Read Online Adele Ashworth by Stolen Charms - Free Book Online Page A

inhaling deeply to subdue his fired nerves.
    He didn’t want to say anything until she calmed, until her breathing slowed and she regained control. She was probably embarrassed, and he wasn’t exactly sure how to handle it, how to explain his actions, to keep her from feeling rejected.
    Suddenly she was shaking. She pulled her arms down from around his neck and pushed against his chest.
    “Natalie—”
    “Stop saying my name like that,” she whispered.
    He frowned. Like what?
    Slowly he released her, waiting, and she stood back, hugging herself, head lowered so moonlight reflected off her hair in shimmering streaks. Even in the darkness he could feel the tenseness emanating from her body. He just didn’t know if she was angry at him for initiating the kiss or at herself for showing such reckless desire.
    She drew a long, unsteady breath. “Don’t ever confuse me like that again,” she warned in a murmured rage.
    What the hell did that mean? Only a woman would say things that stumped him. “Confuse you?”
    “I am promised to someone else,” she explained as if he were stupid, seething from every pore.
    Enlightenment doused him with pleasure. Now he understood, and in the dimness he allowed himself to smile broadly with satisfaction. Expressing her confusion was completely different from expressing repulsion or shock, or from slapping his face.
    He lifted his finger to caress her jaw. “You are not promised to anyone,” he corrected in a deep whisper.
    Her head jerked up, and she glared at him through furious eyes. “Good night, Jonathan.”
    She lifted her skirts with dignity and walked past him.
     
    H e gave her nearly twenty minutes to compose herself and get ready for bed. Then, with a somewhat guilty rush of anticipation, he knocked on the cabin door twice and opened it without waiting for a reply.
    But she wasn’t in bed or doing whatever it was women do to ready themselves for it. She was sitting on the edge of it, engrossed in thought, fully clothed, although her cloak was now unbuttoned.
    She turned when she heard him enter, staring at him vacantly at first, then with what he could only describe as growing horror.
    “How did you—”
    “I have a key, remember?” he answered before she could finish.
    He shut the door, bolting it, enclosing them tightly inside the small, cramped cabin now filled with her presence, her intimate belongings, the alluring scent of lavender and lilies in creams and powders and perfumes. After only a few hours together he’d come to the uncomfortable conclusion that the most difficult task he’d ever undertaken in his life lay just ahead—not in stealing precious emeralds from dangerous French Legitimists, but in keeping Natalie Haislett’s virginity intact.
    He heard her stand behind him as he unfastened the top two buttons of his shirt.
    “I—I suppose you’ll be sleeping in the next room, Jonathan?” she stammered in a soft, shaky voice.
    He turned back to her and was nearly brought to his knees by the vivid pleading in her eyes of the hope that he would just go away, from the swell of her full breasts as her opened cloak exposed her form-fitting, tightly waisted gown, from her long, thick hair now free from pins to tumble down the front of her in a luxurious wave of softness.
    So innocent and untouchable.
    He sighed and confessed the inevitable. “I’ll be sleeping on your left, Natalie.”
    “Oh.” The relief outlined on her face was immeasurable. “Then why are you here?”
    He placed both hands on his hips, not at all certain how much he would enjoy this explanation, but ready to get it said. Baldly, without expression, he maintained, “I don’t mean in the cabin to the left of us. I mean on your left in this bed.”
    Natalie’s first thought was that he wasn’t making an ounce of sense. Then the picture struck her graphically, and for the first time in her life that she could recall, she nearly succumbed to a burst of hysteria. Her eyes grew to