Demon Rumm by Sandra Brown Page B

on the milking motions of her hand.
    “Kirsten, my God, Kirsten . . . beautiful Kirsten . . . not this way. . . . Let me . . .”
    Suddenly she was no longer there.
    Rylan opened his eyes.
    Kirsten was sitting rigidly upright, holding her hands against her chest as though she had just snatched them out of the jaws of a man-eating beast. Her eyes were filled with horror and mortification. She looked at him as though he were the incarnation of the monster in her nightmare.
    Softly saying her name, he reached for her. She shrank from his touch. She clapped her hands over her mouth to stifle a garbled scream. She continued to stare at him, her eyes glassy with fear and dismay.
    Grimacing, he leaned forward, bracing himself on stiff arms. “I see. You didn’t know it was me.” The words were painful to say, almost as painful as the process of having to consciously squelch his desire. “Give me a minute,” he rasped out.
    In twice that amount of time, he slowly sat up and levered himself off the bed. On his way to the connecting bathroom, he zipped his shorts, but not without having to make some uncomfortable adjustments. He switched the light on in the bathroom, turned the cold water tap on full blast in the quaint pedestal sink, and dunked his head beneath it. He splashed his face and chest, but knew that it wouldn’t arrest the fever that would rage through him for the remainder of the night.
    He carried a wet washcloth back to the bed. Kirsten flinched when he sat down and extended it toward her. “You’re soaking wet and it can’t be comfortable. Bathe your face and neck.”
    Unintentionally he sounded brusque. He had tried to curb his irritation, but hadn’t been very successful. He hadn’t rushed across the hall with the purpose of making love to her. Her cries had drawn him. The only thing he’d had in mind when he barged into her bedroom was to be for her whatever she needed him to be. And that’s what he’d done.
    But now she was looking at him like he was Jack the Ripper. Hell, he hadn’t done anything she hadn’t begged him for. He’d hardly taken advantage. There wasn’t a male animal from aardvark to zebra that could have gotten those signals crossed. She’d instigated the foreplay. He had responded. It had been her hands and her mouth that had started crawling all over him, not the other way around.
    But when she buried her face in the cool, damp cloth and he had a view of the crown of her head, he wanted to lay his hand over it, to ruffle her tousled hair and tell her that everything was going to be all right. Where this feeling of compassion originated, he couldn’t fathom. Given his present state of mind and body, it was ludicrous.
    But it was there, a thousand times more potent than he’d first felt it that day in her lawyer’s office. Kirsten might not be willing to admit it, but she needed him. Sexually. Emotionally. Every way.
    When she was done with it, she passed him the cloth. “Thank you.”
    “You’re welcome.” He folded the washcloth and dropped it onto the nightstand. “You need a fresh nightgown. Where are they?”
    “Third drawer,” she said, pointing toward the bureau.
    He found one in the dark and carried it back to the bed. After handing it to her, he turned his back and stayed that way until another quiet “Thank you” notified him that she had changed.
    “Try to get some sleep.”
    Obediently, she lay down. He pulled the sheet over her, then bent down until his face was directly above hers. “What were you dreaming about, Kirsten?”
    “Charlie.”
    All his facial features reflected a negative reaction to the answer he had expected. However, there was nothing but steely conviction in his voice when he said, “But I was the man you reached for.”

Five

    She liked men.
    The theory of frigidity had thankfully been shot to hell last night. Sipping coffee as he watched Kirsten through the terrace door while she sunbathed on the deck, Rylan thought what a damned