Vixen (51 page)
Authors: Jane Feather
“Oh, but I think you do, Olivia.” He looked at her keenly. “Maybe you don’t feel it as yet, or perhaps you don’t yet understand it. It may seem strange to you at first, but I promise that if you will allow yourself, you’ll come to see and understand many things that Lord Granville’s daughter would never see and understand in the ordinary course of events.”
He came over to the bed and bent over her. His fingers brushed her cheek in a fleeting caress. Olivia looked back into his eyes and that strange sense of connection returned. She knew nothing of this man and yet she felt as if she had been waiting to know him for a long time … as if this moment in the sun-filled cabin was always going to happen. Her scalp lifted with premonition and her palms were suddenly clammy. And yet despite the prickle of fear, she felt elation. As heady as it was confusing.
Hugo was on her heels as she flung open the door and sprang inside.
The wild chase had fanned the flames of Hugo’s shocked fury. His breath came swift and ragged. “By God, you stand in sore need of a sharp lesson, miss,” he declared. “Come here!”
“Catch me!” She laughed at him, bright-eyed, and jumped backward onto the bed.
Hugo lunged for her as she danced across the bed, and this time he caught her ankle and hung on. He jerked hard. Chloe shrieked as she tumbled facedown on the bed.
He seized the other ankle and hauled her toward him across the wide expanse of coverlet, her skirt rucking up as he dragged her.
Even as he struggled with his suddenly reeling senses that had driven all clarity of purpose from his mind, Chloe twisted on her back. Her eyes were dark liquid pools of sensuality, her lips were slightly parted, her cheeks flushed, golden wisps of hair escaping from her braids in a lustrous mist around her exquisite countenance. The sweet swell of her bosom rose and fell with her swift breath. His eye ran over the flat stomach, the sharp points of her hipbones pressing against the linen undergarment, the long creamy length of exposed thigh.
“Sweet heaven,” he whispered in the despairing recognition of imminent surrender. He opened his hands. …
VIXEN
VIXEN
A Bantam Book / February 1994
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Copyright © 1994 by Jane Feather.
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eISBN: 978-0-307-43129-5
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