The Merciless Travis Wilde. Sandra Marton

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СКАЧАТЬ she would have taken a quick step back, but the shiny black truck was right behind her.

      “The point is,” she said, trying to focus on why she was angry at him, “you shouldn’t have done what you did.”

      “Kissed you, without so much as a ‘hello.’”

      “Right. Precisely. The proper protocol, prior to intimacy—”

      Jennie stopped in mid-sentence. She sounded like an idiot. Even her alter-ego had crept away in embarrassment.

      “Never mind,” she said quickly. “It’s late. And I—”

      “Travis,” he said. “Travis Wilde.”

      She stared at him. “Pardon me?”

      He smiled. Again. And her heart jumped again.

      “My name.” His voice had gone low and husky. “I’m introducing myself. That would have been the proper protocol, wouldn’t it?”

      “Well, yes, but—”

      “And your name is …?”

      “Oh.”

      She swallowed hard. Again. She was not good at this. At male-female banter. At any of it.

      “I could call you Blondie.” He reached out, caught a strand of her hair between his fingers, smoothed its silken length. “Or Neiman Marcus.”

      “What?” Jennie looked down at herself. “Is the dress tag show—”

      “That’s how you look,” he said softly. “As if you just stepped out of their catalogue. Their Christmas catalogue, the one that always has the prettiest things in it.”

      Her knees were going to buckle.

      His voice was like a caress.

      His eyes were like hot coals.

      He was—he was just what she’d been looking for, hoping for—

      “But I’d rather call you by your real name, if you’ll tell it to me.”

      “It’s Jen … It’s Genevieve,” she whispered. “My name is Genevieve.”

      “Well, Genevieve, you did a foolish thing tonight.”

      God, she could feel herself blushing again!

      “Listen here, Mr. Wills—”

      “Wilde. Travis Wilde.”

      “Listen here, Mr. Wilde. I only let you kiss me after I realized you were going to get killed if I didn’t!”

      He chuckled.

      Even his chuckle was sexy.

      “I was talking about you going into that bar in the first place.”

      “Oh.”

      “Oh, for sure. You have any idea what kind of bunch you were dealing with back there?”

      “I—I—” Jennie sighed. “No.”

      “I didn’t think so. But it’s lucky for me you walked in.”

      “It certainly is,” she said, lifting her chin. “Or you’d be just another stain on that already-stained floor.”

      He grinned. “Yeah, but a happy stain.”

      “That’s so typical! Men and their need to assert power through dominance—”

      “Men and their need to save their tails, honey. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have bothered, but I have something going down Monday, and the last thing I need is to show up lookin’ like the winner of a bare-knuckles fight.”

      “You couldn’t have won. There were too many of them.”

      “Of course I could have won,” he said, so easily that she knew he meant it.

      A little tremor went through her.

      She’d come out tonight in search of a man. And she’d found one. But he was—he was more than she’d anticipated.

      More than handsome.

      More than sexy.

      More than macho.

      And more than everything you’d want in bed, her alter-ego purred.

      Jennie tried to step back again.

      “Well,” she said brightly, “it’s been—it’s been interesting, Mr. Wilde. Now, if you don’t mind—”

      “About those protocols,” he said, his voice low, his tone husky, “have we met them all?”

      “The what?”

      “The protocols. The ones needed before any kind of intimacy.”

      The woman named Genevieve blushed.

      Again.

      She did that, a lot.

      Travis liked it.

      Would her face and breasts turn that same shade of soft pink during sex? Would her eyes lock on his the way they were now, dark and wide but filled with passion instead confusion?

      Crazy as it was, the fate of the world seemed to hinge on learning the answer.

      “Because if we’ve met those protocols,” he said, moving closer, flattening his palms against the cab of the truck so that his arms encased her, “I’d like to take the next step.”

      “What next—what next—”

      He looked into her eyes. Looked at her lips. Gave her a second to figure out what was coming.

      “No,” she whispered.

      “Yes,” he said, and in what seemed like slow motion, he, lowered his head to hers and took her mouth.

      Her lips parted. His tongue slipped between them. Her heart banged into her throat. The taste of him, the feel of him inside her mouth …

      Ohmygod, she thought, oh—my—God!

      He groaned.

      His arms went around her.

      Hers rose and wound around his neck.

      She pressed herself against him. And gasped.

      He was hard as a rock.

      She wanted to rub against him. Wanted to move her hips against his. Wanted to—to—

      He СКАЧАТЬ