Harlequin - Jennifer Greene by Hot Touch (read full novel txt) 📕

wolf teeth. She leaned forward, closing her eyes, feeling his heartbeat, feeling the heat of his skin, feeling his pain…and then going for it. Temples. Eyes.

Frontal lobe. The sides of his neck, under his chin, his whole face. Then into his scalp.

Two minutes passed. Then five. Seven more minutes passed before he even started letting go…but then he was hers. Her heart suddenly quickened with a rhythm she couldn’t shake. She never got that feeling with her babies. Never got it with her elderly clients. Touch was sensual and healing and fulfilling, and she needed—liked—to help people. But it wasn’t sexual.

It was so, so sexual with him. Intuiting where to touch, how to move, wasn’t just about evaluating his pain. It was about sensing what he wanted. What he liked. What moved him.

Even though the pain finally eased, he didn’t open his eyes for a long time. Silently she pulled up the sides on the massage table so he wouldn’t accidentally fall, but still she stood there, knowing he wasn’t totally asleep yet. His body fought sleep, naturally wary that if he let go completely, the pain could steal up on him again.

At one point he murmured, “I just want you to know…I’m not marrying anyone. But if I were…it’d be you.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s what all the guys say,” she quipped easily, but her voice was still a careful whisper.

He fell silent again, but not for long enough. “I almost forgot. You warned me before about all those men you have in your life.”

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She hadn’t warned him. She’d just said what he was undoubtedly already thinking because of her being a masseuse, but she let it go. Seconds ticked by. Then minutes. Finally his breathing turned deep and even. She watched his chest rise and fall, watched the thick furrow between his brows smooth out, watched those tightly muscled shoulders finally ease completely.

The idle thought sneaked into her mind that this had to be the craziest thing that had ever happened to her. The guy hadn’t touched her. In any way. She was the only one who’d done the touching. Yet she was somehow more drawn to him than any other man she could remember.

It was downright scary having to worry that she was losing her mind this young.

And it was scarier yet to realize that this fierce, wonderful pull she had for Fox was so dead wrong. He was a man whose wealth and background was bound to make him look down on her and her profession, a man who had shown no interest in her. A man as inappropriate for her as Alan had been. A man who had the potential to hurt her, she feared, even deeper than Alan had.

Four

The dream stirred Fox into waking. In the dream a sizzling-hot sun fried his back—just like every other day. For months he’d wondered if that incessant sun had ever driven anyone mad. Yet he wanted to be here. Wanted to do this.

The last few days, they’d been clearing debris, starting the work of rebuilding a school. It was more than good work. It was exactly the reason he’d felt driven to enlist. Back home the honor thing had bugged him. He couldn’t teach kids history every day and discuss what it took to be a hero and an American without realizing that it was damn well time for him to actively show instead of tell. The other reason was the kids. Having the chance to rebuild hospitals and schools made him believe that his kids, his students, just might have a better world to grow up in.

And that was exactly why he didn’t hesitate to crouch down when the little brown-faced squirt shyly approached him. He offered the tyke some candy, a yo-yo. He knew the language, which was partly why he’d ended up there. And the child with the big brown eyes and hollow cheeks looked hungry and desperate, as if somehow, some way, somebody had to do something to make his life better.

That the child had a bomb wrapped around his belly never crossed his mind. Never. Not for a second.

Not even when it went off…and he was blown back a dozen yards, scissors and shards of God knows what spearing every surface on his body that wasn’t covered by gear. And the kid, that damn kid, that damn damn damn baby of a kid…

And that’s when Fox woke up. When he always woke up. But this time he was as disoriented as a priest in a brothel.

Something was really, really screwy.

This wasn’t the leather couch where he always fell asleep. Instead he seemed to be lying on some kind of cushioned surface, wrapped in a soft warm sheet. Everything around him was saint white, except for a bunch of bosomy plants hanging in windows, spilling leaves and flowers in crowded tangles. For some goofy reason there was a bathtub in the middle of the room, and yet the far corner was heaped with stones and construction and plumbing parts. Goofier yet, his nostrils picked up the most wonderful smells—the sharp tang of lemon and a minty herb fragrance, and then another scent, something he couldn’t quite identify, something vague and fresh and brisk and just a bit flowery.…

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Her.

The minute he turned his head, he saw Phoebe. As always when he woke after a crash-deep, crash-dark sleep, the headache was completely gone and his senses ultrasharp. He could feel every ache, every fading stitch and bruise.

He also promptly realized that he was naked as a jaybird under the sheet—and hard as a jackhammer.

One look at her seemed to do it.

She was curled up in a white rocker. All the blinds in the room were drawn, except where she’d opened them several inches in the south window above her. Sunshine beamed down—as if just for her. Her bare legs were swung over the chair arm, and the shape of her naked calves was enough to