with the force of a hurricane.

      This was one thing she could not blame on jet lag; she had lost control—sexually, with a stranger, a man whose name she didn’t even know.

      Mortified colour ebbed and flowed in her cheek. What had possessed her?

      The answer to her question was getting out of what remained of the top-of-the-range sleek powerful car, his body language not suggestive of someone who had just survived a car smash or, for that matter, someone who had just kissed her passionately.

      He looked … A soundless sigh escaped through her clenched teeth.

      Shameful memories flashed through her mind. For a breathless moment she could actually feel the texture of his lips, the taste of his hot mouth. Libby clenched her teeth, struggling to purge the image of his smouldering sexy eyes. She succeeded in pushing them away, but not before the hot core low in her pelvis had tightened to a hard fist of desire.

      Knowing what she was feeling was shallow and only physical did not make the experience easier to cope with.

      Her knees were shaking as, breath coming in a series of painful gasps, she watched covetously from under the sweep of her lashes as he stepped out onto the grass and stretched the kinks from his spine. The gorgeously cut suit was special and so was the tall Spaniard, and she wasn’t just making excuses—he really was!

      She СКАЧАТЬ