Read Gideon's Bargain for Free Online

hand stroked over the curve of her shoulder and down to cuddle the weight of her breast in his palm. She wriggled away. "So long as you give in to my light urges, Sarah, the dark ones can go hang."

"You were pretending!" she sat bolt upright in her bed, clutched the blankets to her like a shield. "Was it amusing to do that to me? To make me believe you wanted to…you are despicable."

"No, Sarah, merely desperate." He expression had gone grave, like his tone, and he gazed up at her through deep, black eyes that glinted now not with humor or lust or mocking cruelty, but with sincerity. "I spent the better part of a month since arranging our betrothal trying to contact you, but your father would have none of it. I was to stay away from you, he said, until the wedding." His mouth twisted. "If I had not seen you lurking behind a corner on one of my visits, I would have thought he hid some gross deformity of yours. But I knew you to be lovely, and I knew your father to be the worst sort of man. So I was forced to bide my time until today. Only in the church and at the lunch, it was not your father who thwarted my attempts to know you, it was you yourself."

"You lie. I wanted nothing more than for you to notice me during the ceremony, yet you spent the day ignoring me!"

"That is not so, Sarah. Every time I thought we might share a word together, your drunkard father or wastrel brother would butt his filthy head in and send you scuttling back into your shell."

Sarah stiffened, remembering. He was right. She had noticed Richard bumbling along through the morning in his usual half-drunken state, getting in the way time and again as she wished for a husband who would see her.

"Then what sort of game did you play tonight?" she demanded, feeling herself soften, but still wanting answers. "If you wanted to know me, why did you not try speaking with me, or…or telling me what you're telling me now? Why was it necessary to humiliate me?"

"That shell, Sarah, was blasted hard to crack." He lifted a hand, skimmed it along her jaw, and she felt no desire to slap it away. "Every time your brother or your father interrupted, you went further and further away. You never spoke. I wondered if you had gone mute until you arrived here and I overheard you telling your maid you believed me to be the same sort of man as your relatives. You had me tarred and feathered, my dear, and I knew it would take some drastic action to clear the air."

She snorted, but her fingers began to relax on the coverlet. "As in a lightening strike."

Gideon grinned. "It worked, didn't it?" He tugged her down to the pillows beside him. "I wanted to find out where that shell came from, what it was you wanted to fiercely you had to conceal it from the world. And you gave the strong impression that asking flat out would not yield a usable answer."

She pursed her lips and looked away.

"Hmm. As I thought." He gave her a mockingly stern glare. "I decided that if I pretended to be the demon you thought I was, I might be able to elicit the truth more quickly."

"Then you aren't the evil, cruel master seeking to bend me to his will?" She reached out, circling a slender finger around his flat, male nipple, the first time she had voluntarily touched him. This time, she did not tremble, though she felt her pussy soften and dampen.

He slid his hand to her bottom and squeezed, and his mouth curved in a slow and wicked smile. "I can be, if you enjoy the idea."

She shrugged and cuddled closer. "I'm not at all sure what I enjoy, my lord, for I've only known what you showed me this evening."

He lowered his smiling mouth to her breast, sipped delicately from the peak, and felt her shiver. "That did seem to make an impression."

"Oh, yes." She sighed and buried her fingers in his hair, lightly cradling his head against her. The feel of his hot mouth on her sensitive nipple brought that faint, quivery feeling back in force. "Quite an impression."

"Then it might be worth repeating."