Read Online Before by Nicola Marsh - Free Book Online Page A

them.
    She released my hand and shoved me away. “Yeah, but like the real thing, too much will make me puke.”
    God, I loved how quick she was. I could easily fall for Jess as more than a friend, which would be the ultimate act in masochism.
    She was leaving in two weeks. She was a girl so far out of my league I’d need a stepladder to get up there. And her brother was doing me a massive favor.
    Three sane reasons to keep my distance.
    Pity I’d never been any good at sanity.

 
     
     

Chapter Thirteen
     
    JESS
     
     
    When would I learn?
    Daring Jack to let me ride pillion had been a deliberate ploy to rattle him at the time. But now? With my arms wrapped around him, my body on fire from our proximity and the pure male scent of him filling my senses? I was the one seriously rattled.
    Not that the last ten minutes hadn’t been exhilarating, galloping through the station’s grounds and beyond, mile after mile of arid beauty. I didn’t know where to look first so kept my cheek firmly pressed against Jack’s back.
    Now that we’d slowed to a trot, I could hear my thoughts again above Dundee’s pounding hooves. And they weren’t pretty.
    Why did I blab all that stuff about Dave? I barely knew Jack and all we did was try to score points off each other. Yet when he’d said we were friends? I could’ve hugged him. Having him share some of his past with me had precipitated my verbal diarrhea, I knew that, but how did it happen that I felt closer to Jack than I did with any of my college friends?
    Two semesters at UNLV and I still couldn’t name one person I would’ve told about Dave…bar Dave. And that’s what irked the most, that the one guy I’d chosen to trust as a friend in my freshman college year had turned out to be anything but.
    “We’ll stop here and eat.” Jack reined in Dundee near the bottom of a small valley and I let the peacefulness wash over me.
    It was like Jack and I were the only two people in the world.
    “You can let go of me now,” he said, clearing his throat.
    “And spoil my fun?” I gave him a tight squeeze, akin to a Heimlich maneuver, and chuckled when I heard his ooph.
    I swung my leg over Dundee’s rump and slid to the ground. My butt ached, my back twinged and my legs wobbled, but as I watched Jack’s mighty fine ass as he dismounted, it was so worth it.
    He turned and caught me staring, a slow grin spreading across his face. “What is it with you and my nether regions?”
    Damn, I was busted. “Maybe they’re so impressive I can’t help but stare?”
    “I’m flattered, but don’t waste your time.” He busied himself making Dundee comfortable, leaving me to ponder what he meant.
    “A girl can’t look?”
    “Looking is fine. Touching isn’t,” he muttered, sounding increasingly grouchy as he gave Dundee a final pat and started setting out the picnic he’d packed.
    “Why’s that?”
    He glanced up from the blanket he’d spread on the ground. “Because I won’t be your holiday fling.”
    Guess that meant I couldn’t tell him he’d be my first, too.
    “Surprising.”
    His eyes narrowed. “Why? Because you think a bum like me would have sex with any woman who crossed my path?”
    Wow, there was way more going on here than me making a flippant remark and him taking it out of context.
    I held up my hands. “Whoa. PMS, much?”
    Some of his tension eased as I glimpsed a flicker of a smile. “Sorry, you hit a nerve.”
    I wanted to know more, despite doubting the wisdom of prodding him when he was in a mood. “Because you’ve been sleeping your way across the east coast of Australia?”
    “Something like that,” he said, through gritted teeth, as he resumed laying the picnic out.
    If I’d been curious before, I was positively intrigued now. Considering the Chris Hemsworth thing he had going on, I wasn’t surprised he’d never lack for willing partners in bed. Jack was seriously gorgeous. But rather than being proud of the fact like most egotistical