Free Passion's Dream (The Doms of Passion Lake Book 1) by Julie Shelton Page A

steamy sheath.  He knew she was aroused.  Her scent enveloped him, intoxicated him, ravished him until it was all he could do not to just fuck her senseless, over and over until he got her out of his system.  Christ almighty! How am I ever going to be able to keep her safe if I’m the one attacking her ?
    With effort, he managed to force himself to back off slightly.  “See what I mean?”  His husky whisper brushed against the corner of her mouth as he planted a line of tiny, nibbling kisses along her jaw.  “We do know each other, Leah. Have known each other in other places, other times.”  His arms tightened convulsively around her and he buried his face in the sweet curve where her neck met her shoulder.
    The startling parallel of his words to her earlier thoughts was frightening.  “That’s-that’s nonsense,” she broke in, only slightly out of breath.  “I-I don’t believe in such stuff.”
    “Neither do I.”  He smiled into her hair.  She could feel his lips curving.  “At least, I didn’t.  Until three years ago, when I met you.”  He straightened and pushed her slightly away from him to look down at her.  When she didn’t move, he took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and forced her head up.  Her eyes fluttered open and she saw the intensity of his passion-glazed eyes with a small tremor of foreboding.  She was struggling against her attraction to him, like a moth struggles against its attraction to a flame, circling ever and ever closer until, in the end, she, like the hapless moth, would be incinerated.
    “Face it, Leah.  What’s between us is as inevitable as night following day, and we can no more resist it than the tide can resist the pull of the moon.  We have been lovers, not once, but many times, in many other lives.  I feel it with a certainty I’ve never felt about anything before.  And we will be lovers in this life, I promise you.”
    Yes, but for how long?  It was a silent cry of anguish, making her lower her eyes so he wouldn’t see the pain written there.  How long will it be before you, too, grow tired of me?  How long before you, too, find me wanting and seek your pleasures elsewhere?  By his own admission, he’d had many women.  Did she want to wind up being the latest in a long line of Clay Knight’s discards?  She was smart enough to know that the pain of Richard’s betrayal would be nothing compared to the agony she would face if she were to become involved with Clay Knight.  Her automatic response to him was simply too strong to allow her to emerge unscathed if he were ever/ to tire of her and cast her casually aside.
    She shook her head slightly.  No, she couldn’t do it.  She simply could not open herself up to that kind of pain.  With a kind of determined fatalism, she sighed and pushed her hands against Clay’s hard chest.  Surprisingly, he let his arms fall immediately to his sides, giving her the freedom to step away from him.  Perversely, she wanted to be back in the warmth and safety of his embrace.  For one nano-second, she allowed herself to consider it.  But she knew that the sense of safety was an illusion.  The only thing awaiting her within his embrace was danger—to her heart and quite possibly her soul.
    She gave a nervous little laugh.  “Well, Mr. Knight.”  Somehow she managed to make her voice sound cool and amused, “I’ve really got to hand it to you.  You’ve got the most original line I’ve heard in my whole life.”
    “Clay,” he replied automatically, frowning slightly.  He’d seen the struggle she was having against her own desires and longed to ease her fears.  “Is that what you think this is?  A line?”
    “Of course.”  She gave an insouciant wave of her hand.  “What else could it be?”
    He shrugged.  “The truth,” he said simply.
    “Oh, come now.”  Somehow she managed to inject just the right amount of world-weary cynicism into her voice.  “Don’t tell me you