Читать онлайн «Bound By Marriage»

To Wanda, who makes me a better writer.

And to the Brainstorming Desirables and NZRomance

e-mail groups, who between them, can answer any

research question ever invented!

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Coming Next Month

One

The last person Jess Randall expected to see as she walked out of the arrival gate at Christchurch International Airport, was the man she was about to marry. “Gabriel. What are you doing here?”

“You’ve been living in L. A. for a year and that’s all you have to say?”

Flustered, she leaned forward to drop a quick kiss on his cheek. It felt unfamiliar, awkward. “Sorry, I was just surprised. Aren’t you busy with station work?”

“I wanted to talk to you about something. But first things first. ” He bent his head and, without any prelude, kissed her full on the mouth.

Knocked completely off her bearings, she couldn’t do anything but clutch at his shirt in an effort to keep herself upright. Her heart was a staccato drumbeat in her ears, her blood a rush of thunder. And all around her burned a rough male heat that demanded everything she had.

It was the most intimate kiss they’d ever shared, the closest their bodies had ever come. And it made her nerves tighten in sheer panic. Not because she didn’t like it, but because she did.

“Welcome home,” he said, releasing her. The look in those green eyes was unmistakable—Gabriel Dumont was a man more than ready for his wedding night.

Legs not quite steady, she watched him pick up her bags. He led her through to the domestic part of the airport and across the road to the landing field used by smaller planes. The Jubilee, one of Angel Station’s two planes, sat waiting for them.

Fear—of Gabe’s expectations, but mostly of her own inexplicable response to his touch—had such a stranglehold on her that she was barely aware of hopping on board. Over the past year, she’d convinced herself that her marriage would be a calm, steady, business-like affair, never once considering what it might mean to be Gabriel’s wife in truth…to be touched and claimed in ways that obliterated the distance she needed to survive this bargain.

Her heart stuttered as he settled in beside her, taking the pilot’s seat. Taking control. A man who knew what he wanted and exactly how he wanted it, her fiancé was not someone who could ever be ignored.

Though he was tall and undeniably strong, his musculature was lean and powerful, not bulky. When he moved it was like watching a wild stallion in its prime; healthy and magnificent and proud. The faded burn scars on his left arm and back took nothing away from that—they possibly even contributed to the overwhelming sense of masculinity that surrounded him. Add in the pure green eyes and that sun-shot hair, and it almost seemed as if he’d become more beautiful in the year’s absence…more wrong for her.