Читать книгу Long Summer Nights - Kathleen O'Reilly - Страница 8

“A QUIET TUESDAY NIGHT in Harmony Springs. Day One in this reporter’s quest to find something interesting in this picturesque town where absolutely nothing ever happens. Did Quinn need to send me on this assignment? Do I have sucker stamped on my head? Do I need to keep asking these stupid rhetorical questions?”

Jenn clicked off the phone’s voice recorder, and leaned back on the hard surface of the giant boulder. Above her was the night-dark sky. And stars. She’d heard the rumors of their existence. She’d seen pictures in books, but as a lifelong resident of New York, she’d never observed them in their natural habitat.

Out here in the solitary woods, there were other creatures in their natural habitat. She could hear them scuttling and slithering, and she told herself not to panic. Cute, furry things scuttled. Mouselike things. Mickey. Minnie. Mighty.

And then of course, there were the not-so-nice ones with devil-red eyes that glowed like the fires of hell. With large teeth that could chew on human flesh … and she could almost feel something crawling on her.

Instantly she brushed at her jeans and came away with nothing but embarrassment. Sometimes an overactive imagination was a plus, and sometimes, like now, it was a definite problem. Taking a deep, focusing breath, she stood up, and held her phone to the moon like Excalibur.

Two bars. Almost enough to make a connection.

Standing on tiptoe, she reached for the stars.

At the sight of three magical bars, she squealed with delight, nearly dislodging her feet from terra firma.

Still, the near-death experience was worth it.

Her phone’s display finally lit up, showing a map of the constellations above her head. Virgo and Centaurus. These were the twinkling constellations that were normally obliterated by the bright lights of the city. They seemed so low, so deceptively close, as if you could throw out your arms and touch them. It seemed that stars, much like New York politicians, were born to deceive.

She repeated the line in her head, liked it, and recorded it, a mental reminder of her literary prowess. And they thought journalists couldn’t write.

Below her notes, the day’s headlines crawled across the screen. All the things that happened in New York without her. A humbling experience, which proved that yes, the world did not revolve around Jenn.

But, her reporter’s brain argued, wasn’t that the whole point of being out here, at one with nature? It was a giant screw you to the concept of being at the center of everything. To say that you don’t care. To say you don’t need the rest of the world. To proclaim—a bit too loudly—that you’re satisfied with only the company of me, myself and I.

Deciding the philosophical overtones weren’t newsworthy, she sat down on the rock, reading over the day’s headlines, getting distracted by the goat-rodeo they called Albany politics. She was deep into an op-ed piece on the latest budget referendum when she heard a new noise. Not scuttling, rustling. A large rustling, then a quiet oomph.

Not alone anymore. Quickly she closed her eyes in case the creatures had returned.

“Hello,” drawled an annoyed voice. Not a mouse, she thought with relief, and opened her eyes, blinking twice in case her imagination had kicked in again.

No, not imagination. It was the uncooperative man from the inn. The same man who had dazzled her loins and piqued her curiosity. Yet no matter the pique or the dazzle, Jenn knew at a gut-deep level that this man would be another mistake.

His black hair was worn long, a man who didn’t care about the opinion of the world. Tonight the cool blue eyes were arrogant and detached, missing the burning intensity of this afternoon. His nose was Romanesque, the profile of dictators and emperors and rulers. Nothing sensitive there. It was only the slight dimple in the center of his chin that made her wonder about the accuracy of her assessment.

But all those warning signs didn’t mean she couldn’t have fantasies, didn’t remember the shot of excitement that chased through her this afternoon. The marvelous thing about dreams was that they were harmless, as long as you remembered they were only dreams.

Mr. Habitual Scowler sat down next to her, long legs stretched out in front of him, and she told herself there was nothing remotely dreamy about him.

“Your phone is very distracting,” he said in a completely undreamy voice.

Surprised, Jenn looked at the innocent device in her hand. Yes, cell phone users were capable of many sins. Since she was intolerant of most of them, Jenn knew that both she was and her phone were being unjustly accused. “My phone?”

“I was trying to work, and I kept seeing this flash from my window. I told myself to ignore it, but I couldn’t. So I walked over, looked out onto the normally darkened night sky, and I saw you sitting up here, performing some odd ritual.”

“You could have ignored me,” she pointed out.

