Read Online All Grown Up by Janice Maynard - Free Book Online Page B

through clenched teeth. “I get that you’re crazy. Or maybe this is an act you put on to drive men insane so they’ll grovel at your feet. But yes. I get it. Hell, sweetheart, I’ll sign over my soul to the devil on the spot if you’ll take off that gown.”
    She licked her lips. “Well, okay then.” It was rather heady to have a man so intent on ravishing her. Thank God she wasn’t a totally inexperienced virgin. That little detail had been taken care of during a sad and disappointing college encounter that had never been repeated.
    She had wanted to lose her virginity…so that she could understand what the other girls were talking and giggling about. So that she could be part of their charmed inner circle.
    As an eighteen-year-old college freshman, she had thought that becoming a woman in the physical sense would help her understand what it meant to be a girl. But when it was all said and done, she was still Annalise Wolff. Impatient. Driven. And far too confident and assertive for most guys to want a serious relationship.
    She dated. A lot. Men liked the external package. And she was not a nun. But no one ever interested her enough to go the distance. Even in bed, she’d felt a sense of failure. Perhaps because the earth never shook and the fireworks never boomed.
    Now it had come to this. She waited impatiently for Sam to take her in his arms and undress her. Arousal danced and twisted in her lower abdomen, and her heartbeat skittered out of control. She held out her arms. “Say something, damn it. Or are we going to stand here all night?” She was too agitated to worry about her language at this point.
    He shrugged, his expression calculating…like a tiger eyeing a mouse. “Take off the gown.”
    The blunt words sent moisture blooming between her thighs.
    “But I thought you would—”
    “Now, Annalise. Slowly. Make me wait. Tease me. Taunt me.”
    The guttural commands were something new. She didn’t know Sam had it in him to be so deliciously barbaric. But she liked it.
    Feeling his stare like a hot brand, she shrugged out of the robe and tossed it onto a chair. Now there was no disguising her excitement. Her tightly furled nipples actually hurt. She wanted his hands on her skin, everywhere.
    Feeling a bit foolish, but breathless with excitement, she put one hand over her breasts, and with the other hand slid the narrow straps of the gown down first one shoulder and then the other. Releasing each arm completely was a little more awkward than she would have liked, but she gave herself points for bravado.
    Sam was transfixed, his entire body tense, hands fisted at his hips. “I want to see your breasts. Lower the top.”
    For a woman who liked being in charge in almost every situation, it was surprisingly comfortable to cede control. Despite Sam’s arrogant demands, she realized that in a deeper sense, she was in the driver’s seat.
    Feeling faint and giddy, she took the bodice of her gown and dragged it to her waist. Someone gasped. Him? Her? It didn’t matter. Sam’s gob-smacked response went a long way toward making up for the past. She knew he had seen his fair share of naked women, so his reaction to her no-more-than-average breasts was a balm to her battered ego.
    He cocked his head, arms folded across his chest. “You’re not done.”
    The heat from the fire singed her back, warming the silk against her skin. She felt exotic, dangerous. Never in the occasional fantasies she’d allowed herself had Sam looked at her in quite this way.
    She put her hands in the sides of the gown and shimmied it down her hips. Stepping out of the pile of ruby cloth and kicking it aside, she removed her exotic slippers and faced him bravely. “I seem to be doing all the work,” she said, mesmerized by the enormous bulge beneath his fly.
    Sam swallowed, the muscles in his throat rippling, betraying the fact that he was deeply invested in this moment. “Do you want me, Annalise?”
    Here it was. A chance for