The Wild Side

She jerked her arm straight out in front of her. “Observe the shaking hand, complete with sweaty palm. If you’d like to feel my pulse I think you’ll find it one step shy of panic level. Now. Please tell me exactly what would make you think I’ve done this before.”

His eyes narrowed, then his expression changed to contain something that seemed like admiration. He grinned that slow sexy grin which changed him from terrifying to devastating. “I apologize. You’re perfect.”

Melissa would have laughed, except he sounded like he was mocking her, and she was still furious. He thought she was perfect? “Two sentences that time. I dare you to up the count.”

He stood and took a step toward her. “I’m not much of a talker.”

The implication was there, in his eyes, in his purposeful nearness. I’m better at other things. Melissa reached down for her drink and walked toward Rose’s tiny kitchenette, unsettled to the verge of tears. She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be ready for this man. Two minutes into their meeting he was playing mind games, and she hadn’t a clue why. Maybe he thought it was sexy. Maybe he thought making his victims want to stick pins in him would be fabulous foreplay.

It wasn’t. Not even close.

She drained her glass and poured herself another Scotch, knowing she wouldn’t be able to come close to drinking even half of it. She’d rather not exhaust her dignity by throwing up in Rose’s toilet. But it gave her something to do, something to help her escape his calculating stares and overwhelming presence. Something to help calm her while she figured out how to get the evening back on track.

“Look, Riley.” She clenched the whiskey bottle, not yet brave enough to turn around and face him. “I’m kind of a mess over this whole thing. So if you could make it a little easier on me, I’d appreciate it. I don’t know what you expected, but obviously I’m not it.”

She took a long, healing breath, glad to have all that out in the open…and held it. He’d come up behind her. Close. She could feel his warmth, could feel his eyes on her. She wished her hair was still long so the back of her neck wouldn’t feel so exposed. Her sleeveless cotton shirt had only a slightly scooped front and back, but she might as well have been wearing a bikini top, the way she felt.

“You’re better than I expected.” He drew his hands down her arms in a light, caressing touch that ended with him circling her wrists in a firm grip she had a feeling would tighten impossibly if she tried to pull away. Although his tone still hovered between compliment and insult, Melissa’s heartbeat sped up. She stood entranced, imprisoned, and somewhat shamefully aroused.

“I expected you’d be beautiful.” He said the words softly into the top of her hair. She felt as if his voice was surrounding her, heating her, making her joints go watery.

Beautiful? No way. “Pretty”—she’d been called that. “Cute” tons of times—she hated that. Beautiful?

“I expected you’d be desirable.” He drew his hands back up to her shoulders and let go lingeringly. “But I didn’t expect such…perfect innocence, for all I was warned. You’re quite a woman.”

Melissa swallowed. Warned? Rose thought Melissa was so virginal she had to warn him? “Uh, thank you? I’m not really sure what you…I mean, I’m not that innocent, but I am… I mean, it is kind of the whole point of you being here, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” He laughed without humor. “Of course.”

Melissa sidled away, putting distance between herself and this totally confusing person. She felt off balance and infuriated, and infatuated, and inebriated and pretty much anything else anyone cared to mention. This had to have been the most confusing half hour of her life. But one thing had been totally decided the minute he touched her, the minute he half whispered words into her hair. She wanted him. As soon as they got past this strange tension, she wanted him to be the one. Rose’s instincts were absolutely right on. This was a man she could stock ice cubes and honey for. But how the hell to get to that point?

Maybe if she got him away from the mind games, maybe if they got to the, uh, purpose of the evening, they could put this bizarre uncomfortable beginning behind them. She took a deep breath and crossed her fingers.

“So. How do you usually…I mean, do you want to talk first or just… Oh, forget it. I stink at this.” She put her drink down and turned in exasperation. “Can we just—”

He was right there. Somehow he’d moved while she’d been thinking and stuttering, and he was right there. She froze, whatever asinine thing she’d been about to say still dangling from the end of her tongue.

He moved forward so his body was all of a half-inch from hers, smiling down with that strange, challenging, know-it-all smile that made her want to slug him and kiss him at the same time. He dipped his head slightly toward her, still holding her eyes with his penetrating brown gaze. “You first.”

Melissa’s eyes widened. “What?”

His smile stretched briefly. “I said, you first.”