“Yes, but then I kept telling myself that you might be some pagen worshipper, and might get naked and things went downhill from there. I couldn’t work, and I needed to work, so I climbed up here to ask you to return to your cabin where you belong.”

Immediately she realized who he was, and her heart bumped happily. Never a good sign. “You’re in cabin number three, aren’t you?”

“You’ve been spying on me?” he asked, sounding not as disturbed by that thought as most normal people would be.

“I don’t spy,” she said, defending herself. “I was warned not to disturb you.”

“Too late. You’ve disturbed me.” He pushed a hand through his hair, disturbing that, as well. It only added to his sexy quotient, and Jenn tried not to smile.

“I’m sure many mental health professionals would tell you that you were already disturbed long before I wandered onto this rock. And by the way, innocent rock-wandering would not be considered a disturbance by the population at large.”

“At this campground, I’m the sole population at large. It’s not a busy place.”

“And now there’s me. I’m looking at the stars, and I’m going to continue gazing at the stars, so if I’m disturbing you, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to stop.”

“You’re not gazing at the stars. You’re gazing at your phone. There’s a perfectly good sky up there. You should try it.”

“I don’t know all the constellations. I’m learning. I suppose you know them all,” she asked carefully. He didn’t look like a romantic stargazer, she thought, not wanting anything else to add to his sexy quotient.

“No,” he answered, and she sighed with relief. Although secretly she admitted that she liked the lack of fog in his eyes.

She pointed to the stars on her phone. “If you had a star app, you could learn them.”

“Spoken like the commercially brainwashed American consumer that you are. Obsessed with convenience, purveyor of a thousand bits of minutia to manage an already hurried world. Devices that fool you into believing that you can rule time and have some control over your life. And in the end, those very things only make you a slave instead of the master.”

Instinctively she knew it wouldn’t be smart to laugh. If he hadn’t sounded so completely sure of himself, she might have felt sorry for him. Instead, because perhaps there was a shred of uncomfortable truth, she crossed her arms over her chest and raised her brows in her best imitation of smug superiority. “This coming from a man who left his solitary cabin and climbed up on a rock, solely in hopes of a little gratuitous nudity? You’re in no position to cast stones.”

Sadly he didn’t look the least bit ashamed. “I’m a mere man. Tethered to the weakness of the flesh and damned to experience life at its worst.”

That was the problem with weakening flesh, she thought, wishing that this time her body could be a little smarter. Instead she was noticing the long, length of his thighs, the rangy breadth of his shoulders and the sexy way he looked at her when he didn’t want to look at her. She’d never realized conflicted men could be so arousing.

“Who said that?” she asked.

“It’s no one you’d ever heard of.”

“He sounds overwrought.”

“That’s the polite term,” he said, his teeth flashing in the dark, and she was shocked at how normal he looked. How appealing. How completely unromantic and yet still hot.

“Why are you here?” she asked, now completely overwrought herself.

“Because I thought you were going to take off your clothes. I thought you would look nice without them.”

Her eyes narrowed only because if he asked nicely, she might have considered. “You think that line will fool me? Leisure Suit Lothario doesn’t come easy for you. In fact, you probably had to scrape the dregs of your social vocabulary to come up with that one. Ergo, the actual answer to my question is even worse than being branded a mere man.”

As insults went, it was convoluted and scattered, mainly because her mind was still stuck back at taking off her clothes.

He looked at her sideways, his eyes amused. “What are you? Psychologist, or just nosy?”

“I’m a reporter.”

At her words, the change in him was visible. The humor in his eyes faded, and his mouth tightened to a forbidding line. “Bottom-feeder.”

Jenn was used to the lack of respect. As a journalist, she had trained herself to be immune. “You are a charmer. I bet your complimentary ways go over well with all the ladies. What do you have against reporters?”

“Do you want specifics, or are the broad, generalized sins of the species enough?”

“Specifics. I like dealing in truths.”

“There is no truth, only whatever is convenient to whomever is speaking.”

She didn’t like his words, didn’t like his bitterness, didn’t like that he was correct. Since she was a kid she’d wanted to be a reporter, but she wasn’t blind to the narrow line that a journalist had to walk. Integrity versus news.

Instinctively she changed the subject to something safer. Like sex. “Is this your idea of seduction? It’s not working,” she muttered, relieved when the tight smile appeared again.

“No. It’s my idea of trying to get you off this rock.”

