Read Online River Magic by Martha Hix - Free Book Online

carrying a seductive entreaty. “I’m a thoughtful woman when it comes to birthdays.”
    A traitorous smile eased across his tight lips as he recalled the scent of lavender, along with the sight of a curvaceous form that no dowdy clothes could hide. And those eyes—those indigo eyes. Eyes of India ink.
    O’Brien, good army men don’t sleep with the enemy and certainly not with Clara Bartons.
    â€œWhy so quiet, Major? Earlier you wanted me to disrobe.”
    He turned. Just as he’d figured, there was nothing ancient about the exotic, tawny-complected siren. Was she part Indian? Whatever she was, he liked what he saw.
    Wavy hair of jet flowed across her shoulders, falling to her back. The curves adhering to a scrap of lavender-hued silk ought to be outlawed, they so beguiled him. Her small feet encased in satin curl-toe slippers, she glided to him, her allure akin to that of the narrator in the book in her room, Scheherazade.
    Yet she wasn’t a great beauty, not like Antoinette Lawrence or the sensuous raconteur of Arabic fable. Her face had too many angles for classical beauty. The whole of India Marshall, nonetheless, was easy on the eye and warming to the loins.
    â€œYou have a wicked gleam in your eye,” she whispered.
    â€œSo do you,” he said, welding his gaze to intoxicating eyes. Yet, in spite of her recklessness, he detected a quiver of fear in her voice and an almost imperceptible trembling in her limbs. “Do you know what you’re doing?” he asked quietly.
    â€œOh, yes.” Now tinted with rouge—her mouth rinsed with something that had cut the wine bouquet—her lips were more than seductive as she mouthed, “Happy birthday, Major.”
    Connor knew he should order her out of here, told himself to do it. Then again, a gentleman ought to put a lady at ease.
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    There was something in his eyes. Desire? Let it be, India prayed as he hesitated in accepting her birthday gift. Could the major tell how much her limbs shook? Would he care? Lousy were her attempts at being a seductress. Yet women older and uglier, fatter or skinnier, than India Marshall had gotten what they wanted from men. Surely she could bewitch this one mule-headed Tennessean.
    â€œThis is insane,” he grumbled, echoing her own frame of mind. Yet he didn’t retreat.
    Nor did she. As Connor O’Brien’s heat radiated to her, she began to feel an odd strength and a delicious rush, even before his finger moved along her jaw. What had been trepidation now turned to a shiver of anticipation.
    â€œDo you do this sort of thing often, calling on a man in his room?” he asked huskily.
    â€œDoes it matter?” Despite budding passion, she didn’t feel as bold as her words, since she’d barely been kissed, much less tempted to the carnal.
    Her study moved from the substantial wall of his hair-dusted chest, up to his face. The brush of her curls against an arm and the feel of silk against her breasts added to her stirred insides, or was it from the light strokes his fingertip made on her bare skin? Whatever it was, she reveled in being half naked for the first time in front of a man.
    This was nice insanity.
    These feelings were nothing compared to what he did to her, without so much as another single touch. The manly scent of him—a blend of musk and a much-earlier splash of bay rum—wafted into her senses. “I like being wanton.”
    Ready for the next step, she lifted her arms to rest both hands on his shoulders, as she’d seen Persia do while turning Tim Glennie from an unctuous bootlicker to a man out of his wits.
    Moistening her lips, India locked eyes with the Yankee from Dixie. “Happy birthday, Major O’Brien.”
    â€œYou might try smiling,” he chided.
    â€œSo should you.”
    But neither smiled. He angled his lips; she rose on tiptoes to meet the kiss. Inexperience caused her to knock her teeth against