Read Online Demon Rumm by Sandra Brown - Free Book Online

was it hard, hungry, and carnal? Was it anything like this?”
    He hooked his hand around the back of her neck. Before she could recover from her surprise, they were mouth to mouth.
    All similarity stopped there if her first kiss from Charles Rumm had been awkward and bumbling in any way. If the young Navy pilot had bumped noses with her, apologized self-consciously, and tentatively tried again to do better, then their first kiss didn’t even resemble the one Rylan impressed on her mouth now.
    Instinctively he angled his head in the opposite direction of hers and sealed their lips together with just the right amount of possessiveness and pressure. If Charlie had given her several closemouthed, tight-lipped, dry kisses before working up enough courage to use his tongue, then Kirsten was no doubt surprised with Rylan’s indelicacy. His tongue arrowed into her mouth with one swift thrust. It stroked her evocatively, unapologetically, masterfully.
    Rylan knew that for as long as he lived he would never forget this first taste of her mouth. Lord, she was sweet. Her mouth opened up to his like a flower, then her lips closed petal soft around his intrusive tongue, hugging it.
    He delved deeper, fearing that he might be going too far, but desperate for more, more. She responded. Her hands clutched at the waistband of his jeans, then her arms slid around his waist. Her body curved invitingly against his. He tilted his hips forward, until her thighs parted slightly and cuddled his hardness between them. Reacting strictly on impulse, he began lightly slamming into that marvelous softness with rhythmic movements.
    Finally it penetrated his passion-fogged mind that her frantic movements weren’t engendered by a desire to get closer, but to escape. He released her so suddenly they both swayed. For a moment they only stared at each other, lips moist and swollen from the power of the kiss, chests heaving, breaths rasping.
    There were a thousand things he wanted to say to her. She gave him no chance. Spinning on her heel, she fled the room. He reached for her but clutched nothing but air.
    “Kirsten!”
    He chased after her, but knew it was hopeless. Even if he caught her, what would he say? That he was sorry? He wasn’t. He would kiss her again, and just as passionately, if given the chance.
    So, cursing himself, his impulsiveness, and the situation, he watched her retreat into the safety of the bedroom she had shared with her husband until the day he died in an airplane crash.

Four

    Rylan had already been up for an hour when she made her first appearance in the study.
    Nursing his third cup of coffee and a dull headache due to lack of sleep, he was reclining on one of the short sofas. Several pillows were piled beneath his head. He had been reading an article about Demon Rumm in a back issue of
People
. His feet, propped up on the arm of the sofa, were bare. So was his stomach between his sawed-off T-shirt and his denim cutoffs. He had dressed for comfort. But it wouldn’t matter to Kirsten Rumm what he wore. She wouldn’t like him anyway. Because she didn’t like men.
    That was the conclusion he had reached last night after hours of sleeplessness. Kirsten’s reaction to his kiss hadn’t been strictly aversion. Fear had been involved. Obviously she had some kind of deep-seated dislike for men and sex. Why else would she bristle like a porcupine every time one came near her? No wonder Rumm had had a long-standing death wish. The poor sucker had had an ice cube for a bedmate.
    When he heard her enter the room, Rylan tipped the folded magazine toward his chest and, over the top of it, watched her hostile progress toward her desk. “Good morning.”
    “Good morning.” She set down her cup of coffee and lowered herself into the chair.
    Her unfriendliness miffed him. Frigid or not, a woman could be polite, couldn’t she? “You’re not a morning person, I guess.”
    “No.”
    “Good. Neither am I.”
    He rudely raised the