Free Cullen's Bride by Fiona Brand

what you don’t need,” he said with a destroying gentleness, “and that’s a few sweaty hours between the sheets with a man who can’t give you anything more than that”
    Her heart almost stopped at the image of Cullen’s muscled body entwined with hers in dampness and tangled sheets. The image was crude and utterly sexual, brutally ripping away any possibility of softness or tenderness. “You’re going to a lot of trouble to scare me off.”
    â€œI’m no Prince Charming,” he admitted flatly. “I’m big and hard, and so hungry it feels like I haven’t had a woman in years. I wouldn’t court you, Rachel, I’d just take you.”
    The shock of his words slapped coldly at her, but something about his body language, the careful distance he kept from her, his refusal to let her see his facial expression, made her stand her ground. “I’d have some say about that. I don’t believe for one minute that you treat women like objects.”
    The silence closed in around them; the music and laughter of the barbecue seemed to lull and recede, making his voice sound deeper, harsher, on the still night air.
    â€œYou’re right,” he admitted “I don’t.” He turned so the moonlight skimmed his face, so she could see the compassion softening the brooding line of his mouth, stealing the glitter from his eyes. “But I also don’t intend to take the daughter of a neighbour and family I respect just to relieve my physical needs. And I especially don’t want a woman who thinks she can change me ”
    Rachel stiffened at the tender cruelty of his brush-off.
    Damn him, he was feeling sorry for her.
    Nothing could have made her more furious Not his calm indifference, not the knowledge that somehow he’d seen right through her, seen her desire to put things right for him, to change the mystifyingly strong opinion of the town and somehow melt all the hard reserve he used to distance himself from people. From her. “You could almost convince me you’re genuine if you weren’t trying so hard to put me off.”
    And then she did what she’d promised herself she wouldn’t. She reached up and touched the satin-rough line of his jaw.
    His fingers closed on hers, calloused and hard as he wrenched her hand away on a soft, succinct curse that should have shocked her. She wasn’t shocked—his touch burned her as she knew it would, sealing them together with a jolt of pure sexual energy that turned the coldness in his gaze to hot metal. Cullen was all the things he’d said he was, and he could probably hurt her very badly indeed, but the one thing he wasn’t was indifferent.
    She winced as the splinter dug deeper into her flesh.
    â€œWhat is it?” Cullen rasped.
    Without waiting for her reply, he turned her hand over in his grip and unfurled her fingers, letting the cold light of the moon wash across her palm. The splinter was long and thin, jutting darkly from the mound of flesh below her thumb Just seeing how big it was made the wound sting even worse.
    Cullen cupped her hand with both of his and unexpectedly lifted her palm to his mouth. His teeth flashed whitely as they closed over the splinter and tugged it from her flesh. He turned his head, jaw rasping against her skin, and spat the splinter out. Then, instead of letting her go, he bent his head, and his mouth closed around the small wound. His teeth pressed into her soft flesh as he sucked out any remaining debris; his tongue laved her skin in a hot, wet caress that rippled through her She couldn’t move, could barely breathe. Her whole world had shrunk to the circumference of his mouth and the heat radiating from her palm.
    â€œDamn,” he said, releasing her hand, then reaching out to touch her hair. “This isn’t working.”
    She drew a shuddering breath at the light stroke of his fingers as he sifted them through an