He looked strangely content for a man who was disturbed, but she understood. He provoked her, but she could feel the answering thrum in her blood, the tightening of her skin, the brooding pulse between her thighs.

Frowning, she crossed her legs and his eyes followed the movement with a knowing awareness that didn’t help the situation. “That didn’t work with the pilgrims at Plymouth. It’s not going to work with me. I have an assignment. I’m going to do my assignment, and I’m sorry if my presence disturbs your man-in-the-bubble existence. Actually, no, I’m not sorry. It’s a lot of fun to irritate you.”

He looked at her, his eyes a little too stunned. “Do you clip the wings off butterflies, as well?”

It was fascinating the way he drifted into insults so easily, using them like a shield, parrying anything that cut too close. “A butterfly, are we?” she said, raising a faux superior brow.

“I like to think in objectifying metaphors, dehumanizing as much as possible. It makes dealing with people much easier. Generally I like to avoid most people.”

Not quite sure how to answer that one, not quite sure why he seemed content to sit with her on the rock, Jenn elected to remain silent, her legs firmly locked.

It was a beautiful night not to be thinking about sex. The sounds of nature weren’t quite so forbidding when he was beside her. Somewhere an owl was hooting, and she realized she’d never heard the hoot of an owl. Crickets played and the stars shimmered in a velvet sky. When he didn’t think she was looking, he would glance at the display on her phone, matching the constellation to the one’s overhead. But she was always secretly looking, always watching him.

She liked him, she admitted. He was the best sort of man. Brutally honest and unafraid to speak his mind, dark and twisted such as it was. But it was that honesty that was refreshing.

He leaned back on the uneven surface of the stone, his chest rising steadily, his face turned up to the sky. He had a nice chest. He chose to hide it, much like he seemed to hide everything, a complete opposite of most of the other men she met who wanted to drone on about every aspect of their existence as if she couldn’t wait to hang on each and every second of their day. Frankly a little mystery could be very sexy.

Maybe she should do this. Maybe she should have an affair. Maybe she should lean over four inches and kiss him. Feel that sharp mouth on hers. Slide her hands under the buttons of his shirt, and see if his heart would beat faster. At the moment, so deep into her own dreams, she thought that it would.

“What’s your assignment?” he asked, which was the very worst question to ask while she was contemplating seduction.

Turning back to the matters at hand, which weren’t nearly as exciting as her current thoughts, she wiped sweaty palms on her jeans. “Harmony Springs. The Summer Nights Festival. The city-goers’ annual mecca to a quiet upstate community that offers very little in comparison to the myriad wonders of the five boroughs, so why the heck do all these people come here?”

Perhaps he noted the snark in her voice. “Which do you work for? Fear-mongering scandal-chaser with a penchant for yellow journalism or overpriced glossies perpetuating an idea of beauty or wealth that no ordinary person could achieve? “

She looked at him sharply, surprised by the anger. These days people were cynical about government, business and international diplomacy. But the media had been defanged long ago.

“I work for a newspaper. Large. Manhattan-based. Many Pulitzers among the staff. You probably haven’t heard of it.”

Beneath the sarcasm, she still felt the thrill, the fierce pride in her job, which warred with her marginalized female propensity to remain humble. Usually the pride won out.

His mouth curved, and not in a happy way. “They give the Pulitzer to every journalistic rabble-rouser who spent their college years watching All the President’s Men.”

After all her bragging—completely deserved in her eyes—the man didn’t look nearly as impressed as she’d hoped. Secretly she wanted to make that disdainful gaze flash with admiration and respect. Some of it was her own defensiveness, her own not quite deserved pride in her career. And some of it was because he belonged to the world of the intelligentsia and the literati. It was a nut she wanted to crack, a place she wanted to belong. At the paper, the halls were filled with people who dropped rhetorical devices at the drop of a hat. Instinctively she knew he lived in that high-brow existence, as well. His careful assessment of his surroundings, his use of language, his absolute moral certainty. So, who was he?

“I’m assuming you’re not a reporter. What is your job?”

He waited a long time before replying. But eventually he met her eyes casually. Too casually. “Writer.”

“Journalist?” she asked, not because she believed he was, but merely to see him dump all over the profession again. There was much to be gleaned from a person’s prejudices.

“Fiction. Not so different.”

A writer? Sure, there was something bohemian about him, but he seemed a little more intense than the unambitious dreamers who sat alone in their cave, waiting for the muse to come down and strike them with brilliance. No, this man would beat his muse senseless before he depended on someone else for his words.

