LITMIR.BIZ

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just beneath her ear where a pulse beat rapidly. Her arms tightened in response to his nipping, teasing kisses.

      His fingers toyed with the ribbon between her breasts, but he carefully kept away from a more intimate touch, knowing it was too soon. Instead he claimed her mouth once again, enjoying the way she tasted and the way her tongue thrust and parried with his own.

      All too quickly, mere kissing wasn’t enough. Chance wanted, needed to touch her, feel her warm skin against his, cup her bare breasts in his hands.

      He stroked his hands down the length of her sides. He could tell she was ready for him to take them into the next dimension. Her breathing had grown more rapid and occasionally a tiny moan issued from her lips.

      “Lana,” he whispered softly. “I want to take your gown off.”

      In the pale illumination of the room, she gazed at him, and he saw her desire in the dark depths of her eyes. “Shut off the light,” she replied breathlessly.

      He hesitated. He didn’t want the light off. He wanted to see the beautiful skin he was eager to caress. He wanted to see her breasts, the flat of her stomach, the curve of her hips and the length of her legs.

      “Please, Chance,” she said as if recognizing his hesitation. “We can keep the light on next time.”

      He acquiesced to her wishes with the promise of another time ringing in his ears. Turning out the light, he heard the whisper of silk leaving flesh and when he reached for her again, she was warm and naked in his arms.

      Any further conscious thought was impossible as his hands stroked her heated flesh and she returned his touch, caress for caress. Their mouths found each other’s as they explored one another’s bodies, finding the magical, secret places that evoked sighs or sweet shudders of pleasure.

      All too quickly, Chance was ready to possess her completely. She arched beneath him and a deep, throaty moan escaped her as he moved between her thighs.

      He moved partially into her and encountered resistance. He pressed deeper, harder, and instantly her fingernails bit into the flesh of his back. He froze, recognizing suddenly what the resistance had been.

      “Lana.” Her name was both a protest and a plea. He started to pull away, shock riveting through him as he realized what he’d done, realized she’d been a virgin.

      “No, Chance. It’s all right. Don’t stop now. Please don’t stop.” The fingers that had bitten into him now pulled him closer.

      Heaven help him, he didn’t want to stop. She surrounded him, warm and tight and achingly pleasurable. Still, he remained inert, afraid of hurting her any more than he just had.

      “Please don’t stop,” she repeated, the words a warm breath in his neck and followed by the press of her lips against his skin.

      He moved tentatively, gently against her, awed by the gift she’d just given him and at the same time angry that she hadn’t told him beforehand.

      Had he known she’d never been with a man before, he would have never agreed to this whole scheme. Now it was too late. In a single moment he’d transformed her, changed her forever, and she would never again be the same woman she’d been before climbing into his bed.

      Had he known she had never made love before, he would have taken more time, enjoyed introducing her to sensations that would be new and exciting.

      But it was too late now. Buried deep within her, he couldn’t staunch the storm of passion that coursed through him. Like a tidal wave, he was helpless in the wake of it as he felt himself building to a summit. Then he was over the summit and crashing down as he hoarsely cried out her name.

      Moments later, he lay on his back, trying to catch his breath and wondering how on earth a woman who had never made love before had managed to get him to such a fever pitch.

      He heard the slide of silk fabric and realized she had grabbed her nightgown and was once again pulling it on. “Lana, why didn’t you tell me?” he asked with a touch of censure in his voice. “I would have never agreed to any of this had I known.”

      “That’s why I didn’t tell you. I’m tired, Chance. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.” The mattress shook with her movements and he sensed she’d turned her back to him.

      A momentary urge to reach out and touch her, to pull her into his arms and hold her swept through him. It surprised him, the need to gather her against him and feel her heartbeat against his own.

      But he dismissed the impulse. It was obvious she wasn’t interested in sharing any afterglow with him. She was finished with him now that the deed had been done.

      As he stared up at the dark ceiling, he reminded himself that she was nothing to him but a means to an end. And it was apparent that he was the same to her. That was just fine with him. The last thing he wanted was any sort of emotional tie to this woman or this place.

      In three to five months time, he’d be out of here and this time when he left Prosperino, he didn’t intend to ever look back.

      A dream awakened Emily Blair Colton. She sat straight up in bed, heart pounding with the residual terror of the dream. No, not a dream, a nightmare.

      She stared around the room, looking for something familiar, safe. Bright moonlight streamed into the bedroom window, painting the room in silvery shades.

      A deep, abiding sadness stole away the terror as reality sank in. She wasn’t home. She wasn’t safe and sound at the ranch in Prosperino, California, with her loving adoptive parents, Meredith and Joe Colton.

      She was in the small town of Red River, Montana, hiding out because somebody was trying to kill her. Chilled, and with the memory of the dream further haunting her, she got out of bed, grabbed her robe and left the bedroom.

      She turned on the table lamp, pulled her robe on, then sank down on the sofa, her mind in a jumble of thoughts just as it had been for the last year, since leaving home and running for her life.

      Raking a trembling hand through her hair, she thought of the dream she’d just had. It was a familiar vision that haunted her more and more frequently.

      It always began the same. She and her mother, Meredith, were in the car. In the dream, Emily was no longer twenty, but rather eleven years old and filled with the joy and security of Meredith’s love, love that in a screech of twisting metal and the tinkling of shattered glass had evaporated.

      It was never the car accident in the dream that frightened Emily, rather it was always what happened after the wreck that ripped terror through her soul.

      Dazed by a head wound, bleeding and frightened, Emily had opened her eyes to see two identical mommies. They had the exact same hair, the exact same features, but one was Emily’s loving, beautiful mother and the other was a mother with hard, gleaming eyes and a wicked, hateful smile. And in the blink of an eye, the good mommy was gone, replaced by the bad mommy.

      It had only been in the past year that Emily had begun to realize that the visions that tormented her in her dreams were not really dreams, but rather memories of the events that had occurred on that fateful day of the accident.

      And now, almost ten years after the day of that accident, Emily knew the truth. Meredith’s wicked, evil twin sister, Patsy, had usurped not only Meredith’s identity, but her home and her family as well.

      Grief ripped through Emily as she thought of the years lost, of the family that had disintegrated beneath the dramatic changes in “Meredith.”

      But now Emily knew the truth, the whole truth. The Meredith she’d lost on the day of the accident was in Jackson, Mississippi, trying desperately to regain the memory she’d lost that day.

      Once Dr. Wilkes helped the real Meredith cope with the trauma she’d suffered, she would return home and reclaim her life.

      Emily left the sofa and went to the window. Staring out into the darkness of the night, she’d never felt quite so alone.

      Patsy

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