“But…you’re supposed to—” Melissa closed her eyes. Okay. So he wasn’t going to take the lead. She could kiss him. She’d done that before. She could do this. To hell with him.

She opened her eyes to find him still there, still staring, still with that smug, annoying-as-hell smirk. Her anger rose. Fine. Jackass. She lifted on tiptoes and planted a loud, closemouthed, little girl smack on his lips, complete with sound effects. “Mmm-ah.” Then she went back down on her heels, shrugged and batted her eyes with rhythmic fluttery precision. “Well, gee. That’s about the best I can do. You really have your work cut out for you, Riley.”

For a second she wasn’t sure what he would do, and it suddenly occurred to her that if he got angry, she could be a squashed bug under his fist in about ten seconds. She’d never felt physically vulnerable around a man, and it scared her.

If the sick truth be told, it fascinated her, too. And aroused her. She suddenly pictured him picking her up and taking her right here, standing in the middle of the room with her legs hooked around him, while he held her up with nothing but the strength in his shoulders.

All of which would not come to pass if he killed her now.

He didn’t. He pulled her against him and kissed her long and hard, a mean, messy kiss that left her feeling punished and violated and wanting to cry. “Is that what you wanted me to teach you?”

“No.” She turned away; he followed, grabbed her arms, lifted her up onto the kitchen table and pushed himself between her legs.

“How about this?”

“What are you doing?” She could barely gasp the words out. This was beyond horrible. Her worst nightmare. The man was a brutal, sick, macho pig and he was going to rape her, and it was partly her fault for coming up with this stupid idea in the first place. She pushed at his shoulders ineffectually, knowing she was totally powerless to keep him from doing anything he wanted. “Stop it. Stop!”

He drew back and looked at her incredulously. She didn’t move, other than to make strange uncontrollable sobbing noises without tears, breath heaving to get out of her chest.

“What the—” He narrowed his eyes and swore obscenely. “I can’t figure you out at all.”

“What do you mean? I’m the most straightforward person on the planet.” Tears spilled out of her eyes and onto her cheeks. “You’re the weird one. You come in here and start playing bizarre mind games. It’s like you hated me from the beginning. If you don’t want to be here why the hell did you come?”

He stared at her again, as if he didn’t speak her language and had no clue what she’d been trying to tell him. Then he released her and walked away, stood by the window, a big, male, solitary figure against the white lace curtains blowing in the soft evening air.

Melissa got down from the table, shaken and crying, and reached for a tissue from the lacquered box on Rose’s counter.

“How many men have you had sex with?”

She started. “What?”

He repeated the question, searching her face from across the room as if he thought her answer was the key to something mystical and life-saving.

She sank into an antique rocking chair and blew her nose loudly, not caring if she looked like Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer when she’d finished. Not caring about anything except the immense relief that he’d morphed back into the harmless sexy man he’d been when he first came in. Somehow, even in her badly shaken state, it was slowly entering her awareness that something—maybe something he’d misunderstood from his buddy Rose—had made him think badly of her. And even if it made her a spineless wimp, she desperately wanted to change his mind, to make it right, so they could start again with something approaching a normal meeting, and see if they could work things out.

“Only two. Two men. One in college—it hurt and it was horrible. Then Bill—it didn’t hurt, but it was still pretty horrible.”

“No others?”

She tossed her tissues into a wicker wastebasket, so drained and stripped emotionally that baring her sex life to a stranger seemed the most natural thing in the world. “The others were just dates. Just fun.”

He nodded, looked at her intently, as if he was making up his mind about something. Melissa could even sense the minute he changed his attitude, when his eyes and mouth softened into something strangely guilty and almost tender, and she wanted to cry again, from relief this time.

He crossed the room and crouched in front of her, his huge body compacting lightly and effortlessly. He put his hands on the outside of her thighs and looked up at her, his expression open and sincere for the first time since he’d come in.

“Tell me what you want from me, Rose.”

She almost laughed at his slip, except that she wasn’t capable of laughter at that moment. “It’s Melissa.”

He didn’t look remotely embarrassed by his mistake. “Melissa is your real name?”

“Yes.” She nearly cried again. Why couldn’t he take anything at face value?

“Okay.” He continued watching her closely. Very closely, as if she were his science experiment. “What do you want from me, Melissa?”