Read Online Phantom Series Boxed Set by Julie Leto - Free Book Online

chaise lounge, scooting away from where he’d vanished even as her lungs struggled for breath.
    Slowly, like a ray of sunshine gleaming through a window, he rematerialized. He was staring at his hands, as if he were as surprised as she was.
    Once he was completely solid again, he crossed his arms on his chest. “The answer to your question, my dear lady, is yes.”
    Alexa squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again, all pretense gone. Damon still stood above her, his expression handsomely smug.
    “Maybe this is a dream,” she muttered.
    “Perhaps. There is also the distinct possibility that instead of you freeing me from the portrait, I sucked you in with me.”
    “You’re just trying to scare me.”
    His brow furrowed as he considered the possibility. “Frightening women for sport is not the measure of a true man.”
    “What is?” she asked, annoyed at the unwelcome fear coursing through her.
    His smile was pure sin.
    She scowled to mask the sudden flare in her blood. “I can’t be in the portrait. Can I?”
    “Can’t say for certain. I appear to be free of the portrait,” he said, nodding toward the painting of the room that no longer had a sexy, sardonic man in the center, “yet I cannot leave this castle.”
    “How do you know?”
    “While you were unconscious, I attempted an escape. I was not successful.”
    “Can I leave?”
    “I’ve no idea,” he admitted, then leveled his ocean gray stare at her. “Why don’t you try?”
    A sudden wave of dizziness struck her. She braced her hands on either side of her, willing the sensation away. She’d experienced enough vertigo for a lifetime after the wreck. She didn’t need a reminder of the pain and discomfort now.
    She was healthy. She was strong. She was a survivor.
    She repeated the mantra silently in her head until the wooziness subsided. After blinking away the last of the fog, she shot a glance down the stairs and to the door, then back at Damon.
    His hopeful expression vanished nearly as quickly as he had.
    But not quickly enough.
    “No,” she said.
    “No?”
    She arched a brow. “Not used to being contradicted?”
    His glower was powerful. “Of course not, but I assumed you’d want to ensure that freedom was still yours to take.”
    She smiled. “You let me worry about my freedom. You’ll soon discover that I’m very good at taking care of myself and getting precisely what I want, when I want it.”
    He wanted her to try the door. Desperately. He was clever and commanding, this man, and he wasn’t as adept at hiding his emotions as she was at reading them. For all she knew, the wave of vertigo she’d just experienced was from him trying to exert his will on her with the same magic he’d used to disappear and to conjure the chaise lounge and the wine. But she’d fought him successfully. If she played her cards right, the game could be hers.
    Bottom line, she wanted this man.
    To be her personal phantom. This idea, so entrenched in her psyche for oh so long, blossomed into something tangible for the first time in her life. She’d turned quite a few of her more pragmatic fantasies into reality using her wealth and influence, but she’d never brought a fantasy to life with just her touch.
    “What could possibly be more pressing than finding out if you are free of this curse or trapped by it?” he asked, incredulous.
    “Finding out more about you.”
    The atmosphere shifted. The power play ended and the blaze in his eyes kindled from a spark of frustration to a slow, steady sexual heat. He reseated himself on the chaise and held-out his hand to her.
    “You say that with seduction in your voice, my lady.”
    She accepted his hand. This time, when he drew her onto the chaise, he allowed no space between them. His thigh crushed against hers, igniting a wildfire of sensation through her.
    She traced an invisible crazy eight on his knee. Crazy, as in completely insane, touching a man who, by all tenets of reason and logic, couldn’t