Read Online Rogue Stallion by Diana Palmer - Free Book Online Page B

mouth lowered to touch and tease her soft lips in tender, biting kisses that made her muscles go rigid with sensation. Her hand caught at his shirt, searching for something to hold on to while she spun out of reality altogether. Her nails bit into his chest.
    He groaned under his breath. “You’d be a handful,” he whispered. “And if you were a different sort of woman, I’d accept with open arms the invitation you’re making me right now.”
    “What…invitation?”
    His nose rubbed against hers. “This one.”
    He brought his mouth down over her parted lips with real intent, feeling them open and shiver convulsively as he deepened the pressure. She whimpered, and the sound shot through him like fire. He abruptly drew back.
    His breathing was a little quick, but his expression showed none of the turmoil that kissing her had aroused in him.
    She was slower to recover. Her face was flushed,and her mouth was red, swollen from the hard pressure of his lips. She looked at him with wide-eyed surprise.
    “You’re like a little violet under a doorstep,” he commented quietly. “A lovely surprise waiting to be discovered.”
    She couldn’t find the words to express what she felt.
    He touched her soft mouth. “Don’t worry about it. Someday the right man will come along. I’m not him.”
    “Why did you do that?” she whispered in a choked voice.
    “Because you wanted me to, Jessica,” he drawled. “You’ve watched me for months, wondering how it would feel if I kissed you. Okay. Now you know.”
    Her eyes darkened with something like pain. She averted them.
    “What did you expect?” he mused, pulling the car back out into the road. “I’m not a teenager on his first date. I know exactly what to do with a woman. But you’re off-limits, sweetheart. I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”
    “I haven’t asked you to marry me, have I?” she asked, bouncing back.
    He smiled appreciatively. “Not yet.”
    “And you can hold your breath until I do.” She pushed back a disheveled strand of hair. “I’m not getting mixed up with you.”
    “You like kissing me.”
    She glared at him. “I like kissing my cat, too, McCallum,” she said maliciously.
    “Ouch!”
    She nodded her head curtly. “Now how arrogant do you feel?”
    He chuckled. “Well, as one of my history professors was fond of saying, ‘I’ve always felt that arrogance was a very admirable quality in a man.’”
    She rolled her eyes.
     
    He drove back into town, but he didn’t stop at her office. He kept going until he reached the Hip Hop Café, a small restaurant on the southeast corner of Amity Lane and Center.
    She glanced at him uncertainly.
    “If I haven’t eaten, I know you haven’t,” he explained.
    “All right. But I pay for my own food.”
    His eyes slowly wandered over her face. “I like independence,” he said unexpectedly.
    “Do I care?” she asked with mock surprise.
    He smiled. “Fix your lipstick before we go inside, or everyone’s going to know what we’ve been doing.”
    She wouldn’t blush, she wouldn’t blush, she wouldn’t…!
    All the same, her cheeks were pink in the compact mirror she used as she reapplied her lipstick and powdered her nose.
    McCallum had taken the time to wipe the traces of pink off his own firm mouth with his handkerchief.
    “Next time, I’ll get rid of that lipstick before I start,” he murmured.
    “Oh, you’d be so lucky!” she hissed.
    He lifted an eyebrow over wise, soft eyes. “Or you would. It gets better, the deeper you go. You cried out, and I hadn’t even touched you. Imagine, Jessica, how it would feel if I did.”
    She was out of the car before he finished speaking. She should go back to her office and leave him standing there. He was wicked to tease her about something she couldn’t control. It didn’t occur to her that he might be overcompensating for the desire he’d felt with her. Experienced he might be, but it had been a while since he’d had a woman and