Walk on the Wild Side Read Free Page A

know she hadn’t done any damage. He’d seen the guilt on her face as he’d walked towards her—she thought she’d done that to his knee. He needed to relieve her of that burden because, despite her alternative, all-black, all-attitude couture, she was the type to have nightmares about it for weeks. A little bit of sweetness wrapped up in ‘wannabe different’ city slicker sophistication.
    But first, there was something else he had to tend to. He stood, barely resisting the urge to laugh again, and walked round the table. She stiffened as he touched her.
    â€˜Easy,’ he murmured. ‘You’ll make it worse.’
    The comb was well and truly caught—knotted in the mass of curls at the back of her head. She hadn’t realised, of course, and he heard her gasp as she did now. Amusement washed over him and he wanted to make her laugh about it, too. Except she was too busy blushing. Seeing the colour in her cheeks was good, hearing her breathing quicken was even better. So he affected her?
    Excellent. Because he was still suffering from a severelust attack. He tried to concentrate on the tangled bit of plastic but up this close he found out her hair was extremely curly and shockingly blonde and also soft and smelt flower sweet. Like her eyes, the colour was fake, but her natural shade must be reasonably light because there wasn’t any darkness showing at the roots. Or maybe she’d just had it done. Jack was used to blondes and their high-maintenance hair, but he’d never seen blonde as snow white as this. Or as messy.
    He swallowed, his mouth dry, as he bent closer to free her hair from the comb without hurting her. Her scent was all he could taste. She turned him on as if he hadn’t been turned on in a long while—and Jack was no stranger to sex.
    Well, not usually. The knee op had put paid to any and all kinds of fun for a while—both on the snow and in the bedroom. That must be the reason for this intense reaction to this woman, right? Because petite pieces of fragility like her didn’t usually do it for him. He was into strong, athletic women who could match his needs, not slim things who looked as if they’d blow over in a light wind.
    And he definitely wasn’t into overly emotional women. No to neediness, thanks very much—his lifestyle didn’t let him offer much to anyone, certainly not much in the way of emotional support. But when he’d seen the softness of her soul in those moments when she’d thought she’d hurt him, that womanly sweetness had been achingly tempting—the blinking back of the tears and the trembling lips. Yeah, her lips. Their crushed-rose colour—unlike so much else of her—was natural. Neither a glossy nor matte finish adorned them. They were full and deep and inviting all on their own.
    He’d badly wanted to kiss her feelings better.
    He wanted to do more than kiss her now. He wasimagining scooping her up in his arms—it’d be so easy, and so delightful to nibble on the delicacies hidden under that to-the-floor, funeral-march-style dress.
    He was in for an even longer spell of abstinence. That was the problem. Knowing he had another four weeks ahead of him with no chance of getting any had put sex at the forefront of his brain. That was why he was struggling to control his body in the middle of a busy café. That was why he was attracted to a woman as wrong a playmate for him as a piranha was as wrong a tank buddy for an angelfish.
    Carefully he worked the comb free. It took longer than he’d thought it would but he didn’t mind. He hadn’t known he had a touch of the masochist in him. That he’d like the torture of his fingers brushing accidentally against her and not touching how he really wanted to. He throbbed with the temptation to run his fingers right through and muss up her hair even more. Yeah, the upcoming physical rehab session was making him