Читать книгу A Nanny Named Nick - Miranda Lee - Страница 9

CHAPTER FOUR

NICK froze, embarrassment consuming him. He had an awful feeling it would also shortly consume his natural glory. Linda’s wide-eyed staring at his private parts unnerved him totally, especially when he realised they weren’t shrinking. Just the opposite, in fact.

If only she would stop looking at him like that!

But she didn’t. She kept on looking and he kept on growing. Swiftly. Startlingly.

Nick clenched his teeth down hard in his jaw, shoved Rory into his mother’s arms, then bent to sweep the towel up from the carpet. Rewrapping his loins proved somewhat difficult when he found that his hands were shaking.

Anger combined with frustration at this totally alien clumsiness. What in God’s name was the matter with him? Fancy letting some female reduce him to this!

‘If you’ve finished gawking,’ he snapped, ‘I’ll go get dressed and be on my way.’

Scowling, he whirled round and stalked back down the hallway and into the bathroom, banging the door behind him. A shave was now off the agenda. He was simply not capable of holding a razor to his throat. He was too angry, both with himself and with her.

‘Mug,’ he muttered as he began dragging on his clothes. ‘Serves you right for playing good Samaritan in the wrong town. City girls don’t know how to be grateful, only suspicious. And they have no sense of decorum!’

His anger had cooled somewhat by the time he was fully dressed; the sight of his reflection in the vanity mirror brought a rueful smile to his face. If Madam Linda thought he looked dangerous semi-naked, then wait till she got a load of him like this!

His clean top was black and body-hugging as opposed to his earlier simple white T-shirt. It looked wicked above his tight black jeans, the sleeveless style emphasising the bulging muscles in his arms.

Normally, Nick despised people who judged by appearances, but even he might not have invited the character staring at him in the mirror home for dinner. All that was missing were some tattoos to complete the picture of primitive masculine aggressiveness. An earring or two would not have gone astray as well. Even without those added touches, he could appreciate that he was still far removed from the sort of man a classy woman like Linda would normally associate with.

Not really wanting to scare her half to death, he combed his hair neatly back from his face then dragged his leather jacket on to cover his possibly menacing body. Though, damn it all, she hadn’t found a certain part of it menacing a minute or two ago. She’d ogled him like a woman starved of sex.

Which she probably was, came the interesting and provocative realisation. A woman living alone with her baby... Her long-time lover dead... Nothing sexual in her life nowadays but memories.

Hard to live on memories, Nick knew. Eventually, no matter how much you told yourself you would never look at another member of the opposite sex—let alone want them—the day invariably dawned when you did.

Linda was a young woman. Young and healthy and presumably heterosexual. Had she looked at him just now and wanted him?

Nick decided he didn’t want to know. Dave would kill him if he touched his precious sister. Hoisting his rucksack over his shoulder, he swung round and reached for the doorknob.

Linda paced the family room, trying to quieten the purple-faced Rory—not to mention her own whirling thoughts. Her face was still flaming from those ghastly moments when she hadn’t been able to drag her eyes away from Nick’s naked body, her gaze remaining riveted to his blatantly male appendages which had nowhere to hide and which had responded shamelessly to her ogling.

No, not shamelessly. Nick had obviously been annoyed and embarrassed by his involuntary arousal, whereas she was the one who’d been shameless. She’d been fascinated then excited by the sheer speed and power of his erection. He’d looked like an animal, standing there stark naked with his legs apart. A beautiful, big male animal.

The female animal in her had been stirred, then challenged by the sight of his obviously unwilling desire. And for a split second she’d wanted him as she’d wanted no other man—not even Gordon. Her mind had burned with the image of her going up to him and touching him; of her doing more than just touching ; of her leading him right to the edge till he lost all control and took her where they were, right there in the hallway.

Rory had somehow disappeared from the scene in her head and she’d imagined Nick dragging her back up and stripping her roughly before pinning her naked and panting up against the wall. He’d imprisoned her hands above her head and prised her legs apart with his before manoeuvring himself into her by then frantic flesh.

He’d moved powerfully within her with deep, voluptuous thrusts, lifting her up onto her toes and propelling her into a previously unknown world where reality receded and she was nothing but a body, searching blindly for release.

Love had nothing to do with her feelings. It wasn’t tenderness she sought but passion. And pleasure. Oh, yes, pleasure; a wild, selfish, sweet pleasure which would blot out everything, everything but the feel and smell of him taking her up against a hard, cold wall and making her moan as she had never moaned before.