He belonged somewhere else. Like Brooklyn, for instance.

“Why are you here?” she asked. “Why aren’t you out among the teeming masses, mingling with the great unwashed dregs of humanity, obsessed with the eight million stories in the naked city?”

“Do you have to keep bringing up naked?”

He looked so upset at the idea of weakness, so worried that he was actually afflicted with something as common as lust, that Jenn wanted to shout childishly, “Naked, naked, naked,” or perhaps, less childishly, to rip off her T-shirt and see what he’d do. Prudently she abstained from both and changed the subject.

“You’re here to write? No, strike that. I still don’t get you. How you can stay here without going bonkers? Don’t you want to know what’s happening in the world?”

“Are people still getting robbed, are hurricanes still blowing, is the country still poised on the edge of ruin?”

Okay, he had a point, but it amazed her that anyone could stay so unplugged from the events of the world, the personalities, the happenings that affected them all. He didn’t seem as though he’d be disinterested in the world. Maybe he didn’t want to think that way, but she’d seen him watching her phone, she watched him at the inn earlier.

“But it’s news,” she protested, speaking out in defense of the American media institution. How could anyone ignore … everything?

“It’s not news. It’s old. Old as history, old as time.”

“Old as sex,” she contributed, noting the blush, pleased at his response.

“You promised,” he protested. It was halfhearted, and his eyes warmed with lust and want, watching her the same way he watched everything else. Not liking it, not comfortable, but unable to stop.

“I didn’t promise. You assumed,” she answered, flirting dangerously, because she didn’t want him to stop. She liked the want in his eyes, the way it made her heart pump with courage instead of fear. She liked the powerful heat in her blood.

Suddenly he was very close, a whisper’s breath away. His legs were nearly brushing hers, the muscles in his arms tense with frustration. All she had to do was move one inch …

“Woman, you are the gate of Hell, the temptress of the forbidden tree. You are the first deserter of the divine law.” The words were low and raw and she’d never felt so completely aroused in her life.

“Cecil, again?” she whispered, inching closer.

“No, Tertullian.” His eyes met hers, fogged with desire. For her.

“Anytime,” she whispered, feeling the curling tension inside her, the budded nipples straining against her T-shirt, begging for attention.

His astute gaze rested on her T-shirt, and his mouth strained as well, causing her nipples to harden in a completely Pavlovian manner.

“I should go,” he announced, moving away from her, and she told herself she was glad. Relieved, even.

“The work is calling,” she rationalized, trying to keep her mind focused on important things like her future career in journalism, instead of the length and width of his sexual prowess.

“Yes,” he agreed, but he still wasn’t leaving, and he showed very little intent of going so, and she could feel the panic growing inside her, in direct proportion to the needy urge to lean in a little closer, ease into that completely planned yet seemingly arbitrary moment when two lips collide.

Do not fall for this, she reminded herself. Ignore the sexy man with trouble simmering in his eyes. He wanted sex, his body nearly hummed from it, and unlike the twenty-four-year-old drummer with a passion for cartoons, this one would give her a night full of screaming orgasms, and then break her heart, most likely at the same time because he seemed to be that talented.

“Who are you?” she asked, thinking that if he was going to break her heart, she wanted to know his name.

“Aaron.”

“Aaron who?”

“Smith.”

“Really?” she drawled, not bothering to hide the sarcasm.

“It’s actually Jenkins-Smith, but that seemed pretentious, so I just use Aaron Smith.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Smith. I’m Jennifer Dade, and from now on, I’ll try to stay out of your way.”

It was a desperate hint that she wasn’t in his way, that he was sitting on her rock, and if he truly wanted all that solitude and privacy that he kept blustering about, then he’d have to act a little less … stimulated. Not that she was complaining. Much.

“I should go,” he repeated, but he moved closer, and his eyes were on her mouth, and Jenn felt herself go hot, then cold. “Normally I like to ignore everyone else. It makes my life much more comfortable.”

“Why can’t you ignore me?” she asked, because she needed him to. She did not need this, but she couldn’t ignore it. She couldn’t ignore him.

He brushed a gentle finger across her brows. “You look at me with those busy eyes, always digging for your version of the truth, but grasping for the first clichéd insights into the psyche because it’s easy and it makes your deadline, and it doesn’t matter that there isn’t always some three-point paragraph that explains who we are. You think there’s always an answer, always a reason, but sometimes people are simply the way they are.”

