Awakening Beauty Read Online Free Page A

she didn’t pull away in shock. Neither, fortunately, did she delve inside his pants. Her fingers moved uncertainly, feeling the outline of his shaft. He swallowed, maintaining his self-control with difficulty.
    Her face burned. He lifted her hand off his cock and carried it to his lips for a quick kiss. “That’s how much I want you, so don’t tempt me anymore. When you’re better, and if you still want to come, I’d love to take you out to dinner.”
    Even as he said the words, he laughed at himself. He sounded so pompous and grown up. Which was another matter. The girl was nineteen and clearly not as experienced as he’d expected. Yet another reason to back off.
    And yet the sneaking thought entered his head that if Vee had ever felt half so good in his arms, he wouldn’t be this tormented over the decision he needed to make concerning their possible future together. She was not yet his fiancée, not really even his girlfriend, more of a business partner if anything. He owed Vee nothing, at least not in emotional terms, and yet even thinking of her now felt like treachery. Though whether to her or Aurora he wasn’t clear and didn’t want to be.
    Aurora’s gaze fell. She shifted away from him, and perversely, he wanted her back in his arms.
    “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I just feel so…”
    “Needy,” he said ruefully. “Me too, but with considerably less cause. Come on, eat up. It’ll make you feel better.”

Chapter Three
    “This drawing room was one of my mother’s favorite rooms in the house. She loved to sit here playing the clavichord.” Aurora stroked her hand down the dusty keyboard and the musical instrument gave a discordant jangle. “She would die to see her beloved instrument ruined.” Her choice of words struck her like an arrow to the chest, for very likely her mother was dead, long dead and turned to dust.
    “How could all this time have passed? A magic spell must have catapulted me forward through time. I must find a way back to my own time.”
    Joel walked over to join her by the clavichord. He plunked one key over and over, a horribly out of tune B-flat. “Magic. I suppose that’s one possibility. Or some sort of wormhole through space. Or maybe, you simply came here with a film crew to make a…a music video or something. You went up into the tower alone, knocked yourself out and remained unconscious until I happened to come along.” He paused. “The wormhole idea is seeming more believable.”
    Aurora stared at this odd man with his strange speech—and his mouth that could do such strange things to her insides when he kissed her. “Many of your words make no sense to me at all. How is it that you speak my language if you come from someplace far away?”
    “I often come to Schlaushagen on business, so I speak the language fluently. In fact, I’ve lived in the capital, Hambriega, for nearly a year, overseeing the merger of two corporations. My work often involves travel and extended stays in various countries. I can speak three languages fluently and several others enough to get by.”
    “Travel. How exciting that must be for you. I always wanted to go somewhere, anywhere, but my parents would barely let me outdoors. Do you know, in my entire life I’ve never been beyond the castle gardens?”
    He glanced around the drawing room, now half garden itself. “A deluxe prison.”
    “Yes. That’s the way I always felt, as if I was sheltered and loved but a prisoner.” Aurora didn’t share her secret—that most of the reason she’d been excited about marrying Karl, the Prince Regent of Blessen, was because the marriage would at last take her to a foreign land and an exciting new life. “But now I would give anything, even if I had to stay in this castle forever, to have my parents back.”
    Joel stroked a hand over the ebony cover of the clavichord. “I can understand that. I lost my parents when I was very young, or rather, my mother. I never knew my father. Mom