Full Exposure: A Loveswept Contemporary Erotic Romance Read Online Free Page A

long, lazy mornings in bed.
    “
Your
book thing?” she answered carefully as his voice sent chills of pleasure up her spine. Her voice was shaky, but it held, a fact she was incredibly grateful for.
    “Our book thing,” he growled. Lightning flashed outside, illuminating his beautiful face and troubled eyes for just a second. She didn’t know why, but she longed to touch his face, to let her fingertips slowly soothe the tension from his muscles.
    “I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.”
    “I don’t even want to think about it,” he answered. “But it seems to be happening whether I want it to or not.”
    “You agreed to do it, you know.” She shifted in his lap, as if a change in vantage point would suddenly reveal his face again. “All you had to do was say no.”
    “I did say no. At least fifty times. When I signed that contract, it wasn’t agreement. It was surrender due to total and complete desperation. Steve and Marsha gottogether and ran me to ground. I never stood a chance.”
    “Against your agent and publicist? And you call yourself an artist? Don’t you know that it’s
your
duty to make
their
lives hell?” she teased. Her voice wasn’t as steady as she would have liked, but it held. She couldn’t ask for more.
    “You know that and I know that,
cher
. But the two of them don’t seem to get the concept,” he commented drily. “They think I hired them to make
my
life hell.”
    “So why don’t you explain it to them?” A powerful surge of thunder had her cuddling closer, had his arms tightening around her without either being aware of it. “You don’t exactly seem the type to take such abuse lying down.”
    “I’m not. And I have explained it, many times, but they don’t listen. Instead, they hound me day and night. Phone calls at all hours, trips here or to my house in New Orleans when I take the damned thing off the hook.” She felt his very un-Kevin-like smile against the top of her head.
    “And you put up with this?” She liked this new side of him, so different than anything she’d ever seen or heard about him. She knew he was distracting her, knew he’d chosen the topic to keep her mind occupied with something other than her fear. But that made him only more interesting—as a person and as a potential lover.
    Her fingers itched for her camera, the need to record this unexpected side of him nearly overwhelming. But it was way too dark to photograph him, no matter how good her flash was. Not to mention that she’d have to leave the safety of his arms to do so, something she wasn’t yet ready to contemplate though she shied away from the knowledge.
    Glancing around the still-dark studio, she shuddered before she could stop herself. She hated this stupid fear, hated that it still had the power to control her. It had been ten years since Sandra had died. And while the first few years were a jumble of fear and hate, confusion and loneliness, she’d slowly pulled out of the tailspin her sister’s murder had thrown her into.
    Years passed and she began to go days, weeks, sometimes even months without feeling the crippling grief that literally brought her to her knees. But something always happened. A newspaper article, a movie preview, a blackout. And she would realize, once again, just how tenuous her grip on sanity really was.
    Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. The pattern was her mantra at times like these. If she did it long enough, the shaking would stop. It always did.
    Kevin tensed and felt his heart rate double. Serena was all but convulsing in his arms and she was doing it without a sound. But the quiet made her agony all the more frightening. She was breathing—slowly, methodically, as if every breath was a matter of life and death. He raised a hand to smooth her sweat-soaked hair from her face, astounded to realize that he wasn’t quite steady. He couldn’t stand this, couldn’t handle her pain or his total inability to make it better.