A Man for the Summer by Ruby Laska Read Free Book Online Page B

popped the top on another diet soda and squinted out the window. It was finally getting lighter out, no doubt about it. He checked his watch: 4:40 am, a time when the only people awake in the world were on their way to the early shift, like waitresses and truck drivers.
    And insomniacs.
    Which Griff generally wasn’t. In fact, he usually had no trouble at all falling asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.
    But it wasn’t every day—or every night—that he took a woman to bed, intending to give her a night to remember, and found himself in way over his head, manhandled like a mouse in the paws of a tiger.
    Make that tigress . God, she was something. He felt the blood rush to his temples again, just thinking about Junior. Those… muscles . The way she gripped him between her thighs and taunted him with those incredibly long strokes, pure magic below him, making him ache, making him beg for satisfaction before arching against him, plunging them both into ecstasy again.
    Well. Griff reddened, took a long, deep gulp of the soda. Ecstasy for him , anyway. When he’d finally given up and ridden the tide to the most thunderous climax of his life, it was marred only by the knowledge that the woman in his arms was just waiting it out, putting up with him, probably—what, bored? Or worse—
    He couldn’t bear to take that thought to its conclusion. Griff wasn’t the type to brag, but never before had any complaints from a lover. Just the opposite. He’d come to view himself as more than adequate, just a fact, like the fact that he was six-foot-two or the fact that his golf score hovered around 80.
    The embarrassment was total. Griff stifled a disgusted groan and drained the rest of the can. His…third? Fourth? A tough way to caffeinate, but coffee was out of the question. They had left last night’s pot on for hours and now the bottom was coated with a smoking, gluey mass.
    When Junior had nodded off, minutes after…the debacle, it had only been nine-thirty. Which meant that Griff had had seven hours to sit around her kitchen tormenting himself by trying not to think about her.
    He’d be gone—out of here, out of this damn town—and well on his way to forgetting all about her, except for a few pesky little details.
    Number one: he’d just deflowered a virgin.
    Number two: the virgin had mere months to live.
    And number three—except there was no number three because he was for damn sure doing his best not to think about it—that virgin had somehow managed to get under his skin.
    Staying put was just the right thing to do, Griff reminded himself. Any guy worth his salt would do the same. You hold open a lady’s door, you light her cigarettes, and if you just happen to give her a really crummy first intimate experience, you stick around to apologize.
    Crash .
    Griff jerked his head up. The sound had come from upstairs, from Junior’s room, and before he could think twice Griff was bounding up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He careened down the hall and came to a stop in her door frame.
    Junior was sitting—stark naked—on the floor, gingerly rubbing her elbow. When she saw him, she blushed deeply, but managed a grin.
    “Oh, hi,” she said.
    “What the hell was that?” His momentary panic had quickly given way to irritation. It wasn’t her fault, exactly, that she was sitting cross legged without a stitch on. And it wasn’t her fault that the sight was making his blood pound, or that he was suddenly very, very anxious to join her on the floor.
    “I tripped. On this.” Dorothy held up one of her clunky sandals, then sighed and tossed it into a corner. “Course I guess my head was spinning a little too. I don’t, y’know, drink much.”
    “Got a hangover, do you?” Griff asked, forcing his gaze away from her. He stared very deliberately at the ceiling, the curtain rod. Suddenly he didn’t know what to do with his hands, so he stuffed them in his pockets.
    Hell, next he’d be whistling.
    “Uh