Read Online Spells & Stitches by Barbara Bretton - Free Book Online Page A

secretly started a new family up there in snow country, maybe she had her work cut out for her.
    She added Luke to the list of phone calls she planned to make, then walked back to the ladies’ locker room to light a fire under the stragglers.
    “We close in ten,” she said to the two women who were blow-drying their hair in the bathroom, “but if you need a few more just let me know.”
    “No problem,” said the younger of the two, “but thanks.”
    She paused in front of the door to the men’s lockers and rapped twice. “Ten minutes to closing,” she called out.
    She waited for a response and when there wasn’t any, she rapped again, harder.
    “Ten-minute warning!”
    It had to be him. Only one guy had taken class today and he was romance-novel-cover hot, all chiseled and sweaty and borderline dangerous. Everything she loved in a man over and over again.
    She pushed the door open a crack and listened. It was as quiet as a church in there. Not that she had been to church lately, but she had a good memory. No sounds of water running. No blow-dryer. No radio blaring sports or, God forbid, talk radio.
    Maybe he was gone. He probably left while she was in the ladies’ locker room, slipped right out when she wasn’t looking.
    But she’d wait a few just to be sure.
    She went back to the desk, gathered up her stuff, and tossed it all into the big leather tote she’d been carrying since college. The two women waved good-bye on their way out the door, but there was no sign of Fabio.
    The easiest way to lose her job at Hot Yoga would be to lock a paying customer in the studio, so she slung her bag over her shoulder and marched into the locker room to make sure there were no bodies slumped over a bench or circling the shower drain.
    Better safe than unemployed.

THREE HOURS LATER
     
    His kisses were slow and wet and deep and if they went on any longer Meghan was reasonably sure they’d kill her.
    Pleasure could kill a woman if she wasn’t careful, and she was anything but careful when it came to love.
    Which this wasn’t, of course. Not love. Not now. You didn’t fall in love with a total stranger in three hours even if the total stranger walked straight out of fantasies you’d never told another living soul.
    Everything about him was perfect. She could get drunk just looking at him, touching him, breathing in the smell of his golden skin.
    “I have to close the studio,” she whispered, coming up for air. “I can’t afford to lose my job.”
    “You won’t lose your job.” He did something with his tongue that made her forget her own name.
    “We shouldn’t.”
    His hands dipped lower.
    “What if someone walks in while we’re—”
    His fingers began their magic. “They won’t.”
    “The door is wide open. Anybody could—”
    “I know,” he said. “That makes it even more fun.”
    Oh, God, he was right ... so right....
    She moved against his hand, straining for the ultimate pleasure that he kept just out of reach. A cry was building up in her throat and she sank her teeth into his muscular shoulder to keep from making a sound.
    “Bitch,” he murmured into her hair, spreading her legs wide with his knee. “You know what I like.”
    She bit him again, harder this time, hungry for something she hadn’t known existed until that moment, with that man. He filled her to the breaking point, taking her to the outer edges of madness, until there was nowhere left to go.
    She stopped caring if someone walked in and saw them. She stopped caring if she lost her job or what was left of her sanity. If he had asked, she would have walked across fiery coals to be with him.
    Suddenly all that mattered was his hands on her body, his mouth on hers.
    He took the keys and threw them across the room. The sound as they hit the floor made her jump. Her heart slammed her rib cage hard and she felt sweat break out on the back of her neck.
    “Scared?” He stood over her, filling her line of vision.
    “Should I