Free Demon Rumm by Sandra Brown Page A

Cocaine has contributed to her paranoia. She’s living up to everything the press prematurely wrote about her. The bastards.”
    He stood against the buffeting wind, unmindful of it. Without his even trying, the emotion his face conveyed was captivating. It was no wonder cameras treated it kindly, cosseted it, made love to it.
    Suddenly realizing the moody reflections he had fallen into, Rylan turned his head and caught Kirsten staring at him. He gave her one of those sardonic smiles he was famous for. “Such is Hollywood.”
    He looked at her through speculative eyes, noting the way the wind was whipping her clothes around her slender body. Her blouse alternately billowed like a sail, then was plastered against her alluring form. “You’re pretty enough,” he said. “Ever thought about becoming a movie star?”
    She laughed, but the wind snatched away the sound, leaving Rylan with only a delightful image of her smiling mouth. He ached to taste it again.
    “Hardly. I don’t have the talent or the drive or the discipline.”
    “No discipline? I wouldn’t say that. You sat in that chair this morning, poring over the same page of manuscript for hours.”
    “That’s different.”
    “How?”
    “It’s personal. Just between the words on that page and me.”
    “That’s important to you, isn’t it? Protecting your privacy?”
    “Very.”
    His gaze moved over her. He studied her clinically, as a movie mogul might a starlet while he weighed her box office potential. “It’s probably just as well you didn’t try Hollywood. They might have messed you up.”
    He was hoping she would take the bait. She did. She asked him how she might be messed up.
    “For instance,” he said, “they would probably have wanted you to let your hair grow long. And it’s so damn perfect for you this way.” He cupped her head in his hands and followed the curvature of her skull and its cap of dark hair. He playfully yanked on the straight, wispy fringe in front of her ears.
    Framing her face between his hands, he said, “Terrific eyes. Wide, intelligent, expressive. You certainly wouldn’t need glue-on eyelashes. Not with these.” He ran the tip of his finger over the dark, feathery lashes.
    “Good bone structure. High cheekbones.” He took her chin in one hand and with a swift motion, poked his thumb between her lips and slid the pad of it over her front teeth. “Straight teeth. Seductive smile. And I know for a fact that you’re a good kisser.”
    The caress was over and done with before Kirsten could react to it. And while she was still docile with astonishment, he moved his hands down to her hips and sandwiched them between his palms. She gazed at him in silent shock, but he didn’t remove his hands. It was now or never. He had to know.
    “You’re narrow enough through here.” His thumbs lazily rotated over her hipbones. The cloth of her shorts, made like men’s boxers, was so soft that it might not have been there. He wanted to press his open palm over the flat plane of her stomach and slide his fingers down into the
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of her thighs, but decided that might be going too far. “You probably wouldn’t have to lose a single ounce.” His voice was so low, it was almost a growl.
    She wasn’t participating. If he had expected her to collapse against him, tearing at his clothes, begging him to take her then and there on the sand and appease a primal urge, he knew he was in for a grave disappointment.
    But she wasn’t resisting either. He drew small encouragement from that. Was it stark fear or arousal that had dilated her eyes and made her breath as choppy as the whitecaps out on the ocean?
    His hands glided up her rib cage and paused for a heartbeat before sliding over her breasts. “They would have wanted to pump these full of silicone.” He pressed his hands over her, taking all of her within his palms. “And that would have been a damn shame. You’re perfect as you are.” His thumbs brushed the taut peaks.