It was not what she wanted to hear, not what she had hoped to hear, and all those roiling emotions finally erupted. “And that’s why you can’t ignore me, because you just can’t? The Twinkie defense? I had to be me. I was born to be bad. No, there’s always a reason. You just don’t want to tell me.”

She thought he was going to leave. Thought she’d finally done it. Finally chased him away, but instead he looked with all the wretched want in his eyes. All the lonely hunger, combined with the same painful recklessness that she felt in herself.

“I wrote about you. This afternoon, I came home and spewed out reams of pages about someone with your face, your eyes, your hair.”

“How did it end?” she asked, breathlessly tempted by the drama of it.

“You threw yourself in front of a train.”

“Why?”

“You are the mariner’s albatross, Ahab’s white whale, the magnificent obsession. In the end, there was no alternative. You had to die,” he said, sounding miserable and baffled.

But then his fingers reached out, touched her hand, such a small gesture, such a telling gestured. Sometimes sex was scratching an itch, and sometimes sex was the very human need to touch someone. All the phones, all the gadgets, all the machines in the world that mimicked human contact, and yet nothing came close to the absoluteness of sex.

“You like me, don’t you?” she asked, twining her fingers through his, locking them there.

“I don’t want to like you,” he admitted. “You’re very happy and sure of yourself and you like machines without souls.”

“I don’t want to like you either,” she admitted, as well.

“But you do?” he asked. His eyes met hers, uncertain and unhappy and still hoping that she would say yes.

“Women don’t like men like you,” she said because she knew that unhappily hopeful was bad. Very, very bad. It spoke of vulnerabilities, and wounds, and manly suffering that had plagued women for thousands of years.

“What sort of man is that?”

If he were any other man, she’d have thought he was fishing, needing a stroke to his ego, but he didn’t have those insecurities. Tragically like every other woman before her, she was falling for it in spades. “You want some three-point analysis that sums you up in fifty words or less?”

“Yes.”

She chose the less dangerous answer. “You’re brilliant and hurt and your writing draws you into humanity, but humanity repels you at the same time, and you can’t reconcile those two aspects and it frustrates you.”

“Do you know what frustrates me?” he asked.

“What?”

“How badly I want to kiss you. I hate your mouth. I love your mouth. When you talk all that blather, it’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Why don’t you kiss me?”

“Because it won’t stop.”

“I know,” she said with a smile.

Then his lips covered hers, and she could feel the frustration in his mouth, his tongue, in the way his fingers anchored her face.

Her blood started to simmer and heat, and the feel of his tongue inside her mouth, and its furious demands, was the very best sort of pain. His hands fumbled, pulling her closer, her breasts to his torso, and her fingers tangled in the dark silk of his hair. Her phone, her prized phone, fell uselessly away, and once again Jenn was swept up in the very things that were bad.

Oh, but this. How could it be bad? He was whispering to her, using words that were neither pretty nor poetic, but the unfocused rasp in his voice, the hard pressure of his touch was hitting the spot right between her thighs.

Her shirt was open, and his mouth was on the thin silk of bra, licking and sucking, and telling her how tempting she was. The hungry pull was like shocks of electricity direct to her chest, and she heard her own moan. Impatiently he shoved the fabric aside, touching her, his mouth on her nipple once again, and Jenn was glad for the cover of darkness, for the cloud of the moon.

Mistakes I Made on Summer Vacation, Part VI. The One with the Great …

She reached for his fly, stroked him through the thick denim fabric. She knew there would be a Part VII, VIII and IX to the movie.

He thrust into her hand, and the movement was so marvelously wicked, so raw. Then he pulled at her own zipper, restless fingers sliding low between her panties, lower still. One finger flicked at her, long, insistent and aiming to please, and she stopped worrying, stopped thinking, focused on the pleasure.

The stars watched as he turned her, pulled her back against him, and she lay on him, his body cushioning her from the rock. His erection prodded her against her ass, and she wiggled against it, against him, but he stilled her, because apparently Mr. Wilderness Adventure had other ideas.

Soon she realized what they were.

His hands brushed her shirt off to the side, pulled at her bra until it hung off to one side, and then he slid her jeans low on her hips, and all her pertinent parts were exposed to the air. While his mouth nuzzled her neck, his hands roamed over her like an explorer and she was his map.

