Free Enchantment & Bridge of Dreams by Christina Skye Page B

breaking your bloody neck!”
    At that moment, he sounded as if the prospect of getting rid of her held definite appeal.
    In the engulfing silence, their footsteps echoed noisily. Every breath was sharp, every rustle intensified. And the infuriating man knew exactly where he was going, Kacey soon realized.
    â€œStop,” she hissed. “I can’t keep up! It’s pitch-black in here, remember?”
    Draycott muttered something beneath his breath and slowed his pace.
    Reaching out, Kacey felt the banister beneath her fingers, velvet-smooth with centuries of beeswax and careful polishing. Five hundred years ago, the house must have been much the same as this, she thought. No lights, no whirring machines. Only this total, encompassing silence.
    Down the stairwell they went, and to Kacey, it was as if they’d found the path straight into the house’s heart. The ancient walls seemed to hum and close around them, as if welcoming them down a long corridor.
    Of time. Of dreams.
    To a place they both dimly remembered.
    â€œDon’t you have a generator or something?” Kacey asked irritably, to cover her growing uneasiness. “After all, this is the twentieth century.”
    They were at the second-floor landing. Draycott led her confidently to the right, his fingers hard on her wrist. “Marston will be on to it already, I’m sure.”
    She frowned, trying to tug free, only to feel his fingers tighten. “Stop fighting me, Kacey. You’ll never win.”
    â€œThat’s where you’re wrong, Nicholas Draycott!”
    He stopped so abruptly that she stumbled into him. Without a second’s hesitation, he twisted back against the wall, taking her with him. His arms slid to her ribs and crushed her against his chest.
    The next moment Kacey found herself captured between rigid thighs.
    â€œDo you really believe that?” he asked. “Let’s find out, shall we?”
    Disoriented, she reached out blindly in the darkness. The hard contours of his shoulders flexed rigid beneath her searching fingers.
    Somehow her hands curved, digging into those taut muscles.
    Somehow his hands shifted, burying themselves in her silken hair.
    â€œKatharine—sweet, soft Katharine.” His breath hissed free in a dark, erotic groan.
    The sound went straight to her heart, setting off sensual explosions that jolted bone by tiny bone all the way down Kacey’s spine. “St-stop, Nicholas.”
    His mouth cut off her half-formed protest. He kissed her urgently, unthinkingly. All his calculation was gone now—all that remained was raw male need. He took without asking, commanded without speaking.
    He shaped her mouth, then remade it in his desire, and he didn’t stop until her lips softened beneath him and her breath fled sharply.
    Only then did he part her lips and fill her with his heat.
    Perfectly.
    Agonizingly.
    Until the kiss seemed to go on forever, blinding in its power and sweetness.
    When he released her at last, her mouth was throbbing, and the old Kacey was gone, swept away forever. Now a new Kacey burned in the darkness, consumed by yearnings she had never before known.
    The Englishman just smiled. Without a word, he turned and tugged her after him into the darkness, moving noiselessly and with total certainty. Dimly, Kacey heard a door open, then felt a chair probe the side of her knee. A moment later he pushed her down into a stiff-backed wing chair.
    â€œStay put. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
    â€œNicholas, wait! Let me—”
    Too late. She heard him move away.
    Her heart was pounding. Only anger, she told herself and tried to believe it.
    Later she was to wonder why she hadn’t been more afraid at that moment. Oddly enough, she wasn’t, though she was sitting in utter darkness in the middle of a strange room in an unfamiliar house.
    As her eyes gradually grew accustomed to the dark, she began to make out faint details. The