Read Online Shameless (The Contemporary Collection) by Jennifer Blake - Free Book Online

while he was in the army. His clothes seemed to consist of jeans and camouflage. He lived in the game reserve and drove a Jeep. All that added together made him the King of the Red-Necks. He was, in fact, everything that she most despised in a man.
    Why, then, did her body respond to him as it had to no other?
    She kicked at the sheet that covered her as she flung herself over on her back. This was a passing moment of insanity. She would get over it.
    The last thing she needed was another complication in her life. In any case, a woman didn't throw herself at a man.
    She wanted him with a deep internal ache that had nothing to do with physical need. It was as if something of her essential self reached out to him.
    He would think she was crazy, or possibly depraved. Maybe she was. Why else would she even think of risking the pain and danger he might bring her?
    She sat up and slid out of bed, walking to the window, where she pulled the curtain aside and looked out. The trees in the garden were silver-green in the lightning flashes, the undersides of their leaves showing pale gray as their branches tossed in the wind. Thunder rumbled a warning, then detonated with a solid boom.
    Grasping the window sash, she pushed it up. The sound of the rain and wind blew into the room on a gust of fresh, moist air. The rich, wet smell of it was like inhaling an aphrodisiac. The thunder was louder, the lightning's glow more intense. As she leaned on the sill, a silver trident streaked down the sky above the treetops. Hard on its singeing crackle came a shattering explosion of thunder that shook the floor under her.
    And yet, the greater storm was inside her, a violent conflict between values and instinct.
    There had been a great deal of thought and discussion about the last this evening. Why should she be concerned about following its lead now?
    She straightened from the window and, leaving it open to the rain, moved across her bedroom and out into the hall. She hesitated, closing her eyes tight, then opened them wide and turned toward the bedroom at the end of the long corridor.
    As she took one deliberate step after the other, it seemed that she was somehow outside herself, watching what she was doing in mingled approbation and disbelief. It was eerie, as if she had little to do with the legs that moved forward or the feet that trod the soft, Oriental runner stretching down the hall. She felt compelled, or perhaps drawn by some force outside herself.
    Was it true, or only an excuse? Either way, she couldn't seem to stop herself. She wasn't sure she wanted to try.
    She was not quite without self-preservation, however. Reaching out toward the blue bedroom door, she grasped the knob with delicate precision. She turned it slowly to prevent the quiet metallic noise it might make. As she pushed on the door panel so that it swung inward, she called the name of the man inside in soft warning, trying not to startle him if he was asleep.
    He wasn't.
    His sigh was so ferocious, and so close beside her, that she felt it like a warm wind brushing her face. In the same instant, a hard grasp fastened on her wrist and pulled her forward. It was a small jerk, almost gentle, but it carried enough force to send her spinning into the room. She caught the post of the bed and sat down, abruptly, on the mattress.
    Reid pushed the door closed with a snap, then swung toward her. “Testing my reflexes?” he asked in quiet rage out of the darkness.
    His window, like her own, was open to the storm. Beyond the curtains that billowed with the wind, lightning stitched its way down the dark night sky. In its fading blue glare she saw the stalwart masculine beauty of his naked body. And the torment in his face.
    “No,” she said in quiet answer. “Rather, tempting them.”
    “Pity the poor beast. Is that it?”
    His voice recoiled from her, drifting away toward the room's blackest corner. With his back to the wall there, he stopped.
    “More like mutual consolation,”