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  “Please don’t expect too much,” she whispered, and a faint smile flowered on her mouth. “It’s…going to be hard, even with you.”

  “I love you,” he said simply. “Just concentrate on that, and remember that this is an expression of love.”

  A slow, sweet warmth spread over her body as he touched it, his eyes adoring, his face more tender than she’d ever seen it.

  “Here,” he murmured, rolling over on his back. “Touch me. Any way you want to. Be daring. Pretend you’re one of your own heroines,” he added wickedly.

  She managed a smile as her fingers searched him. “My heroines are always passionately in love,” she reminded him, “and they confine their amorous adventures to one man. I don’t condone permissiveness.”

  “So I noticed,” he murmured. “You know I finally read one of your books last week. It gave me hope. I decided that if you could write that ardently, you ought to be able to…”

  “Hush,” she whispered. She leaned down and kissed him, brushing her mouth over his with a lazy, loving pressure, smiling as she felt his chiseled lips move and open and coax hers into a deep, satisfying response.

  “Who’s doing this?” she muttered, “you or me? I thought it was my turn.”

  His hands found her waist and lifted her over him, so that she was lying on his body. “Go ahead,” he replied. “I’m only making a few…suggestions,” he added with a gleam in his dark eyes as his hands caught her thighs and pressed her hips into his.

  She moaned sharply, her eyes dilating at the sudden intimacy, and all the teasing stopped abruptly. He caught his fingers in her hair and brought her mouth down with deliberate sensuality, turning her, easing her onto her back, sliding down onto her throbbing body.

  “Now,” he whispered into her open mouth, “I’ll show you what a woman is supposed to feel with her man. I’ll make you tremble all over with hunger, and then I’ll feed it. I’ll give you such sweet pleasure that you’ll hate the thought of another man’s hands on your body….”

  “Cannon…!” she groaned as he moved, his hands touching her in new ways, in faintly shocking ways, his body kindling hers like dry wood, igniting sparks that burned her all over.

  “Kiss me this way,” he whispered roughly, his tongue fencing with hers in a sensuous rhythm as he eased the rest of the fabric from between them.

  She felt the sudden contact with his bare flesh like a jolt of killing voltage, her eyes flying open, looking into his through a fog of pleasure.

  “This is our beginning,” he said. His hands lifted her, teasing her softness, and he smiled at the reaction he read in her face, in her misty green eyes. “This is how it’s going to be for the rest of our lives. Let me show you…teach you….”

  She caught her breath, trying to tell him how much she loved him, how long she would love him, but a wave of pleasure hit her like whitecaps surging up on a beach, and all she could do was cling and cry and tremble like a vibrating string as he taught her how to please him. She whispered wildly, urgently, heard her own voice twisting into an echo of the pleasure her body was screaming, silvery and exquisitely sweet.

  “This is love,” he breathed into her mouth, and it was the last thing that penetrated her mind as her body seemed to catch in a hurricane of sensation, a frenzy of motion that tautened unbearably and then surged uncontrollably.

  She cried out hoarsely, clinging, urging her body as close to his as physical limits would permit, and it was as if she lost herself completely in him. They became one, in a sense she’d read about but never really believed until now. And it was love. Total. Complete.

  “I never knew,” she whispered as she lay trembling in his arms.

  He cradled her, pressing slow, tender kisses against her forehead, her closed eyelids, her cheeks, her swollen mouth. The wild pounding of their hearts began to calm slowly, and still he held her gently, like some priceless treasure.

  “Neither did I, honey,” he whispered at her mouth. He watched her eyes open and the look they exchanged was as intimate as the close contact of their sated bodies. “Because it was never with love. Until now.”

  She touched his face with wonder, tracing every line, and his eyes closed to savor her touch.

  “I love you,” she murmured, feeling the words as never before. “With my body. With my heart. With my soul. I want to give you children.”

  His eyes opened. His fingers smoothed back the hair at her temples, and they trembled. “I never dreamed that I could love like this,” he confessed roughly. “You’re as necessary to me as the air I breathe, do you know that?”

  “It works both ways, my darling,” she replied. She managed a shaky smile. “I want to give you everything.”

  “You just did,” he reminded her, and a smile softened his face, his voice. “And now I suppose you’ll expect me to do the honorable thing and marry you?”

  “And spoil a beautiful relationship?” she asked, aghast.

  He looked down his nose at her, cocking an eyebrow. “I know you’re a free spirit, Miss Famous Novelist,” he told her. “But if you don’t agree to marry me, right now, I’m going to carry you down those stairs and tell that dignified roomful of dinner guests that you’re pregnant.”

  “Cannon Van Dyne!” she burst out, horrified. “You wouldn’t!”

  “Try me,” he challenged. “My God, what a mass of contradictions you are. How many of your readers know what a Victorian mind you’ve got? It wouldn’t bother me one damned bit to confess everything, but you blush at the thought!”

  She laughed sheepishly. “And it’s just the opposite with you,” she remarked. “Oh, Cannon, your board of directors is going to be livid, do you realize that?”

  “To hell with my board of directors. Are you going to marry me or not?” he murmured, kissing her roughly, slowly. “Think how shocked my mother would be if I told her that you could be pregnant…. And you could be,” he breathed against her answering lips. “Already…” His hand flattened against her stomach.

  “Impatient, aren’t you?” she teased softly, but the thought made her tingle with excitement. She’d wanted children so much, for so long!

  “I’ll be forty next month,” he murmured. “Would you really mind it happening so soon? If you would, I can…”

  “No, I wouldn’t mind,” she said, silencing him with a kiss. “I want a family, too. And I have my grandmother’s christening robe….”

  “There’s a Van Dyne family christening bowl….” he murmured back. His mouth smiled against hers. “I want ten.”

  “Ten…? Oh!” she gasped as his hands moved.

  “Bargain with me,” he chuckled deeply. “How many do you want?”

  The magic was working on her again. “Ten.” She laughed. “Twelve. Fifteen. Anything you want—just kiss me!”

  He laughed softly, triumphantly, as his mouth settled lovingly on hers.

  * * *

  The dinner guests had just eaten their way through the salad, and the first course was being served when Cannon and Margie walked into the dining room, hand in hand and grateful that they’d hardly been missed in the crowd.

  Victorine got up and came forward to meet them. “It’s about time,” she scolded softly, just before she grinned. “Just look at yourselves….”

  “It was your suggestion,” Cannon reminded her with a smug grin.

  “Your hair looks worse than ever,” his mother replied. “And I’ll only forgive you if you say the magic word.”

  He lifted a bushy eyebrow. “Marriage?” he suggested dryly.

  The elderly woman beamed and moved forward to hug Margie with real affection. “I told you I raised sensible sons.” She laughed. “He knows a good thing when he sees it.”

  “Oh, it’s not that,” Margie confided with a wicked glance at Cannon. “You see, I got him in trouble and now I have to marry him.”

  Victorine pursed her lips as she studied her son. “Have you no shame?” she asked him. “She’ll think you’re easy!”
r />   He burst out laughing, hugging his mother to one side and Margie to the other. “Think? She knows it.” He chuckled and winked at Margie. “Let’s eat. I’m starving!”

  * * * * *

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  ISBN: 9781488742354

  TITLE: FIRE AND ICE

  First Australian Publication 2014

  Copyright © Diana Palmer

  All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises (Australia) Pty Ltd, Level 4, 132 Arthur Street, North Sydney, N.S.W., Australia 2060.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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