Read Online Dead Sexy by Linda Jaivin - Free Book Online

was time to stake out his territory, batten down the hatches, piss in a circle around the tent. Fox had smelled smoke. He wasn’t sure if it signalled a three-alarm blaze or merely a cooking experiment gone wrong, but he was taking no chances. He’d started up the ladder truck, primed the extinguishers and now he was going to reel out the big seventy-five-mil hose.
    ‘Nicola,’ he said, dropping to his knees, ‘I love you. Will you marry me?’
    Nicola burst into tears. Fox had anticipated this. He folded her into his big strong fireman arms, stroked her hair and waited for theinevitable confession. When it came, he told Nicola that he was content to ‘let bygones be bygones’, but that if Johnny ever tried to come onto her again, he’d ‘throttle ‘im’.
    As previously noted, Fox was good in a crisis. ‘No one gets between me and my baby,’ he declared in a quiet but firm voice.
    ‘Oh, Foxy,’ Nicola sighed, resting her head on his strong chest. She felt all her fear and stress fade like nicotine stains under a peroxide gel. Fox, staring over the top of her head, narrowed his eyes. They sat like that for a few minutes until Nicola realised she was dribbling on his pecs. When she looked up with a goofy smile on her face, Fox’s eyes, now soft and forgiving, were fixed on hers.
    Following a vigorous session of lovemaking in which Fox demonstrated that he’d read ‘Sex Positions to Please Her!’ and was willing to experiment a little so long as it didn’t involve anything unhygienic or technology-based, they slept soundly in each other’s arms.
    Nicola didn’t want to waste either time or resolve. First thing Monday, she phoned Johnny at his office and asked him to meet her at lunchtime at a cafe not far from either of their workplaces. Being in the centre of town, it was more of a coffee shop than a cafe, but Nicola was glad of the lack of a more intimate atmosphere.
    ‘We’re going to be married,’ she informed him, her voice resolute.
    ‘Why?’ Johnny asked. He poured one spoonful of sugar after another into his espresso.
    Nicola rolled her eyes. ‘Because we love each other?’
    ‘George Bernard Shaw said that it is most unwise for people in love to marry. Besides, I note a querulous inflection in your voice. Maybe you’re not so sure as you think you are.’
    ‘How would you know?’
    ‘Our species wasn’t designed for monogamy. Men, as is well documented, have a natural hankering to spread their seed around. Interestingly, I believe I read under your very own byline that women have a similar, built-in urge towards promiscuity, something about selecting the bestsperm. It’s only after conception that your sort opts for fidelity, which, in biological terms, is purely for the sprog’s benefit.’
    ‘You’re infuriating.’ He was also right. Nicola had researched the article while trying to cope with her fantasies about Johnny, seeking some sort of justification for her wayward impulses.
    He shrugged and then looked at her from under his eyelashes. ‘Hey, Nic,’ he purred. ‘What do you say we go back to my place and you exorcise all those harmful, pent-up feelings of hostility you seem to have for me by slipping into your stilettos and pissing on me in the bath?’
    ‘Yuk.’ Nicola started to laugh but caught herself. ‘Johnny. Read my lips. I. Am. In. A. Serious. Relationship.’
    ‘Nic, you know that old bra ad? “Lift and separate”? Well, that’s what you’ve gotta learn to do with sex and relationships. Lift’—he gestured as if raising imaginary breasts towards his chin—‘and separate.’ He pulled them out to the sides. ‘Hey, Nic.’ He winked.
    ‘What?’
    ‘I think you’re wearing entirely too many clothes.’
    Nicola bit her bottom lip and sighed. ‘Give me your hands, Johnny.’
    He held them out, wearing his best bad-boy grin.
    ‘Huh,’ she commented, turning them over and examining them.
    ‘What is it, my little palm reader?’
    ‘You
do
have