Read Online How the Scoundrel Seduces by Sabrina Jeffries - Free Book Online Page A

stare, a sudden heat flared in his face.“Since we’ve already established that you don’t like me, I’m giving you a little demonstration of what I mean.”
    And before she could react, he bent his head to kiss her.
    She was stunned. Then appalled. Then horribly, awfully intrigued. Because Mr. Bonnaud didn’t kiss like the two fellows who’d given her dutiful pecks on the lips during the early days of her debut. He kissed like a man who knew exactly what he was doing.
    Impossibly, though his lips were soft, his kiss was hard. Bold. All-consuming. It demanded a response, and she gave it willingly.
    She told herself it was out of simple curiosity. Mr. Bonnaud had women trailing after him everywhere, and she was dying to know why.
    Then his hand slid about her waist to pull her close, and the tenor of the kiss changed, and she forgot all about her curiosity. She forgot her name and where she was and why she was even here. She forgot everything but the feel of his firm body plastered to hers, his muscular arm wrapped about her waist, his hot mouth coaxing hers open so he could slip his tongue inside.
    Something wild and wanton uncurled in her belly. So this was how a scoundrel kissed a woman, with long, heated strokes of his tongue. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. And strange, wonderful things were happening to her in places a lady didn’t even acknowledge existed. Lord save her.
    In a flash, she understood how he’d gained his reputation with women—by doing this to them. Thatthought brought her to her senses enough to drag her mouth from his. “Mr. Bonnaud, we shouldn’t—”
    “No, we shouldn’t, princess,” he agreed, then perversely kissed her again.
    Now her pulse beat at a positively giddy pace, and her belly warmed. Or something down there warmed anyway. Which most assuredly shouldn’t happen.
    She didn’t care. Because he was giving her such raw, heady kisses that her head spun. She couldn’t catch her breath, but what need had she for breath when he was giving her his? Their breaths mingled, their mouths mingled, everything mingled until she feared her knees might actually buckle.
    Unbidden, the fortune-teller’s last remark concerning the “gentleman with eyes like the sky” burst into her memory: If you let him, he will shatter your heart.
    Not if she had anything to say about it.
    She shoved him away. “Enough,” she murmured, fighting for breath. And sanity. “That’s quite enough, sir. This demonstration is over.”

4

    T RISTAN COULD ONLY stare blindly at her, his blood running fast and his heart beating even faster.
    Demonstration? What demonstration?
    Oh, right. He’d been making a point before it had turned into . . . whatever the hell that had just been.
    He’d kissed plenty of women and seduced at least half of those he kissed, so he knew what kisses felt like. And they had never once felt like that .
    A good kiss was pleasurable, a better kiss was erotic, and the best ones were often the prelude to a seduction. They damned well weren’t like being turned inside out and upside down.
    They weren’t supposed to be, anyway. They were supposed to be under his control. He was always the one leading the kiss, not following it like a hound scenting blood . . . or perfume as sweet as Yorkshire’s violets.
    Thank God she looked as flummoxed as he was. Her eyes were fathomless, like the waters off Flamborough Head, and she gulped breath after breath.
    He followed the convulsive motion of her throat, wishing he’d thought to plant a kiss in the hollow just there, where the skin was softest and the pulse beat—
    “I’m afraid your demonstration proved nothing,” she said.
    He had to sift through his addled brain to figure out what he’d been trying to prove. Ah yes. That a woman could desire a man even if she didn’t like him. And that a man could make a woman desire him.
    “Seems to me I proved a great deal,” he rasped.
    Of course he had. And now that he didn’t