A Fine Specimen by Lisa Marie Rice Read Free Book Online Page B

forgotten all about it. At
her command, he picked up his fork.
    Though she kept her face
impassive, Caitlin rejoiced inwardly.
    Yessss!
    If he obeyed her once,
he would obey her again.
    She was going to win
this battle. And after the battle, the war.
     
    The aromas of Hank’s
food wafted straight into Alex’s system, reminding him that he was running on
empty. Or on station house coffee, which was worse.
    Alex picked up his fork
to dig into his burrito then stopped, running through what Caitlin had said in
his mind. He lifted his head, surprised.
    “The Frederiksson Foundation?”
    The Frederiksson
Foundation was the pride of the city—one of the best-known think tanks in the
country, run by two Nobel Prize winners.
    Alex looked again at
Caitlin Summers, this time looking past the incredible prettiness, the
absentmindedness, the grad student messiness.
    Now he saw the
intelligence.
    He hadn’t noticed it
before because she was so fucking pretty and looked so damn innocent. He didn’t
know any pretty, intelligent, innocent women. Most of the intelligent women he
knew were cops. A cop didn’t stay innocent after Day One on the job.
    She swallowed and smiled
at him. “You’ve heard of it? I suppose you would have, being from Baylorville.
I’m really looking forward to being a fellow there, if they offer it to me.”
Caitlin pursed her lips. “Even though it is full of pencil-dick geeks.”
Flashing an amused grin at him, she bit into her cheeseburger again. A drop of
Hank’s homemade ketchup dripped from the bun. She licked it off her lip with a
small pink tongue.
    Alex opened his mouth to
reply but was sidetracked by the sight of that little pink tongue. This was
another aspect of Caitlin Summers that he’d been trying to ignore, but that
quick, mischievous grin, that tongue sneaking out to lick her luscious
lips—making him think of her licking him —blindsided him.
    Alex kept sex and work
strictly separate. Not that there had been that much sex lately to keep
separate. He’d been busy. But still. If he met an attractive woman with any
connection to the job, Alex just flipped that switch in his head that kept his
dick down between his legs.
    That switch just broke.
    He’d already noticed how
attractive she was but it hadn’t really affected him beyond a knee-jerk male
reaction when she’d nearly become roadkill. He’d just filed it away as a
distinguishing characteristic, as if compiling an Identi-Kit. Large,
luminous eyes the color of a summer sky, beautiful pale blonde hair so thick it
frothed out of its ponytail, high, sculpted cheekbones, long graceful neck.
Five-four, slender build. Utterly gorgeous.
    But now all that
feminine attraction seemed to reach out and grab him by the dick, forcing him
to notice, to look at her as a woman. She wasn’t wearing any perfume, she
didn’t have any makeup on, her clothes were cheap and wrinkled. His cock didn’t
give a shit. It just reared straight up, the fucker.
    Damn Ray Avery! This woman was going to be a huge distraction. And now was the wrong time for him to be thinking with his little
head. Just when he was zeroing in on Angelo Lopez…
    Maybe all this was
happening because he hadn’t had sex in a while, sort of like punishment. Like
going too long without giving your car a lube job. He had to see about getting
laid, double quick, only not with Caitlin Summers.
    Not only was she
definitely not his type, she’d been sent by Ray . It’d…it’d be like
fucking Ray’s daughter. Ray didn’t have a daughter, he’d never married, but
still.
    “Lieutenant?” He looked
at her. Shit, even her voice was attractive. Soft, a faint hint of honeysuckle,
though without that coyness he hated in Southern women. He shifted uneasily in
his seat. The boner was not going down.
    Caitlin put down her
cheeseburger and leaned forward earnestly, light blue eyes searching his.
“Look, I’ve interviewed literally thousands of people at the workplace. What I
said before is