Read Online The Rawhide Man by Diana Palmer - Free Book Online Page B

of my damned underwear!”
    The thought of it made her giggle. She put up a hand to muffle her laughter, but he caught it savagely and pressed it against his chest.
    Her fingers felt the heavy rise and fall of his breathing. The hand at her back involuntarily drew her closer, and with a shock she realized that the closeness of her body was beginning to have a noticeable effect on him.
    Apparently he wasn’t anxious to have her know that, because he immediately loosened his hold so that several inches separated them.
    His eyes went down to the slender hand resting on his white shirtfront. His own hand touched it lightly, tracing the pale blue veins on its back, running over her long fingers.
    “You play something, don’t you?” he asked in a deep, slow drawl. “The piano?”
    “Yes,” she whispered.
    “You have…lovely hands,” he murmured. His breathing was growing more ragged by the second. Slowly, almost absently, he flicked open two of the top buttons of his open-necked shirt and drew her fingers inside.
    She went rigid at the feel of him, at the hair-roughened warmth and strength of the hard muscles of his chest, just below his collarbone.
    His lips parted as he watched her hand against his body. He opened another button and guided her hand from one side of his chest to the other, letting her fingers rest finally on one rigid male nipple.
    She hadn’t realized that it happened to men the way it happened to women, and she looked up with the discovery in her eyes.
    His eyes held hers for a long, static moment. He bent his head just enough for her lips to come within reach of his, and she could feel the banked-down fire in him like an imminent explosion.
    “Open your mouth, and fit it to mine,” he whispered in a deep tone that hypnotized her.
    She obeyed him in silence, a thick silence that throbbed with new emotions, new knowledge. She stood up on her tiptoes, staring at his mouth, and opened hers very slowly.
    Holding her breath, she fitted her lips exactly to his hard, open mouth, and a gasp caught in her throat at the exquisite sensations that rippled through her body.
    His breath mingled with hers, coming quick and harsh. Both his hands moved to her waist and lifted her gently up against his hard body while his mouth slowly increased its intimate pressure.
    Her hands, both of them exploring his hard chest now, tangled in the thick mat of hair over the warm muscles and pulled, like a kitten kneading a soft cover in pure pleasure. He moaned sharply, and his mouth was suddenly demanding, hungry and relentless, forcing hers into a deeper union that drew a moan from her own mouth. She slid her hands up around his neck and pressed her breasts hard against his chest. She felt as though she were drowning in new and exquisite pleasures.
    All at once he set her back down on her feet and stood glaring at her, his face showing mingled anger and reluctant satisfaction.
    She drew away from him, surprised that he let her, and turned back to the table. “Katy…and I are going to services in a few minutes,” she said, shaken. “Would you like to go with us?”
    “No, I would not.”
    If she hadn’t been so shaken, she might have noticed the rasping sound of his voice, the quickness of his breath, which betrayed how moved he’d been. But she didn’t, and he turned away.
    “I’m going out for dinner,” he said coldly. “You can gush over Katy all by yourself!”
    “She’s your daughter, Jude,” she said, her voice soft and hurt and shaking.
    He stopped, his back to her, and said something rough. “I can’t stay here with you,” he ground out after a minute.
    That was deliberately cruel, but she didn’t react.
    “Don’t worry, Katy and I will be out of the house for at least two hours,” she retorted.
    “I’d still rather go to town. I’ve had about all the high society I can stand,” he added before he slammed out the door.
    She turned her back and went toward the kitchen to see how Aggie was coming