Free Banish Misfortune by Anne Stuart Page A

with shivers so tiny as to be imperceptible if the man hadn't been standing so close. I'm afraid of you, she thought desperately. I don't want to be alone in the darkness with you—I'm afraid you'll steal my soul. And even worse, I'm afraid you'll leave me, alone in the darkness without you. I'm afraid of everything about you.
    But she couldn't tell him that. She struggled for a reasonable excuse and came up with it. "I don't want to be another notch in your thighbone," she murmured, still imprisoned by the heat and force of his body. The only part touching her was his hand, gently caressing the side of her averted face.
    "And I don't want to be one on yours," he countered softly, and Jessica flinched. "That's the danger when you use sex for more than recreational purposes. When you use it to advance your career, or to convince yourself you're a man, or to blot out unpleasant memories. You forget you can make love just for the pure pleasure of it."
    Jessica couldn't help it; she laughed in his face, the bitterness raw in the calm night air. His hand stilled on her flesh, and she could feel the tension in his tall, wiry body. "Oh, Jessie," he said finally, his voice a weary rush of sadness. "It doesn't have to be that way."
    The sadness was almost more demoralizing than his nearness, the gentle, undemanding stroke of his strong, slightly callused hand. "Tell me about it," she said in a light, mocking voice. "You ought to know. Your mother says you've had every available female on both coasts in the past fifteen years."
    She waited for his withdrawal, but it didn't come. "Then you can trust my experience," he murmured. "Come to bed with me, Jessie."
    She didn't move. She could have pushed him away, and he would have let her. She could have strode past him, out of his room, out of his life, and he would have let her. She didn't move.
    A thousand protests screamed through her mind, a thousand drawling insults to put him in his place. She didn't say a word.
    A hundred misgivings filled her mind. Peter and Jasper and Kinsey Enterprises. And X. Rickford Lincoln, his heavy face masked with lust and then anger. She needed Springer MacDowell like she needed a hole in the head.
    "I'm going back to my room."
    "No, you're not."
    "Are you going to try to stop me?"
    "No." The word was low and beguiling, and his other hand slid up her arm, lightly touching, tantalizing, but in no way restraining. "You can go if you want to. But you don't want to. Do you?" His head moved closer, blotting out the light, his other hand holding her still for his kiss. The lips were warm, flesh on her flesh, a gentle exploration, a question, a soothing balm for her lacerated soul. "Do you?" he whispered again against her lips.
    She would have shaken her head in denial, but it would have broken the tantalizing bond. "No," she said silently against his mouth. And liking the way her lips moved against his as she formed the word, she tried it again. "No."
    It seemed to be all the permission he needed. His arm slid around her slender body, pulling her up against him, and the warmth began to seep into her chilled flesh once more. His mouth moved on hers, soft, damp and tantalizing, his tongue deftly tracing the soft contours of her lips before slipping inside. Jessica told herself she could remain passive, stand there in the comforting circle of his arms, with his mouth on hers, and be unmoved. It would be easy enough to view it as a performance, she told herself. After all of Springer's practice he must be rather deft—she could watch him with interest, see how he managed to move her from the corner of the bedroom to the wide queen-sized bed several feet away. Would he carry her? She'd rather liked it when he carried her out on the beach— what she could remember of it, that is. Men didn't usually attempt to carry her. Despite her current birdlike weight, her five-foot-eight-inch proportions made her an unwieldly package, unwieldly enough to discourage even closet