Good Time Girl. Candace Schuler

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Please. Just touch me. Touch—”

      “Well, hot damn, would you look at that.” The voice rang out across the parking lot, boisterous and male. “Yahoo! Ride ’em, cowboy!”

      The two people sprawled on the hood of the Mustang stiffened, stilled in a frozen tableau of passion rudely interrupted. Tom’s hand was under her skirt, inside her leopard-print panties, a millimeter from where she needed it to be. Roxanne’s fingers were clamped around his wrist, the nails biting into his flesh in a futile effort to guide him to the right spot.

      “Come on, Hank, honey.” It was a woman’s voice, high-pitched and giggly. “It ain’t polite to stare.”

      “Well, hell, darlin’, it ain’t polite to do the wild thing in public, either, but—”

      “Come on, Hank. Let’s just go inside. I want to dance.”

      They could hear Hank grumbling but he went, his boot heels crunching in the gravel as he followed “darlin’” into the honky-tonk. The door to Ed Earl’s creaked open, spilling music and light out into the parking lot, then closed again, surrendering the night to the garish pink glow of the flamingos on the roof.

      Roxanne bit back a strangled whimper of frustration and loosened her grip on Tom’s wrist, hating the loudmouthed cowboy and his giggling girlfriend with her whole heart. She’d been so close. So tantalizing close! All she’d needed was one more second. Just one more measly little second and she knew her good-looking, dangerous cowboy would have taken her all the way to paradise.

      Tom swore ripely and withdrew his hand from Roxanne’s panties, silently thanking God or whoever was in charge of looking out for damn fools that Hank and his darlin’ hadn’t come by two minutes later. He’d been that close—that close—to unbuttoning the fly of his Wrangler and giving it to her right there on top the car. Two minutes more—hell, less than two minutes!—he’d have been bare-assed, his jeans around his knees, thrusting into her with no more thought for time and place than a stallion covering a mare.

      And no cowboy yahooing in the parking lot would have stopped him until he’d gotten them where they both wanted to go.

      Even now, it was a near thing. His control—such as it was—wouldn’t survive another close encounter. The next time he put his hands on her, he wouldn’t stop until both of them were naked, sweaty, and too exhausted to do more than moan in satisfaction. And, damn it, they needed a bed and some privacy for that!

      “Come on, Slim.” He stepped back and took hold of both her hands, pulling her upright. “Let’s get the hell out of here before we get ourselves arrested.”

      Bemused, befuddled, her body humming with unfulfilled desires, her brain fogged by unsatisfied lust, Roxanne slid obligingly, even eagerly, off the fender of the car—and then just stood there, staring up at him with a soft, besotted expression on her face. Lord, he was good-looking. And sexy. And she wanted him so much. So very much. More than she’d ever wanted anything or anyone in her entire life. She swayed toward him, her face raised, her lips parted, her eyes drifting closed.

      He took a quick step back and dropped her hands. “No.”

      Her eyes snapped open, widened at his abrupt, almost-biting tone.

      “We lock lips again and, I swear, I’ll hoist you right back up on the hood of this car and finish it,” he warned, his voice low and soft and strained. “Every last cowboy in the bar could come tromping out to watch and I wouldn’t stop. Not until we were both too tired to move. And maybe not even then.”

      Roxanne smiled beatifically, thrilled to the core by his ragged admission. “I wouldn’t want you to stop,” she said, her voice as ragged, as strained, as his. “I didn’t want you to stop before.”

      Tom gulped audibly and his hands fisted at his sides.

      The jolt of pure female sexual power that surged through her at that small, telling gesture was utterly intoxicating, adding another layer to her simmering sexual excitement. No man had ever threatened her with ravishment before. No man had ever had to fight to restrain himself from carrying out that threat, either. It made her feel irresistible. Invincible. Intensely, totally female. At that precise moment, good girl Roxanne Archer disappeared completely. In her place was good-time girl Roxy.

      And Roxy was hot.

      Roxy was itchy.

      Roxy wanted a man—this man—and didn’t care who knew it.

      She tilted her head, looking up at him from under provocatively lowered lashes, and gave him the same slow, seductive come-to-mama smile that had drawn him to her in the bar. But this time there was no calculation in it, no planning or plotting. She was acting on pure feminine instinct. “I guess we’d better do as you suggested, then, shouldn’t we?” she said, and licked her lips. Slowly.

      Tom made a low growling noise and took a careful step back, away from her and the temptation she so blatantly offered.

      Roxanne’s smile turned positively feline. Her eyes glowed. Without shifting her gaze from his, she reached down with exaggerated slowness and slid the first two fingers of her right hand into the pocket of her skirt.

      “The key,” she said, and held the plastic Hertz key ring up in front of his face with the key dangling. “To the car,” she added, when he just stood there, staring at it as if he’d never seen a key before. “So we can get the hell out of here before we get arrested,” she prompted.

      When he still made no move to take it, she reached out, hooked the tip of one long red fingernail on the edge of his shirt pocket, pulled it away from his chest and dropped the key inside. “You drive,” she said, and then turned and sauntered around the hood of the car to the passenger side, hips swaying seductively, glossy red nails trailing over the glossy red car. She made a show of getting into the car, affording him a leisurely, heart-stopping view of her cleavage as she bent over to pluck his Stetson off the floor mat, snuggling her butt into the soft leather of the seat, adjusting the hem of her minuscule skirt over her bare legs with a languid, caressing gesture, as if she enjoyed the feel of her own fingers on her skin.

      Tom stood stock-still, watching her, unable to move, unable to respond, unable to speak, as dumb-struck as a wet-behind-the-ears, peach-fuzz cowboy who’d just been tossed on his head by a bronc and still hadn’t got his breath back yet.

      She set his Stetson on her head, adjusting it so that it set, low and sexy, over her forehead, then tilted her head and looked up at him from under the brim. The invitation in her eyes was blatant, unashamed, unwavering, with nothing held back, nothing hidden. She smiled seductively, slowly, and licked her lips again.

      Damn, she was…she was… Hell, he didn’t know what she was!

      Except gorgeous.

      And hot.

      And so damned sexy it made his insides ache and his palms sweat.

      One look, that’s all it had taken. One long, slow, hot-eyed look from a tall, cool glass of water, and he’d wanted to grab and take and possess. He had grabbed and taken and—very nearly, anyway—possessed. And that surprised him. Shocked him, actually. He wasn’t normally a man with a short fuse. Ask anybody who knew him and they’d tell you Tom Steele was one careful hombre. He took his time. He considered his options. He weighed all the pros and cons. Steady, that was Tom Steele. Not a man to rush off half-cocked, СКАЧАТЬ