For Her Eyes Only. Tori Carrington

the dark hair and eyes he’d given her, she had straight blond hair that shone nearly white, and large green eyes.

      Nearly four years old and she’d gone without seeing her mother for eight weeks. Jake ran his hand over his face then rubbed the back of his neck. He’d been seven years old when his mother had died. And the days afterward, recovering from the shock, had seemed like months. Years.

      Michelle propped her chin onto her bended knees and gazed at him. “Explain to me why your job makes it—what is the word that you used?”

      “Imprudent.”

      She pressed her mouth against her skin. “Yes. Imprudent. Imprudent for us to have sex.”

      Jake shifted on the mattress, which reminded him that he was sitting on a bed. And that Michelle was sitting on another bed not a foot and a half away. He focused on his white-knuckled hands. “I could lose my job.”

      “If anyone found out.”

      “I’d know.”

      “Oh.”

      “Anyway, it’s not in my, um, nature to sleep with someone I just met twelve hours ago.”

      “Eighteen.”

      “Huh?”

      “We met eighteen hours ago. Remember? When we bumped into each other in the parking lot.”

      “Oh. Yeah. Eighteen hours ago, then.”

      She rubbed her cheek against her knee. “Why?”

      He grimaced. “Why what?”

      “Why is it not in your nature to have sex with someone you just met eighteen hours ago?”

      He didn’t miss her word usage. He’d described the possibility of their coming together as sleeping together. She’d called it having sex. He cleared his throat. And that’s exactly what they would be doing, wasn’t it? Having sex? They didn’t know each other well enough for the word love to enter into the equation. He thought back, trying to remember if he’d ever done it. Had just plain sex. All six of the women he’d been with intimately had been longtime girlfriends, and he’d cared for them to varying degrees. But had he loved them? At the time, he supposed he had, which meant he’d made love to them, not had sex with them.

      He gazed at Michelle. With all that wild hair pulled into that neat little twist, she looked different. More presentable. More like the type of woman he would be attracted to. Then why did he have the irrepressible urge to take it down? Watch it cascade down her back in silky, curly strands?

      “Do you do that often?”

      Her soft, feathery brows drew slightly together. “What? Have sex?”

      He averted his gaze.

      “Not nearly often enough.”

      He didn’t respond. Couldn’t respond.

      “I haven’t been with a man…well, since before Lili was born.”

      Over four years.

      Jake didn’t know why that should make him feel better. The woman had just suggested they climb between the sheets and have at it, and she didn’t know him any better than the man in the moon. But he did feel better.

      His want of her also shot up a hefty notch.

      Michelle’s lusty sigh pulled his gaze to her face as she leaned against the pillows and stretched her legs out in front of her. “I thought it couldn’t be true. The rumor that Americans are sexually uptight. I guess it’s the truth.”

      The word sexually came out sounding like a highly provocative suggestion. Jake fought the desire to stare at her mouth, though she had likely just insulted him. “I don’t know that we’re sexually uptight. We’re just cautious, that’s all. These are dangerous times we live in.”

      She shrugged, the movement making her small breasts jiggle under the cotton of her camisole. “That’s what condoms are for.”

      “There’s more than that to be cautious about.”

      “What? What is there that could possibly be important enough to keep a man and a woman apart when it’s apparent they want each other?”

      He was unable to tug his gaze away from her openly poignant one. She looked so unimaginably sexy, her eyes alight with fire, her mouth lushly challenging. “Fatal Attraction?”

      Her burst of laughter was nearly his undoing. “You’re talking about that movie, yes? The one where Michael Douglas’s lady friend boiled his daughter’s pet rabbit?”

      He grinned. “Yes.”

      “Do you have a rabbit?”

      “No.”

      “Then I can’t very well boil it, now, can I?” She rubbed her toes against the arch of her other foot, her expression shifting. “Anyway, I’m returning to France tomorrow. There’s no risk there, is there?”

      He stared at his hands again. “I guess not.”