Once again his finger thrust inside her, plunging deep, slick with her desire. Her pelvis tilted up into his hand, and her ass rode against him, and it was exquisite.

“You see the sky,” he whispered low in her ear, “the moon, the stars.”

She opened her eyes, blinked the world into focus and whimpered a yes.

“You don’t need a phone for this,” he said, pushing into her once again, and she wanted to laugh, but it was too hard to breathe, too talk, to do anything but ride with his hand.

Back and forth his busy finger slid over her slit, finding her clit, stroking there, circling there, her body weeping with delight. She bucked against him, feeling the hard ridge at her ass, and he moaned, but she was pinned against him, his hands keeping her down, and the hard torture continued.

He seemed to like watching her squirm, liked to hear her whine and complain. Part sadist, that’s what he was, because his hand was destroying her. His movements were faster, and she could feel him grinding against her ass, which only infuriated her, but all she could think of was chasing the high, chasing the feeling, chasing the stars.

She closed her eyes, her body arching, and her hips tilted up, and he laughed at her, and she wanted to make him pay, but not right now.

Right now, she only wanted to …

Come.

There. Instantly her breathing resumed, and her body fell against him, sated and sleepy, and she wanted more. She wanted him inside her. She wanted this.

Morning-after regrets be damned. Hell, great sex would probably inspire her to write a better story. Snag the Pulitzer. Show Little Lizette exactly how it was done.

With ethics. With integrity. With the feel of a hard man thrusting inside her.

Happily she turned, attacked his mouth with all the excitement building inside her.

But then he pulled back. The man who was going to help her secure her job pulled away.

Bastard.

She was furious that he was able to stop. That he had the discipline, the ability. And once again, she was left to find her focus.

Angry at him, at herself, at the way her jeans were unzipped, and her shirt was half torn, she stood and picked up her phone, because frankly, at the moment, she preferred it.

“I have a job. It’s very important to me, and it depends on me pulling a rabbit out of a hat, and I don’t even know if I can do it, but I have to try. If you sidetrack me, I will spend the next two weeks flat on my back, screaming my lungs out in orgasmic ecstasy. I don’t need that. I have to spend the my time searching out whatever godforsaken newsworthy truths abound in these hills. I will not do this.”

“You’re right,” he agreed easily, much more than she wanted. His eyes were shadowed in the dark, and she wished she could see them, wished she could see whether this was truth or a lie.

Not that she cared.

“I know I’m right. Now go,” she told him because this was her rock. This was her place. He didn’t want the stars or the night. He wanted his mangy cabin in the woods, so he could have it. But right now, he was going to have to prove to her that he could leave her. That he could leave the promise of sex, the promise of the human touch that she wanted to badly.

Slowly he got to his feet, the moon casting him in silver, and he shoved an unsteady hand through his hair. At that moment, she thought she had him. She thought he would admit defeat because he kept staring at her mouth, at her face, and his normally aloof eyes were still fogged with desire, and it was the most romantic thing she’d ever seen.

But in the end, he turned and swore, and she was alone on her rock, exactly as she’d asked.

After he disappeared, Jenn picked up her phone, prepared to get lost in the stars. Sadly after he had gone, the stars seemed to disappear, as well.

BACK IN HIS CABIN, Aaron pulled off his shirt, dragged off his jeans and stalked out to the lake. It was a rare moment when he yearned for the privacy of a cold shower. She had done this to him, and at the moment, the lake was all he had. The water was icy cold, enough to freeze a man’s desire, diminish his libido.

Didn’t work.

Shit.

Aaron lectured himself as he swam from one shore to the other, his arms stretching as far as they could. He didn’t know anything about her. Only knew she was a reporter and that she was here to write the story of her life. A story, she so candidly admitted, about which she had no subject or no plan. No, she expected her story to hit her between her curious eyes, or perhaps, even more serendipitously, she wanted the damn story to squander itself between her creamy thighs like some sordid porn flick, exploding in his face like old history.

A reporter?

And stupid moron that he was, all he could do was flutter around her like a mindless moth, risking his existence for the light of the flame. He’d nearly cracked open his head, and did he stop touching her? Shouldn’t he have been smart enough to walk away? Oh, hell no. Instead, she ended up being the one lecturing him on the problems of a liaison. Liaison. Such a pompous word for such a basic need. A man’s insane compulsion to spend a moment with a woman in exchange for his soul.

