Read Online More Blazing Bedtime Stories: Once Upon a Mattress by Julie Leto, Leslie Kelly - Free Book Online

can…”
    “Take care of yourself. Yeah, I know.”
    She hesitated. “Except tonight. So thanks again,” she said with a simple nod. Again, he caught a flash of her bloodline in the grace of the gesture, the way she held herself.
    He admired that. But what he wanted was the wild woman who’d been writhing beneath him a few minutes ago. Not a princess, but a female in heat, at the mercy of her own hunger.
    Lucas gritted his teeth, thrusting the images out of his head. Not only did he have a job to do, the woman had just been violently attacked. “Are you sure you’re all right?” he finally managed to ask. “Your head, is it paining you?”
    “A little, but I’ll take a couple of ibuprofen.”
    Brushing past him to the bathroom, she opened a mirrored cabinet and removed a small bottle. Her gaze passed briefly over a blood-tinged washcloth and she swayed on her feet.
    Lucas crossed the room in an instant and steadied her with a hand on the small of her back.
    “God you’re fast!”
    “You’re still dizzy.”
    “It really wasn’t the bump that conked me out. I’ve had a major thing with blood for as long as I can remember. Just can’t handle it—I tried to donate at a Red Cross blood drive once in high school and fainted in front of half the school.”
    She spilled two tablets from the bottle, popping them into her mouth. Then the wicked wench bent completely over the sink, spooning water between her lips.
    Wanton images flooded his brain. Was she trying to kill him? That deep, mind-numbing kiss, the wicked eroticism of her body, her passionate response, now a provocative position designed to drive him wild? If not for the leggings she wore, it would be so easy to slide the skirt up, grab her hips, and thrust into her from behind until they both howled with pleasure.
    She seemed oblivious, straightening and continuing with her conversation. “I guess I used to be pretty clumsy. My Dad told me I fell out of a window and almost killed myself when I was a toddler. I’ve had a problem with blood ever since.”
    Focus .
    “Where is your father, Penny?” he asked, never having gotten an answer from her earlier today.
    “He died almost three years ago.” She waved toward the tablebeside the bed, on which stood a framed image of a younger Penny with a smiling, middle-aged man. “There’s a picture.”
    “He died before you turned twenty-one?”
    “A few days before.”
    “It all makes sense now.”
    One angry brow shot up. “Makes sense that my father died of a heart attack before he was even fifty years old?”
    “No, no. I mean, it makes sense now that he didn’t bring you to your mother’s people. He wasn’t alive to keep his promise.”
    “Don’t go there again, please. Not right now.”
    “All right. But we have to talk about it.”
    Penny shoved a hand through her short hair, which had lost most of its jagged spikiness and fallen into short curls around her face. Everything about her, from her appearance to her mood, even the tone of her voice, had grown softer. More vulnerable.
    “I miss him every day,” she admitted, glancing again at the photograph.
    “I’m sure you do.”
    He understood such grief. The loss of his sister had left a hole in him that he didn’t think would ever be refilled.
    Still introspective, Penny tilted her head, glancing toward a shelf on the wall above the bed. On it sat a sizeable box wrapped in pretty paper, with a large bow on the top. The paper was faded, the bow dusty. The gift had remained unopened for quite some time.
    “From him?”
    She nodded. “Callie, my Dad’s girlfriend, gave it to me when I came back to town a few months ago. He’d had some stuff stored in her garage and she found it after I’d left to go…traveling. He must have stashed it there in case I went snooping around our place.”
    “Why didn’t you open it?”
    Her moist eyes tugged at his heart. “It hurt too much. Opening it seemed like the final step in admitting he’s