Free Crystal Warrior: Through All Eternity (Atlantean Crystal Saga Book 1) by Jen YatesNZ

momentous than the weather.
    Georgina looked at the food and shook her head, turning to watch the sparrows who'd already spied them and were dancing ever closer to their feet in hope of crumbs.
    ‘Dammit woman, you didn't eat breakfast,’ he growled. ‘You'll eat now. You know I can make you. I can make you do anything. I've done it before.’
    Once the words left his mouth Torr slowly lowered his bread roll to the bag on the seat between them and fixed Georgina with a smoldering, resentful stare. His eyebrows were jagged black triangles above a straight, uncompromising blade of a nose. Muscles spasmed along the harsh, jutting line of his jaw. Where yesterday he'd appeared intensely charismatic and virile, today he looked simply dangerous.
    Georgina glared unflinchingly back into the glittering depths of his eyes.
    You don't have a ship or an energy web at your command this time!
    I wouldn't make the mistake of thinking they could hold you—this time. You wouldn't have gone then had I been able to reach you first. Just to touch you would've been enough.
    You think your touch would've held me?
    If I was merely to touch you now, what would happen next would get us both arrested. You know as well as I do a touch is all it takes. Hell, I'm nearly there and all I'm doing is looking!
    Georgina flinched away from the naked desire in his eyes. In blinding, pulsing spectro-color, she knew exactly how it would be to touch, to know this man, to surrender herself to the cosmic physical forces that vibrated between them. Her knees began to tremble again and she crossed her ankles tightly to conceal it.
    `Now we know just what a whore you are.'
    The words, spoken by a man who was legally her stepson, had lived and festered within her for years. Highlighted by a single yellow rose, they leapt accusingly into her mind, feeding off the passion that burned within her to touch Torr Montgomery and be damned to the consequences.
    Recoiling inwardly, Georgina snatched at a roll as if it were a life raft in a stormy sea. She'd long ago accepted when Alan initiated her into the delights of sex at the rather advanced and naive age of twenty-three, it was as if he'd opened Pandora's Box and lost the lid. After his death she'd ruthlessly buried box and contents deep and the rose was supposed to be the key that kept it, and her wanton inner self, securely locked.
    Then Gould had arrived, dug with dogged determination until he'd unearthed it again and freed the contents, calling it `treasure beyond price'. She thought she'd thrown away the box then, along with all vestiges of guilt, believing she'd never need it again.
    Although the rose still lurked in the center of her table, a constant reminder to be vigilant.
    Now, not only was there nowhere to cage these raging desires, she was losing control of her mind too!
    ‘Do you have any idea what's going on here?’
    His voice was rough with emotion and heat.
    Georgina shook her head and concentrated on unsealing the plastic wrap on the bread roll.
    ‘We've got to talk about it, Gina, and this is probably going to be our best chance of doing so without involving either Fran or Gould.’
    He’d called her `Gina’ and the echo of it settled into her soul with a familiarity beyond intimate, a rightness beyond pure. Georgina nodded, still unable to speak.
    ‘I'll tell you how it is with me. Then I'd like to know what's happening with you. Maybe we can make some sense out of it. Agreed?’ he demanded tersely.
    There was no point in refusing. She'd already agreed to come and talk, hadn't she? Georgina nodded again and silently scrunched the plastic wrap back around the bread. Her heart was beating hard in the base of her throat and she doubted she'd be able to swallow anything without choking. She put the roll back on the paper.
    Torr fixed his attention on her as he spoke and Georgina found it impossible to look away from that penetrating gaze.
    ‘I knew you. The moment I saw you at the airport—even