Read Online To Have and to Hold by Nalini Singh - Free Book Online Page A

reached the station there was no respite—he left her to check on something Jim had called him about earlier.
    By the time she heard him return to the master bedroom, she was a bundle of nerves. She wanted this confrontation over with, even if that meant she had to jump deliberately into the flames. Belting her dressing gown tightly closed over the camisole and pajama bottoms she wore, she knocked on the connecting door. There was no answer but she stepped through anyway.
    Gabe sat on the edge of the bed, having already removed his sweater and T-shirt. Now, he dropped his balled-up socks to the floor and stood. “So eager to get to bed?” Holding her gaze, he undid his belt and pulled it out of the loops.
    Her eye followed its descent to the floor. “Stop it, Gabe,” she said, nerves tingling with the awareness that her husband was in a very dangerous mood. “You know why I’m here.”
    He closed the distance between them, big and male with a glitter in his eyes that was pure anger. “Have you come to kiss and make up?”
    She put up a hand to stop him but he walked into it, pressing her palm against his chest and holding it there with one of his own hands. The energy radiating from him burned through her skin and caressed things low and newly awakened.
    She fought back, determined to conquer her body’s hunger for this man she barely knew. “I came to talk.”
    â€œTalking is not what we do best, darling.” In those angry eyes, she saw memories of their first night in this bed, sultry and dark, passionate and furious.
    Her heart began to thud in anticipation and she hated herself for it. “Maybe we’d better start getting good at it.” She broke his hold, surprised when he let her go.
    â€œWhy?” Reaching out, he thrust one of his hands into her hair, recapturing her. “I didn’t marry you for conversation. I married you to get a well-behaved, undemanding and faithful wife who’d give me children. That you’re hot in bed is a very nice bonus but the last I heard, having sex doesn’t require talking.”
    She slapped him. “Damn you!”
    His reaction was a smile that was anything but amused. “I was damned long ago, Jess. Don’t you know what they say—Gabriel Dumont survived the fire because he made a deal with the devil.”
    â€œYou’re no devil, just a bastard.”
    â€œOn the contrary my dear, my parents were very married.” Thrusting his other hand into her hair, he pulled her close. His next words were spoken against her lips. “They used to talk but that didn’t fix anything.”
    Something about that last statement struck Jess as indefinably wrong. Yet he gave her no chance to follow up, ending all conversation with a kiss that robbed her of both her breath and her sanity. Already in the grip of the passion of anger, she ignited at his first touch. Logic and reason flew out the window.
    Her robe was on the floor two seconds later, Gabe’s hands shoving under her camisole to lie flat against her back. Fueled by the rawest, most primitive of desires, she gripped his hair and took another kiss, giving back as good as she got. He made a harsh sound low in his throat and broke the kiss to run his hands down to her waistband.
    Her panties and pajama bottoms joined the robe before she could do much more than gasp. Sucking in a shocked breath, she tried to say something—what, she didn’t know—as he lifted her clear. But the sound was lost in the tumult of his next kiss and so was her mind.
    When he tore away his lips to turn her so she faced the bed, she didn’t understand what was happening…until she felt the hardness of him pressing against her through the closed zipper of his pants.
    â€œDo it!” The order was guttural.
    But that same unfamiliar wildness in her, the one that had reacted so explosively to his kiss, understood. It was an understanding of