Shadows of the Past Read Online Free Page B

She would remember this. Always.
    The last time she expected she would see him. Tears blurred her vision. His face floated above hers like a mirage, until his mouth slanted and he took hers, blinding her with his nearness, his kiss, until only touch and sensation remained.
    God! She tasted sweet; Franc had known she would. Her lips parted on a sigh and his tongue swept past them for a taste of the honey he knew lay within. Almost tentatively her tongue touched his and he felt her hands tremble and flutter like butterflies across his chest. It was more erotic than if she’d answered his passion with one of equal demand.
    “Stay with me tonight. My apartment’s just next door.” The words grated from his throat as emotion took over. For one second he wished he hadn’t said them. But only one.
    As the lights came on she pulled away, her eyes huge, more violet than brown. They flicked from side to side, grounding her in the present. The party was over.
    “No!”
    Franc hesitated in mid-farewell-wave to a departing group. What did she mean, no? She couldn’t mean it. Did she think he didn’t know she wanted him as much as he wanted her?
    “’t have done that,” she said quietly.
    Maria backed away, breaking the contact, taking her heat. Franc shivered. “Why?”
    “We’ve had this evening. Why spoil it?”
    “We could have tonight and no one would be spoiled but you. Let me spoil you.”
    His breath stirred long tendrils of her hair against her cheeks. She pushed them behind her ear, remembering how they’d gotten that way. Franc’s fingers forking through her hair as he held her head still. “I need to call a cab.”
    She needed to get out of here before she did something stupid.
    “I don’t mind driving you home.”
    “No. I insist. It’s better this way. Let me take a cab.”
    “All right. Tell me where you want to go and I’ll call one.”
     

    Maria turned in her seat and watched out the back window of the cab, and without resorting to her glasses, she saw his tall figure soon blend into the shadows.
    Franc Jellic was almost irresistible. And that six-letter word, almost, was her saving grace. She’d never met a man like him. Never been tempted until now, though she had been curious about her sexuality.
    For a moment the answer to the puzzle had been within her grasp, until she banged into a wall of reality and the image of what might have been shattered as she hit. To bare her body, her scars would mean explanations. Explanations she couldn’t give him. Explanations that wouldn’t help her find the way out of the maze left by her abduction.
    A sigh racked her body. She hugged herself to stop the tremors and tried to look on the bright side.
    One thing for sure, she’d learned a lesson tonight. Learned how easily one could become trapped, brought to one’s knees by a glance, both tender and wild at once. A glance that promised to teach all she wanted to know as it sent her body into meltdown and her heart into overdrive.
    Yes, curiosity was all it would take. His kiss…how would it feel in the secret places where her body had throbbed as they danced? Would it ease the ache or sharpen the pain?
     

    Christmas Eve had arrived with a bang. Heat sizzled in puddles of tar on the road and sunburned leaf tips spangled trees meant for the northern hemisphere with bronze. The only cloud in the sky was the leaden one hovering over Maria’s head advertising her failure.
    She mulled over her problems as she stood at the top of the driveway, waving to Tess and Linda, who she shared the villa with. “Bye, have a happy Christmas and a lovely holiday,” she called, her thoughts nothing to do with the joys of the season. Soon she, too, would be hitting the road back to the bosom of her family.
    Bosom being the appropriate word. There would be hugs all round. Papa and Mamma squeezed so tight, sometimes she could hardly breathe. It was their way of showing they loved her.
    The word suffocat reared its head.