Read Online Capture The Night by Geralyn Dawson - Free Book Online

“Here, sweet, somebody ought to get some use from all this heat.”
    “Ow! What’s that metal thing around your arm? It’s poking me, Brazos, move it.” Her hand splayed across his bare chest. “Why, you’re burning up! But you’re sweating. What is this…oh, Brazos, is it…is it…consumption?”
    “I’m not that lucky—or contagious,” he forced the words past the lump in his throat. “Keep talking, Maddie.”
    She looked at him, gazed deeply into his eyes. In his overwhelming need, Brazos buried his pride and allowed her a glimpse of his torment.
    “Oh, my,” she said softly.
    He saw the sheen of tears she did not try to hide as she lay down beside him. And Madeline began to speak.
    Curled against him, she recounted happenings during her childhood. She told tales of Mistress Poggi’s boarding school, of growing up an orphan among girls who returned to their homes for holidays. Her stories were silly ones, nothing that betrayed her secrets, except, perhaps, the loneliness he sensed was so much a part of her.
    Brazos gripped her hand, concentrating on her voice, and on the fresh air streaming through the porthole. It’s open, he told himself. The window, the door, He could get out. He wasn’t alone. He could get out.
    But deep inside him, the beast stirred.
    Madeline continued to talk, and Brazos battled to hear her words. Her voice was a rope of life, a rhythm of light. He grasped it, basked in it. And with Madeline’s help, he held the terror at bay.
    Eventually, amazingly, he slept.
    For a time, Madeline lay awake, thinking about the man now sleeping peacefully at her side. The poor man. Tonight’s events had proven that Brazos Sinclair was more than the handsome, arrogant fool she’d considered him to be. She wasn’t the only person aboard this boat hiding things. And whatever his secrets were, she wondered if they might not be as horrible as her own.
    With such ideas floating through her mind, Madeline drifted toward sleep. But before she slumbered, she opened her heart just a bit, and the injured boy living within the man beside her slipped inside.
     
    BRAZOS DREAMED he was a child again, wrapped in the blessed comfort of his mother’s arms. Her gentle fingers stroked his hair, and her perfume took him back to the gardens at Magnolia Bend. Mama always favored the scent of roses.
    She cushioned him with her breasts. Brazos burrowed into the softness. Something was different, the pillow was fluffier than he remembered. A rush of heat stirred him, inspiring horror that he’d react this way to his own mother. His eyes flew open wide, and all dreams of childhood disappeared as he encountered the luscious sight of a bountiful bosom within tongue’s reach. This was not his mother.
    He must’ve died last night, after all.
    Slowly, Brazos lifted his head. His stare crawled up the length of patterned blue flannel, pausing at the sight of creamy bare skin left visible by a loosened ribbon, then climbing higher to an elegant stretch of neck and to lips, full and red and slightly parted. Almost against his will, he lifted his gaze to her eyes. Deep and as dark as the velvet sea, they silently offered both plea and promise, and Brazos responded to their siren call.
    He lowered his head, and his mouth touched hers.
    He drowned in the pleasure of her kiss. Sensations swirled around him, creating an aching need that craved satisfaction. He groaned a low, masculine declaration of desire, and her answering whimper destroyed the few lingering remnants of resistance he’d possessed.
    He rolled to his back, pulling her with him so that she lay pressed against his chest. His hands raced down the warm, soft texture of the flannel nightgown, then delved beneath to wander over skin even softer, silky and hot.
    He deepened the kiss, his tongue stroking, seeking, and he felt the shudder of desire sweep through the body pressed so close to his. “Oh, Brazos,” she whispered when he tore his mouth from hers, his lips