Reckless Read Free Page B

mind as he watched her savor it, eyes closed, all concentration focused on the task. Another prickling wave of desire washed down his thighs. A little more insistent this time.
    â€œAre you flirting with me, Doctor?”
    She smiled. “Maybe a little. Isn’t that what one does at these things?”
    She made it sound so harmless and innocent and simple. He’d forgotten innocent pleasures even existed and he was suddenly quite glad to realize they still did. “I guess it is.” Impulsively, maybe because she made him laugh, he held out his hand. “In that spirit, I think you should dance with me and let me flirt back.”
    She frowned. “I’m not much of a dancer.”
    â€œIt’s easy.” He stood up, still patiently holding out his hand. “Just follow me.”
    She hesitated for a moment, just long enough to make Jake want to reconsider. He wasn’t kidding himself for a second. He wanted to get laid, and this was the woman his body wanted, no matter how inappropriate it was. Or impossible. He couldn’t go around sleeping with the local doctor.
    Plus, in his current mood, it was dangerous to give in to any whim. Once he had her softness close to him, he wouldn’t be thinking about appropriate or inappropriate. He’d be thinking about how to seduce her.
    Bad idea. Even Jake had some honor. He stuck to the fast, brittle women his mother despised, simply because they didn’t want anything more than he did—a quick, impersonal roll in the hay. Ramona, with her soft eyes and plush warmth, was not the same kind of woman at all.
    But before he could sit back down, she took his hand and rose gracefully. “I hope you don’t fall down from exhaustion,” she said.
    â€œYou can hold me up,” he replied, and led her onto the floor.

Chapter 2
    R amona followed Jake out to the small square cleared for dancing, all too aware of the eyes that followed their progress. She’d seen the measuring examination of the women here, many of them the kind of woman Jake was known to enjoy.
    When he stopped in front of her, waiting for her to catch up, she felt a strange, quick swoop of dizziness. She wished she were wearing something besides the unflattering bridesmaid’s dress. She wished she were tall and lean and elegant, with a swath of butter-colored hair. She wished she had spent her youth making small talk instead of buried in her studies, so now she would know what to say to catch this big, beautiful man’s attention for more than a moment.
    But because she had no illusions, she simply smiled up at him and moved into the circle of his arms.
    She tipped her head back to look at him. “I hope I don’t trip you.”
    He simply shook his head, not even a faint pretend smile breaking the graveness of his dark face. Against black lashes, his eyes were almost painfully blue, that bright, rare shade that defied naming. Only the mountain sky on a hot summer day in the mountains ever came close to that color.
    â€œDancing is just two bodies moving,” he said. “Relax and let yourself feel me.”
    Feel me . An image of her putting her hands on his skin rose up with vivid and erotic insistence—a vision all the more surprising because she simply didn’t get those kinds of thoughts very often. Her introduction to sex had been violent, and it had been a long time afterward before she’d even allowed a man to hold her hand. Once in a while, she saw a movie that made her wonder what it would be like to feel passion, or she dreamed of a man whose face never came clear, a man of vast tenderness who disrobed and worshiped her as if she were an angel.
    But Jake was real and male, and smelled not only of his cologne, but of a distinctly earthy note that she thought must be that skin she thought of touching. Beneath the fabric of his coat, she felt the muscles of his arm moving easily, and she wondered what color his skin was