Read Online Nightfire by Lisa Marie Rice - Free Book Online

to do was tilt his head to rub his cheek against her soft golden hair. Bend down just a little more to kiss her.
    Mike felt heat all along his front, like being covered with a soft, warm blanket that was silky, too. And smelled like heaven. Something fresh and warm.
    He was supersensitized. He could feel the short gasps of her excited breath against his neck. His hand was so big it covered a good portion of her narrow back and he could feel her rapid heartbeat against the palm of his hand. The quick heartbeat of joy.
    Mike had fucked hundreds of women, but he’d never felt anything even remotely like this. A mild electric shock as he held her raced through him. Everywhere he touched, it felt as if he’d never touched a woman before. Never felt such silkiness, such warmth. Never felt as if she’d moved her body into his like magnets of opposite poles meeting. A force that was unstoppable, natural, utterly right.
    She rested against him and he wanted to keep her there forever, but when he felt himself harden, he moved away subtly, mentally rolling his eyes.
    Goddamn. His dick had never known how to behave itself.
    Oh man, way to turn this moment into something that belonged in the dives he frequented when he got his black moments.
    He couldn’t really blame his dick, though. His dick was right to move. He felt it wasn’t getting erect so much as trying to get closer to her, close to all that silk and gold.
    His dick would get closer to her eventually. Close to her, in her. Oh yeah. Only not right now.
    Her hand was still in his and it took real willpower not to bring her fingers to his mouth. She had beautiful hands, fingers long and slender. A pianist’s hands though he had no idea if she played or not.
    He could almost feel her fingers against his lips, so strongly he had to drop her hand and step back, muster a smile.
    When he pulled back, Chloe did, too, and smiled back up at him. “A brother,” she whispered.
    Mike didn’t answer, didn’t reassure her that she’d just found another brother.
    Because what he was feeling right then wasn’t brotherly at all.

Chapter 5
     
    C hloe received more hugs that morning than in her entire lifetime. It was magical, beyond words. Beyond even her imagining—and she’d done a lot of imagining on sleepless nights, staring at the ceiling, wondering what it would be like to have a family.
    Wonderful, that’s what it was like.
    It took her a second to sort the women out. The small, pretty redhead with the slight southern accent was Ellen, Harry’s wife. And . . . and her sister-in-law. And she had a niece .
    Chloe had never, ever thought she’d have a sister-in-law or a niece. Blood relations. The thought made her shiver.
    And then Nicole, Sam’s wife. Beautiful and warm and welcoming. And since Harry said Sam was like a brother to him, well then, apparently Nicole was a relative, too.
    Then there was Sam, very tall, as tall as her brother Harry, only not as good-looking. He actually looked rough, exactly the kind of man she’d shy away from, instinctively. Tall, strong, rough-looking men automatically spelled danger. This was a message that came to her from some place so deeply embedded in her heart and mind and sinews that she had never even questioned it, until now.
    Notwithstanding his appearance, Sam seemed like a good guy. Though he looked like he could pick you up and smash you against a wall without breaking a sweat, the truth was, he made a real point of being gentle with her. He’d hugged her with almost exaggerated care, the way you’d hug a frail grandmother. There wasn’t anything he could do about his rough voice, but he did seem to try to modulate it for her.
    And he loved his wife, as much as Harry visibly loved his.
    It was there every time he looked at Nicole. It didn’t seem like a sick love, either, the kind Chloe now recognized had existed between her adoptive parents and had undoubtedly existed between her biological mother and her drug-addict