His arms cut through the water, his legs pumping until his muscles were on fire. Much smarter to work himself into exhaustion.

All he could think about was her splayed on the rock, nude, her arms reaching for him like some goddess of the earth. She, who worshipped at the altar of communication and technology, instead of the pleasures of the flesh.

Dammit.

The cold water was killer on his skin, completely useless on his dick. As he neared the shore of his cabin, Aaron dove under the water, then came up, before his feet settled on the unsteady shallows. He shook out his hair like a mongrel dog, and stalked toward the grass, feeling his head throb with every step and not caring. A concussion would be preferable to life-altering lust.

When he got to the dirt path, his still-tormented body stopped and turned to face the woman nearly hidden in the trees. Slim, with moonstruck hair and starlight eyes.

Aaron felt his body swell, his mouth dry, and he idiotically imagined that he could hear the shallow rasp of her breath.

His curse was loud and intended to chase her away, but she didn’t move, as if she expected him to run to her, to plunder her, ludicrously believing that he was incapable of restraint.

In spite of everything he knew, every mistake he’d learned from, every calculated step that he prided himself on, still, still he wanted to taste her again, absorb her undaunted breath, and gulp in great, greedy gulps of her being. She, with the bright, eloquent eyes that desired him, that mocked him, that dared him.

Right, he assured himself, while his merry cock gave truth to the lie. Still lying to himself, still believing himself completely in command, he took one hungry step toward her, toward the siren’s whisper of her allure, but then, because he wouldn’t go back to that life, sanity resumed. He stopped himself, putting his well-tended restraint back firmly in its place.

Her swollen mouth curved, twitched, because she knew what it cost him to walk away. But no matter.

Soulless, heartless, he made his way back to his cabin, pride and self-control precisely back in place.

JENN STAGGERED BACK against the trunk of the nearest tree, because she needed to stay standing, and she needed to breathe.

She’d never seen a man more beautifully built, more perfectly arranged. He had no accordion abs sculpted from a love affair with weights. He had no bowling-ball biceps artfully crafted from tedious curls. No, he was lean and loose-limbed and heavily aroused.

Oh, that was the worst. He was thick and powerful, and she could feel him between her thighs, inside her, and she wanted that, wanted him.

She rubbed her arms, feeling the night breeze on her skin, warm and damp. The air had hovered around him, steamed with his desire.

In the city, men didn’t want like that, they didn’t ache with it. They didn’t suffer with the very thought of it. Something out here stripped away the polish from the surface, or maybe it wasn’t this place. Maybe it was only him.

Aaron.

She’d come to his cabin to apologize, at least that was the story she’d invented, but then she heard the sounds from the lake. Safe behind the cover of the trees, she watched him swim, watching all that untapped energy.

It was unnerving. It was arousing.

She was in such big trouble. Instinctively she knew he was a mistake. Yes, she’d had more than her share of them.

Even when she tried for safe and easy, it was still a mistake. For example, the senior financial analyst from Tribeca, with the great apartment and nervous smile. There was no women’s magazine that would call him a Dating Don’t—unless it was Playgirl. To the uneducated eye, he appeared completely normal and tending to boring. Two dates later she learned that the nervous smile was due to a compulsive tendency to shoplift. He’d stopped in a drugstore for aspirin, and she’d nearly been arrested in the process.

Oh, sure, the cop had been very nice and understanding with flirty eyes. In fact, the cop was so nice that he’d let Jenn off with only her promise to call him. If she hadn’t been careful she wouldn’t have noticed the wedding ring on his finger.

Jerk.

But the cop was different from the man she’d met today. Aaron wasn’t flirty, wasn’t fun and would never pretend. Hide, yes, but there was something that drew her to him….

Still not being smart, her eyes searched out cabin number three, nearly hidden in the woods, a dim light in the window. Not an invitation. Not even close. She heard a furious clacking sound, fingers attacking the typewriter keys.

A typewriter?

Unable to resist, she smiled.

The torture of it suited him, with no room for mistakes or edits. No. Whatever words he allowed on the page would have to be perfection.

Feeling far from perfection herself, she went back to her lonely cabin number five. There she pulled on her favorite T-shirt, falling back on her uncomfortable mattress, still feeling the hard fingers on her breast, the burn of his kiss.

That night, she didn’t worry about mice or snakes. Instead she dreamed of a man with passion-fogged eyes.