Read Online Parallel Seduction by Deidre Knight - Free Book Online

thought you'd like having me here. In your bed. Between your sheets." He paused significantly, then added in a low voice, "Between your legs."
    "I can't believe you just said that."
    "Yeah? Well, you don't know me very well yet."
    "I know you're used to getting what you want—and whenever you want it," she told him, tilting her chin upward proudly. And I'm not easy. I shouldn't be easy, not for you.
    His next words came in Refarian, slippery smooth; perhaps he thought she wouldn't translate them fast enough to understand their meaning. "I can't help what you've been doing to me, Hope. I pray that All will save you from my scoundrel's soul."
    "S'Skautsa, you're no scoundrel," she answered back in his own language, taking a tentative step into the darkness, following the sound of his slightly erratic breathing. "But you don't belong here."
    "You don't want me in your bed?"
    "I didn't say that."
    He laughed, a throaty rumble of a sound. His raspy voice had done things to her from the very first time she'd heard it on the FBI intercepts she'd been charged with translating. But here with him now? Right here , alone with him in her room, reclining on her lower bunk as he apparently was? Well, it did insane things to her libido.
    "So you do want me," came his reply. And it definitely wasn't a question.
    "You were crazy to leave the medical area so soon."
    "Again—you don't know me very well. Not yet, in this time. Crazy's my middle name. How else could I lead these rebels like I do? It's an insane career, an insane motivation. Jared should've locked me up years ago."
    "Maybe the hospital is his big chance," she volunteered.
    She doubted his entire depiction of himself. Clearly he was a man of intense discipline and honor; the soldiers she'd met on the base all seemed to revere him totally.
    "Jared knows I can't be stopped when I want something, and I definitely want something, Hope," he whispered suggestively, causing goose bumps to form along her arms. The idea that he needed her as much as she needed him caused her to tremble all over. So she focused on the darkness that stood between them. Had Anna left a discarded boot on the floor? Or a strange alien weapon or anything else that might trip her up? Patting her back pocket, she felt the outline of the small folded cane that the medics had given her, at the same time they'd offhandedly mentioned genetic therapy.
    How the hell am I supposed to get from here to there without appearing like a freaking invalid?
    "There's nothing in the way, Hope. You're safe," he told her gently, all his innuendo and sexual tussling gone. Suddenly he was her rescuer all over again, as he had been at the base. "You can walk straight to me."
    It was as if he'd read her mind. Maybe he did, she thought, taking a first tentative step.
    "You're safe," he repeated. "I won't let you get hurt."
    "That's not a promise anyone can make."
    She knew as much, after believing the doctors thought it was "unlikely" she would lose her eyesight and "likely" she'd be able to one day have a child. Some promises should never be made—not the kind that could easily get broken.
    "I meant that I wouldn't let you get hurt walking over here," he said awkwardly, as if covering his tracks. But she knew better. She heard him patting the place on the bed beside himself again.
    "What about here, at your compound?" She took another step toward the gravelly, deep voice. "Can you protect me here, too?"
    His breath seemed to catch in his throat. "I won't let you get hurt, Hope," he repeated. "I mean it. Didn't I prove that back at Warren?"
    She stood still, hesitating. He had saved her life — there was absolutely no question about that fact— and been horribly injured in the process. "I don't want anything to happen to you, not because of"—she hesitated, taking several determined steps toward the bed—"my limitations. Not again."
    "You're here," he said softly, and suddenly the strong grip of his hand