Read Online Eye of the Tiger by Diana Palmer - Free Book Online

and then I’m going to eat you like candy.”
    She moaned, beyond pride, beyond protest, wanting the breeze on her bare skin, his eyes, his mouth there. She trembled a little as she felt her rib cage being stroked by his lean, strong hands and the wind.
    His face was dark with passion, his eyes glittering with it, as he looked down at her body, his hands just the least bit unsteady. Her arms lifted above her head as he raised the hem of the blouse just to the lacy bottom of her bra. Then, as he started to bare her breasts to his eyes, the sound of an approaching automobile penetrated their passion-hazed cocoon.
    Keegan froze, shuddering. “No!” he whispered in anguish. He glanced up. “Oh, God, go away!”
    But the car, loaded with children and a dog with atongue half the length of his body, pulled into a parking spot right beside the Porsche.
    Keegan dragged his eyes from Eleanor’s shaking body and got to his feet with a rough curse, ramming his hands in his pockets and actually shuddering with frustrated passion.
    Eleanor dragged herself into a sitting position, shocked to find that she wasn’t even very disheveled except that her bra was unclipped. She fastened it unobtrusively as the family talked merrily and slammed things around getting out of the car. Eleanor had a glimpse of Keegan’s obviously aroused body before he turned away and walked down to the water’s edge. With a shaky sigh, she began to get the picnic items together.
    She lifted her head and managed a smile at the group of picnickers as they rushed past to a table a few hundred yards away. She’d had a narrow escape; now she wanted to go home and mentally flay herself for the way she’d given in. She wondered if she might be a nymphomaniac or something. She certainly seemed wanton with Keegan.
    He came back minutes later, still pale and rigid. He lifted the basket for her and carried it up to the Porsche, sticking it in the trunk with little respect for its age.
    He held the door for Eleanor with a face hard enough to make her uncomfortable. She knew a little more about men now than she had four years ago, and she didn’t have to ask what was wrong with him.
    As they drove back toward her home, he lit a cigarette and smoked it silently, his red hair blowing in the wind with the top down. Eleanor kept her silence, too,ashamed of her behavior, ashamed of letting him see that she was still vulnerable.
    He pulled up in front of her house and cut the engine. “I didn’t mean for that to happen,” he said unexpectedly. He leaned back against his door, watching her with an expression that didn’t quite register.
    “You never did,” she replied curtly. “Well, if you’re expecting me to be available for fun and games, you can forget it. I had one dose of you, and one was enough. I’m over you.”
    His thin lips moved up slightly as he read the fear so plain in her big, dark eyes and controlled the automatic urge to retaliate. He stared down at his cigarette. “I came on too strong, I guess,” he said quietly. “I expected you to be experienced by now, Ellie.”
    “And what makes you think I’m not?” she demanded.
    He looked up into her eyes, and the expression in them caused her to flush. She opened the door and got out, so quickly that she almost fell.
    She was almost to the house when he caught her up with his long, easy stride.
    “I won’t flatter myself by thinking that no other man measured up, if that’s what caused the scarlet blush,” he told her, turning her at the front door. “Did I leave such deep scars that you can’t give yourself again, Ellie, is that what happened?”
    “Now you are flattering yourself,” she said tightly.
    He touched her hair, hating the tiny flinch of her eyelids that told him how very vulnerable she was, how frightened. “Don’t,” he said softly, tenderly. “I don’t think I could bear it if you pushed me away.”
    Her eyes widened, shocked as she searched the blue depths of his