Free A Breath of Scandal by Connie Mason Page A

of the mystery surrounding him and the pitfalls of loving him. Danger stalked him. He was no ordinary man. Intelligent, enigmatic, and imbued with an unsettling degree of secrecy. She’d have to be crazy to fall in love with a man whose name she didn’t know.
    “Lara, don’t think. Just feel. I know you’re thinking that you can’t trust me, but I swear I’ll make you happy tonight. Don’t think about the other men who have made love to you in the past. Pretend that I am your first lover.”
    Suddenly he went still, giving her a strange look as he searched her face. “I
am
your only husband, am I not?”
    Lara shifted nervously. “I have never been married before.”
    She sensed his relief and wondered about it He was going to leave anyway, so why should he care if she had another husband? He liked her, maybe even admired her, but that’s as far as it would ever go.
    Her thoughts were skewered when Drago’s arms tightened around her and his mouth came down hard on hers. Her eyes fluttered closed at the startling sensation of his tongue plunging into her mouth. She was lost. Utterly and profoundly lost. She raised up on her toes, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back, with her mouth and with her whole body and soul.
    Drago’s groan was low and guttural, his lips demanding and possessive as his hands moved determinedly over her curves. She shifted restlessly, wanting more, wanting him closer. Her breasts were crushed against his chest, her hands gripping his shoulders.
    “Your clothes, take them off,” he growled as his hands swept aside the tumbled mass of her hair to release the ties holding her blouse together.
    She shrugged her shoulders and the garment fell to her waist. She wore nothing underneath. She heard him mutter a strangled oath before he lowered his mouth to claim the dusky crown of her nipple.
    Lara gasped and arched into his mouth. Her fingers clutched desperately at the dark strands of his hair, and her body swayed with the sweet, drugging sensations washing over her; dark, crushing waves that inundated her with each dragging lap of his tongue. She began to shiver, stunned by the torrid rush of exquisite pleasure plowing deep in her belly and between her thighs. She wanted more; intense need weakened her knees. He must have sensed her desperation, for he swept her into his arms and lowered her to the bed in a froth of skirts.
    “These will have to go,” Drago grated, grasping a handful of material and tugging.
    Skirts and petticoat slid down her hips, her thighs, and he whisked them to the floor. Then he dropped down beside her and bent over her belly, his breath scorching her as his tongue dipped into her belly button. Every nerve ending screamed for something, but she had no idea what. Her breath hitched when Drago parted her legs and eased his fingers into the moist cleft between her thighs. She felt his hot, penetrating gaze upon her and stared up into his eyes, waiting breathlessly, nay, anxiously, for his next move.
    The shock of his fingers sliding back and forth over her flesh, then dipping deep inside her, was devastating. She couldn’t stifle her startled cry when his mouth replaced his fingers. She shuddered and arched against him, her hands clawing into his hair.
    “Drago! No!” Surely such intimacy had to be wicked.
    Julian grinned up at her. “Haven’t any of your lovers done this to you?” He didn’t wait for an answer as he buried his head between her legs and feasted on her tender flesh, his tongue lashing furiously, as if she were an exotic delicacy.
    “I … ahhh … please … ohhh … stop!”
    Julian raised his head. “Stop?”
    “ ’Tis too much.”
    He sat back on his heels. “Perhaps you are right. Our passion burns too hot for this kind of foreplay. Perhaps later.”
    Lara had no idea what he was talking about. She only knew that her body was thrumming with raw, wicked pleasure, but what he had been doing to her couldn’t be proper.
    Suddenly