Read Online Rush (Phoenix Rising) by Joan Swan - Free Book Online Page A

well-proportioned as Quaid’s had once been, but also . . . a little too off to be Quaid.
    They say everyone has a twin somewhere. But what were the chances Quaid’s twin would be here?
    Nil.
    She refocused on his eyes, and the breath left her lungs in a quiet swoosh. How many times had she dreamed of looking into his eyes again? Millions. It had to have been millions.
    This isn’t reality. You’re not really here. This man’s eyes look like Quaid’s because you want them to look like Quaid’s.
    And she did. God help her, she did. She so badly wanted these eyes to be Quaid’s she would have sold her soul to the Devil. Which was exactly why she’d told Teague and Keira she couldn’t do this.
    “Shit . . .” Her voice shook as her logical mind tried to make sense of what she saw even if her heart was ready to leap at the one-in-a-billion chance.
    Then he smiled. Or tried to around the cuts. His lips curved and his deep brown eyes glinted beneath those heavy lashes . . . and . . . Jesus, Mary and Joseph . . . that was her Quaid in those grinning eyes.
    “Haven’t . . .” He licked dry lips. “Seen you in so long.” His voice was rusty, not altogether different, but not familiar either.
    He rolled toward her, and the chain above his head clanked. She lunged to grab the metal and keep it quiet. The move pressed her body against his and an instant, deep hit of tingling awareness penetrated everywhere they touched. His free arm curved around her hips and his sultry hum lit off fireworks throughout her body. He turned and pulled her into him until her breasts were snug against his chest. He kept his head tilted back, his eyes on her face with an expression of awe and pleasure and affection. But he was obviously a little gone, because he showed no fear, as if her presence didn’t pose a threat to them both.
    “You have to be quiet.” Her breaths came quickly— because of the fear, she told herself, not the way her body heated being pressed against him.
    “I miss seeing you.” His lazy gaze slid down her throat, lower to her chest and rested on her breasts. She knew that look. The hungry one. The one that made her skin tighten and her nipples harden. Like now. “Why were you gone so long?”
    Confusion. Desperation. Suggestion. That’s what this was about. Because if this was truly Quaid, those comments didn’t make sense.
    “Look at me.” She lifted his chin. When those brown eyes were on hers again, she just pushed out the words before she couldn’t. “Who am I?”
    His smile grew wider. His lids grew heavier. The man was half drugged out of his mind. This was a ridiculous effort. Then his arm tightened around her, drawing her closer. “Woman of my dreams.”
    She frowned. This was crazy. She was starting to believe she’d gone crazy. Or she was about to. Those eyes had to be a fantasy. A trick of the mind. Something she saw because she so desperately wanted Quaid. Or because she so desperately didn’t want this to be just another dream where she would wake up to the stone-cold reality that her husband was in the grave and she’d never touch him again.
    “Who’s with you?”
    His whisper brought her gaze up from full lips surrounded by several days of dark stubble to find his eyes filled with a liquid heat that made her body ache in ways she’d forgotten.
    “No one.” Which reminded her of what a mess she was in. “It’s just me.”
    “Then . . .” His smile faded. His gaze darted past her, scanned the room, and came back. “Why are you here?”
    What kind of question was that? And why the hell was she here? And where the hell was here ? Her mind wobbled on a razor-thin tightrope wire.
    “To find you,” she only half-lied. “I came for you.”
    “You came . . . for me?”
    The astonishment in his voice, the surprise in his eyes, made guilt resurface for having refused Keira and Teague. “Yes.”
    “I’ve waited so long to hear you say that.”
    The sexy timbre of his voice was still