Free Lady Love by Diana Palmer

“Silk and satin and velvet. A dangerous combination.”
    “Delle is staring at us. And I’m very hungry,” she returned.
    “Let Delle stare. You ate lunch.”
    “I’m hungry again.”
    “A woman of large appetite,” he said, searching her eyes. “I have a large one of my own, Merlyn.”
    Her face flamed and her eyes flashed. She stopped dancing. “If you’re going to make crude innuendoes…”
    “I’ll reform, if I must,” he murmured dryly, drawing her back into the slow rhythm.
    “Poor little thing,” she said, glancing past him to Delle, who looked very young and lost and frightened.
    “Who, Delle?” He laughed. “Here comes Mama. She won’t be lost for long.”
    Merlyn noticed the older woman entering the room. Mrs. Radner’s sharp blue eyes picked out Cameron, widened when she saw Merlyn, and glittered when they found Delle all alone. She lifted her head like a spirited thoroughbred and made her way to the buffet table.
    “She reminds me vaguely of a race horse,” Merlyn said absently. “One with its ears back.”
    He chuckled deeply and pulled her hard against him as he executed a graceful turn. “You remind me of a nervous filly,” he said, bending so that his breath brushed her ear. “Your body feels like a board. Why don’t you relax?”
    “It would be suicide,” she said without thinking.
    “Would it?”

Chapter Five
    T he tone of his voice was like velvet, and it made her feel liquid in his big arms. His hand pressed harder against her back. “Would it, Merlyn?” he repeated softly.
    “Yes,” she whispered, peeking up at him through her dark lashes.
    She’d expected the coquetry to make him smile, but he didn’t. If anything he looked more formidable than the night they’d met. He held her tight as he whirled her around, and she couldn’t seem to break the hypnotism of his gaze.
    “You smell of gardenias,” he said quietly, “and I could get drunk on the feel of your skin. Your name suits you. Merlyn. Magic.”
    She felt hot all over. With an effort, she looked away from him. Things were getting out of hand. “Could we stop?” she asked in a high-pitched little voice. “Delle must want to dance with you, she’s glaring at us.”
    “Delle can wait,” he murmured.
    The waltz ended abruptly, but he didn’t let go, and the band immediately began a lazy, bluesy tune that invited closer contact.
    “Please, I don’t want to,” she said softly.
    He only shook his head, folding her back into his arms. He moved lightly, gracefully, amid the throng, while Delle and her mother looked daggers at them. There was going to be trouble there, Merlyn thought with resignation.
    “Stop worrying,” he said, bending closer. “We’re only dancing.”
    But it didn’t feel like only dancing, and his big, warm hand on her bare back was doing the most fascinating things to her pulse rate. She was leaning against his broad chest with no idea of how she got there, and he was holding her close enough that her thighs brushed his when they moved.
    Merlyn wasn’t a child. She’d been engaged, and although she hadn’t experienced it herself, she knew how potent a man’s lovemaking could be. But what Cameron Thorpe was doing to her had never happened before, certainly not with Adam. He was making her tremble with every touch of his body. She could feel its warmth all the way up and down her own. She could smell the clean, spicy scent of his skin and sense the growing hunger in him.
    It shouldn’t be like this, she told herself. I shouldn’t be reacting to him this way. But even as she began the silent lecture, his hand dropped down to her waist and pressed her closer, and she trembled even more.
    He stiffened as he felt it. His hand froze and then pressed urgently. His dark head bent so that his breath was at her ear as the couples dancing around them nudged them even closer.
    “You’re potent, Jane Eyre,” he growled in her ear. “Can you feel what you’re doing to me?”
    She