Breaking the Rules Read Free Page A

breasts stirred under her black T-shirt as his eyes boldly dropped to survey them.
    “I’m thinking about them right now. Guess I don’t have any shame left any more.”
    Susana swallowed hard, trying to shove down the very unfamiliar sensation building underneath her baggy shirt, sliding hotly down into her long, black skirt.
    He glanced up and raised his eyebrows. “Do I disgust you?”
    “No.” She shook her head. She didn’t know what she was feeling, but disgust didn’t play any part in it.
    “I should have disgusted you back then. A big, horny twenty-year old boy eyeing a thirteen-year-old girl. Sounds like a recipe for disaster.” Bitter humor flashed in his eyes again. “Then again, maybe a jail term would have saved me some of the other trouble I had instead.”
    His eyes fell to her breasts again. Her nipples tightened, heating under his gaze.
    “What would you have said if I’d asked you out that night?”
    “I’d have had to say no.”
    “Why?”
    “I was engaged to be married.”
    “At thirteen?” His expression of shocked surprise almost made her smile.
    “It’s not unusual among my people.”
    “So you’re married?” His forehead creased as he asked the question.
    “No.” She shook her head. “The engagement was cancelled. My grandmother needed me to stay with her, to develop my gifts.”
    “And I was the lucky man you tried them out on for the first time.” He nodded grimly, a smile struggling to break across his lips. His body still taut, emotion and motion reined tightly as he watched her.
    “It wasn’t planned.” She shrugged, again trying to absolve herself of the growing sense of responsibility gnawing at her. “My grandmother was smoking a cigarette out back. She told me to step in for her.”
    “You were nervous, weren’t you?”
    “A little.”
    “I could see that. It made me like you. Made me see you as a person. Now I can see it should have made me nervous too.”
    One fist unclenched, and he rubbed a spot on his chest with the extended fingers. The action pulled his thin, white T-shirt tight across the thick curve of his pec, and again Susana’s body responded with an alarming flare of heat.
    “You were anxious, too.” A smile flickered across her lips at the memory of the strapping young man in his white sailor suit, shifting from foot to foot, waiting for her to emerge through the door.
    “Yeah? I guess most people are when they’re about to hear what the future has in store.”
    “Only if they plan to believe what they hear.”
    “Like I said, I just came in on a dare. I sat in that chair”—he gestured toward it—“and I wondered about your breasts.” Again his eyes flicked over them, and goose bumps rose over the swollen flesh. Susana tossed her head, lifting her chin, defying her body to respond to his crude gawking.
    “You misinterpreted the information I gave you.”
    “You withheld the information I needed.”
    He fixed her with his hard stare again, dark eyes holding hers as if a beam of black light shot between them. She faltered, wilting under the heat of his gaze.
    He was right. She had cheated him. Committed a sin of omission.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “You’re sorry? Yeah? Well, I’m sorry, too.” He paused, unclenched his fists and settled his hands on his hips. The gesture enlarged him visually until he seemed to fill the entire space of the small storefront. “And I think you owe me.”
    He hissed the words quietly, and they slid into Susana’s ears, ruffling her nerves, undermining her carefully cultivated professional demeanor.
    “I owe you another reading?” She shivered. She didn’t want to do a reading for him now. Changed as he was, twisted and tormented by circumstance, she was afraid of what she’d see.
    Especially since his future had once been bound up with hers.
    “Hell, no. No more readings.” He held his head high, dark eyes unreadable in the smoky gloom. “You owe me my life back.”
    “Only you can shape