Read Online Manhunt in the Wild West by Jessica Andersen - Free Book Online

twining in the material of his shirt and holding him fast.
    And, even though she knew better, damn it…she kissed him back.
     
    T EMPORARY INSANITY . That was Fax’s only excuse for initiating the kiss, and it wasn’t much of an excuse to begin with. Then, about three seconds after he’d lost his mind and gone in for a taste of her lips, those very same lips parted and a soft sound escaped her, and she started kissing him back.
    After that, there was no excuse. There was only insanity.
    She tasted of sweetness, sunshine and laughter, and so many other things he hadn’t known in a very long time. Her skin was soft beneath his fingertips when he raised his hands to frame her face, to touch her neck and hair, relearning feelings he’d left behind.
    Heat came, and lust. But even the lust was tempered with sweetness. It stole inside him and buoyed his heart, making him feel light and free, while the heat warmed him from within, thawing parts of him that had been cold for so long.
    Which wasn’t a good thing, he realized with a sudden dash of icy reality. Not where he was going.
    “Wait.” He broke the kiss, only then realizing that he’d moved in very close to her, that they were plastered together against the living-room wall, his body pressed against hers, hard and needy.
    Her face was upturned to his, her lips parted and moist, her eyes bright with arousal and self-awareness, letting him know she knew what he was—or thought she did—and she’d kissed him back anyway.
    He forced himself to let her go and move away, remembering to stay out of the window lines, but only barely. His head was spinning, his blood pounding an up-tempo number in his veins, and pretty much everything inside him was clamoring for him to go to her, kiss her again, take whatever she was willing to give.
    What was going on with him? He wasn’t the kind of guy who lost himself in a kiss, wasn’t the type to forget reality in a moment of lust.
    Only that was what had just happened, and it’d happened with a woman who was so far out of his present sphere that she might as well have been from another universe entirely. She was the sort of person he was trying to protect—in a general sense—when he did what he did. She was sunlight and family; he was alone in the darkness, and needed to keep it that way.
    She was attracted to him, he knew, had been from the first moment they locked eyes. It wouldn’t take much for him to get her to take it further, especially after all they’d been through together in the past couple of days. She’d said it herself, she owed him her life. He could lean on that, use it to get what he wanted, what his body was demanding he take, hard and hot and fast.
    And that, he thought bitterly, is the convict talking.
    He’d been playing the scumbag role for so long, through a string of assignments even before the al-Jihad op, that he honestly wasn’t sure it was a role anymore. His mother used to warn him and his brothers that if they made faces too often, they’d get stuck that way.
    Well, somewhere along the line he’d gotten stuck. He’d not only lost his family, he’d lost most of himself. Worse, he wasn’t really sure he minded.
    He did, however, mind the idea of using someone like Chelsea for sex when he could offer nothing else but his body.
    “Bad idea,” he said, voice rough. He jammed his hands in his pockets when they wanted to reach for her, and forced his feet to stay put when they wanted to move. “I don’t think—”
    A knock at the door had him breaking off with a vicious curse. He’d way overstayed his limit, and was seconds away from being busted.
    Eyes locked with his, Chelsea raised her voice and called, “Just a minute.” She pushed him toward the kitchen, lowering her voice to whisper, “Go. Meet me here tomorrow, and I’ll get you into the ME’s office.”
    She didn’t say anything about the kiss, but it buzzed between them like a living, tempting thing.
    He hesitated, wanting