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

give their teachers grief nonstop. Teaching was kind of like juggling dynamite every day. Probably why it appealed.”

“So…are you hoping to go back to teaching this fall?”

“I’m never going back to teaching,” he said curtly. “Do you answer questions, too, or just ask them?”

She blinked. “What do you want to know?”

“How you happen to be living in Gold River.”

“I’d been doing physical therapy work for a hospital. I liked the work, but there came a point when I wanted to concentrate on babies—and I wanted to work independently, make my own business. So I started theBaby Love massage thing. And I just like it here. The town, the people, everything.”

“Originally you came from—?”

“Asheville.”

“And where’s the guy in this picture?”

“What guy?”

“That’s what I’m asking. You left Asheville for a small town like this, there was a guy involved,” he said with certainty.

“Okay,” she said cheerfully, and whipped around. “You’re obviously feeling better. I’ve got groceries to buy, dogs to run, and I’m going to the movies with friends tonight. So, I’ll let you get dressed in some privacy so you can take off. I’ll drop a program plan at your place. Then you can call if you decide it’s something you want to do.…”

He didn’t know he was going to do it. Ease off the table, twist the sheet around his waist toga fashion and go after her. It wasn’t as if she charged out of the room at gallop speed. He easily caught up with her by the hall, looped his hand around her wrist.

She startled at the contact, turned her head.

Fox was aggravated at that moment. It wasn’t a rational feeling, just an awareness that something was…out of kilter. She gave off heavy, warm caring vibes one second…and bristly defensiveness the next. She wasn’t his problem, so her being confusing shouldn’t matter. But it did. Somehow it did. There was something building between them…like ashes that could turn into white-hot coals if they were stirred.

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He couldn’t pin down his own intentions. Somewhere, though, he’d started worrying that she had feelings for him. Sexual feelings. Real feelings. And that couldn’t be, because for now and the whole indefinite future he was in no shape to care for anyone. So maybe he intended on scaring her. Or annoying her. Hell, who knew? He hadn’t had a functioning brain in a blue moon.

He just knew when he touched her arm, when she whipped toward him, when he saw the look in her eyes…that he was going to kiss her.

That she knew a kiss was coming.

And then…

Then he just did it.

Took that soft, crushable, sexy mouth.

Who could guess he’d set off an explosion? Maybe she hadn’t been kissed in a while. Maybe her body was going through some kind of hormone overdrive. Maybe she really did like him—well, that last theory didn’t seem likely. The Lockwood men used to be women magnets, himself included, but he’d thrown out any ability to charm when he’d taken on a body full of scars.

But damn.

Shedid seem to be igniting for him, even if he couldn’t explain it.

Her skillful, sensual hands slid up, looped around his neck, clung. That mouth molded under his, melted under his, moved under his, communicating yearning and longing. Communicating desire. Her tongue suddenly whispered against his. Her soft, full breasts suddenly ached against his chest. Her throat suddenly let out a sweet bleat of helplessness.

The sheet wrapped around his waist gave up fighting gravity and fell to the floor in a woosh. He knew he’d never manage to stand upright long—not just because his injured leg lacked strength—but because all the oxygen in his head had dropped heavier than thunder to below his waist.

His hands framed her face, holding her still as he grappled to understand how a single kiss could become Armageddon. He tried another kiss to find out, since the first one only raised giant-size questions and answered absolutely none. After that he took her mouth a third time, his reasons getting fuzzier. But the silky soft exploration of her lips and tongue and teeth seemed totally necessary. It wasn’t that he was looking for trouble…

His conscience nicked him for the fib. All right, all right, he was looking for alittle trouble. He’d righteously ducked away from thinking about women since his injuries, telling himself that love—and sex—simply had to be taken off his table indefinitely. How was he supposed to know that deprivation had been haunting him? Or that he’d beendamn worried about whether his body was still able to function normally.

It was.

Charlie, let loose, wagged around like a happy puppy tail, poking and pressing against her abdomen with uninhibited enthusiasm. Phoebe was short. Impossibly short. If he’d just had the strength, he could have lifted her, but as it was, his body creaked and groaned the longer he leaned down, crunching his neck, his Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

spine.

The pain nagged at him, but only like a pesky mosquito. Tasting her, touching her, sipping her, made him feel like a man who was offered a drink of cool, clear water after weeks in the desert. She was so like water, liquid, flowing around him, her kisses drowning the drumbeat in his ears, his head. He immersed himself.

There was no wasting time dipping his foot in the water to test the temperature. He dove straight in, all of him engaged, mouth, elbows, brain, heart—and for damn sure, Charlie. It wasn’t as if he were the only one acting insane.

She kissed him back and kept kissing him back. Her throat kept making those yearning, lonesome sounds. Her breasts kept tightening, swaying toward him, into him. Her soft hands held on as if she’d fall if he let her go.

Okay. Fox finally got it. What the deal was.

She wasn’t real. She wasn’t normal. She was a witch. A conjurer of men’s fantasies. Real women just didn’t respond to a guy like this—as if she wanted him to do anything he wanted, as if