Read Online The French Detective's Woman by Nina Bruhns - Free Book Online Page A

had painted on the wall above it, palm out, like a warning against the folly of what she was about to do with Jean-Marc. Their profiles reflected back in the mirror, him with his merciless grip on her arms, her with a look on her face she’d never seen before—somewhere between terror and breathless anticipation. She attempted to pull away again, but her limbs were strangely powerless.
    “Tell me, Ciara,” he demanded. Pulling her closer still.
    “Tell you what?” she asked, befuddled and distracted by his legs tangling with hers.
    His breath was hot in her ear. “Tell me why you’re afraid of the police. Tell me what you’re doing that’s illegal.”
    Shock welded her to the spot. She stared at him openmouthed.
    No. He couldn’t know .
    She shook her head. “Nothing. Why would you say that?”
    He let one arm go and slid a hand over her breast. She sucked in a breath. He squeezed her slightly, his thumb toying with the stiffened tip.
    Giving in to the sensation, she groaned softly.
    “You want me,” he whispered.
    He didn’t ask. Didn’t equivocate. Merely stated the obvious. Keeping his hand on her breast, he turned her toward the dresser and the mirror. Stood with his hard-ridged front pressed into her yielding backside. She started to tremble.
    “When you didn’t call, I thought maybe you’d lost my business card. But you didn’t lose it.”
    Because there it stood, canted up against her hairbrush, right in the middle of the dresser. Impossible to miss. Rife with implication. Damning in its blatancy.
    “There’s no sign of a man anywhere in your apartment, so I’m guessing it’s not a boyfriend. So why? Then I remembered, you are a foreigner, on a student visa, with no visible income.” He leaned down, closer to her ear. “And at the club, when I told you I was a cop, your reaction was...unusual. Suddenly you were frightened of me, and to get involved with me. Why?”
    She licked her lips. “I—”
    “I’m an excellent detective, Ciara. And I’m also damn good at math. Two plus two always adds up to four. Now, tell me what you’re involved in. Drugs? Prostitution? I’ll help you if I can.”
    She closed her eyes against the chaos trying to break through in her mind. Prostitution? Was he kidding?
    No. She’d be all right if she just came up with a plausible reason...
    Think!
    “You’re wrong,” she said past the dryness in her throat. “I’m not afraid. That’s not why I didn’t call you.”
    In the mirror his eyes met hers as she forced them open. His hand moved across her breast, going for the top button of her camisole. He slid it open. “I’m listening.”
    Her pulse zoomed.
    He slid open the second button.
    “It’s not that you’re a cop,” she said in a rush. “It’s that you’re a commissaire .”
    His brow went up and his fingers paused on the third button.
    She quickly went on, “You’re right about me. I’m a foreigner. A student with no money. Look at how I live!” She swept a hand around at her miserably shabby apartment and the threadbare furniture she didn’t own. The lack of adornment, the few items of clothing in the tiny armoire. The pitiful state of her life. “But you...you’re older than I. An important man. We’re from two completely different worlds, Jean-Marc. Why start something when it will never work? I’d never be welcome in your world. You’d be ashamed of me.”
    She tore her gaze away, embarrassed by the truth and vehemence of those last words she’d never meant to utter.
    Her childhood had been an agony of shame—something she had believed she’d put far behind her. Though it drove everything she did, even now, she seldom thought of those unhappy years in the States, before she met Etienne.
    She tried to extract herself from Jean-Marc’s grasp. “Please,” she whispered. “Let me go.”
    “ Non . I won’t. It is you who are wrong, so very wrong, about me.” He put his lips to her hair. “Age is of no consequence when