Forbidden by Susan Johnson (best feel good books txt) 📗

in the center of the space, he shut the door, closing out the storm. And the world.

"I found you," he quietly said, knowing instinctively what would follow.

Daisy's chilled body responded to his murmured words as if he'd lit a fire to warm her, pleasure inundating her senses without cerebral dispute. But a pulsebeat later, a small voice of reason reminded her to be less desperately happy and more wary. "I'm cold," she said, still pressed to the wall, as if her trembling susceptibility to his dramatic presence required explanation beyond the obvious. As if her untrustworthy emotions needed concealment.

"Of course you're cold." He touched her shoulders lightly as he reached her. "You're soaked." Swiftly unbuttoning his leather jacket, he placed it over her shoulders. "My jacket's not wet in-side." It was warm from his body, heated like her newly pulsing blood. "Now tell me how you came to be caught in this storm." He smiled and she heard it more than saw it. "I thought an Absarokee woman would have read the signs better."

He was disarming in his courtesy, easing her tremulous feelings, talking to her about the weather as if good manners were applicable even in a tumbledown well-house in the middle of a raging storm, as if discussing the weather was the only reason he'd come. As if the other reasons he was here could be momentarily curtailed.

His jacket smelled of his body and his scent, the fragrant cologne he had had made specially for him in Grasse sweetly pungent in the small dim interior. He stood very close although he made no move to touch her. There was no need for haste in their complete isolation.

"I was painting a seascape," she said, trying to be as urbane as he, when she was struggling with the sensation of his nearness. "Everything was going just perfectly, you know the feeling when each brushstroke is absolutely right, when your mind and hand are in perfect conjunction"—her words began tumbling out with the same spontaneity she experienced while painting—"when even the watercolors blend mysteriously into the most magical hues…"

"No." Etienne's deep voice was quiet in the dimness. And amused.

Daisy grinned. "Take my word for it," she said, remembering his comments when they attended the gallery shows, about his complete lack of artistic talent, "it happens and when that phenomenon occurs, the world is blocked out, you exist in some energized dimension of your mind, isolated and detached. When the winds became strong enough to interfere with my work, I finally noticed the thunderheads behind me. I started back immediately but the rain overtook me and I decided to take shelter here. I was drenched through by the rain."

"I noticed."

The velvet resonance of his voice seemed to reach out and touch her, his eyes too close suddenly, his husky tone conveying a message distinct from the words. "I'm trying to fight this," Daisy whispered.

"You didn't want to fight it last night." he murmured. "At Nadine's."

"Yes… yes, I did. I tried… Etienne, you're too close… please." There was desperation in her voice… and need.

He heard the need and ignored the desperation. "I've missed you every day and night since you left," he whispered. "I haven't looked at another woman. My word as de Vec on it."

"I don't know what to do." Her voice barely carried across the small distance separating them.

"Honestly?"

His whispered word touched her cheek, warm and seductive. And her answer lodged in her throat because he was right.

They both knew.

Like an insatiable hunger, they knew.

Alone in this sultry, stifling darkness, they knew.

When Daisy slid away, as if she could flee impulse by moving the eight-foot width of the well-house, the Duc shut his eyes for a moment and drew a deep calming breath. "There's nowhere to go, Daisy," he said, very softly, his gaze following her. "Nowhere."

"I don't want you to touch me, Etienne," she said in a small breathless voice, holding his jacket close around her, like a shield. "I want to forget you and last night, I want to go back to Montana and continue forgetting you, I want to find someone else," she went on with new heat in her voice, "who doesn't have a wife with lists of her husband's infidelities, long lists, someone who lives where I live and cares about my people. Someone—"

He'd moved with predatory speed when she mentioned finding someone else, convulsed with unspeakable jealousy, and his mouth stopped her flood of words, covering hers with a punishing kiss of possession and fury. His fingers hurt her as he pulled her tightly into his body, his splayed hands at the base of her spine, and the back of her head inflexible in their restraint. "You're lying," he murmured, his mouth lifting from hers for a brief moment. "You're lying." His eyes emitted a hint of color somehow in the near-dark, jealous-green and angry. "Tell me other men can make you tremble, tell me other men can make you breathless. Tell me, damn you, because I haven't slept a peaceful night in nine weeks and I want to hear the truth."

Daisy wasn't cold anymore, her clothes beginning to warm from the heat of her skin, from the heat of Etienne's body pressed hard against hers. And what was truth was coiling in the pit of her stomach, flame-hot and spreading with every pulsebeat.

"You know already, damn you," she quietly exploded, "but here's the truth if you want me to say it. I want to make love to you. I want you to make love to me. I want us to make love to each other. Is that clear enough?" she cried, although he was close enough a whisper would have sufficed.

"It's honest at least," he bluntly said. "Finally."

"Here's some more honesty then. I can't sleep at night for want of you, and in the morning I crave you beside me to kiss me at daybreak, I hate Nadine's possessiveness, I hate all the Claras and Lilys, too, and your wife's claim on twenty years