Sacrifice In Stone Read Online Free Page A

chocolate.
Those eyes stared into hers, a slight crease of concern between his brows.
    “Am I dreaming again?” Mara fought the
mist clouding her brain. Were her eyes open or closed? What had she been doing
before she’d fallen asleep?
    “No, my lady.” The dream man she’d always
thought of as Garrick smiled. His lips quirked with the left side higher than
the right. “You are finally awake.”
    Mara felt the floor beneath her legs. Her
upper body reclined on Garrick’s lap, his arms strong around her.
    “What happened?” Memory tumbled back. The
museum. The blood. “I did it!” she said. Her voice—weak and
faint—didn’t sound as triumphant as she felt.
    “If by that you mean you almost killed
yourself, then you are correct,” Garrick answered with a frown. “How could you
have been so mad?”
    “Thanks for the gratitude.” Mara jerked
upright and out of his arms. The room around her suddenly shifted as if she
were on a boat, a shaky rowboat. So when Garrick tugged her back into his arms,
she fell happily.
    “I am grateful, profoundly grateful,” he
said. His hand framed her cheek and then caressed her brow. “Nevertheless, if I
had not the skill I learned from our regiment’s doctor, I could not have
stopped the bleeding from your wrist and you would have died.”
    Mara glanced down at the neat bandage
over her cut and then toward the bench at her side. The first-aid items she’d
laid out had been put to good use.
    “Well, it wasn’t my plan to pass out,”
Mara said. “I was going to patch myself up once I had you free. I was going
to—”
    His eyes locked with hers. What had she
been about to say?
    “Ummm,” she mumbled.
    His lips were only inches from hers.
She’d kissed them in a dream. How would they feel against hers outside a dream
world?
    “I can’t believe I did it,” she muttered
as she examined the slight indentation in his chin. She couldn’t help herself
from lifting her hand to place a finger gently to the spot. Tracing her finger
over his angular chin, she caressed a line down his neck. “You’re real.” She
felt the Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard. “I’m not crazy.”
    “I—” She saw his heartbeat in the
hollow at the base of his neck. His chest rose and fell, a motion that
quickened under her examination. His face descended to within inches of hers.
    “Stop,” he said, placing a finger against
her lips. “I would put that mouth to a different use than speaking words.”
    Garrick had waited lifetimes in his stone
prison to kiss this woman. Mara had been fated to be his. Her hair was shorter
now than five years ago, but she was just as beautiful as he remembered. For
the first time he could not regret the suffering he’d endured buried alive in a
stone sarcophagus. That time had brought him to Mara.
    Keeping his eyes wide, his mouth slanted
over hers. His lips moved against hers, searching, needily rough and then caressingly
soft in turns. He twisted, finding a new, deeper angle to drink from her.
Slipping through into the soft, warm cavern of her mouth, his tongue found hers
and the two tangled and played together.
    The feel of her fingers clutching at his
hair, as if she were holding his head in place over hers, was more intoxicating
than any wine he’d ever tasted. She held him to her as if she could not get
enough of his kiss, his touch…
    Her hands swept downward, stroking his
back before settling at the waistband of his trousers. They hovered before they
moved to clutch at the cheeks of his buttocks through the rough wool uniform
fabric. His cock went hard as granite. Straining. Aching. Her hands on him were
such pleasure it was painful. The feel of her breasts, even under the cotton of
her dress, tormented him.
    He dragged his mouth from hers. “Aghhh.
We must stop,” he groaned out. If this sensuous torture did not cease he would
take her here on the floor. She deserved more consideration, particularly when
she must be weak with blood