Bad Girls by Rebecca Chance Read Free Book Online Page A

fuck,’ Joe said for the last time, rubbing Hengist’s huge head for comfort. ‘Do you know what shit I’m going to take for this? The rest of my life, they’re going to talk about the sex addiction every time my goddamn name comes up.’
    He leaned down and hugged Hengist round his neck. Hengist was drooling on his hand. Yeah, Great Danes were slobbery, but who cared? Women were always bitching about the dogs, but they didn’t realize that Joe would choose over them a stinky big dog that couldn’t quit dribbling any day of the week. At least you knew where you stood with a dog.
    He sighed deeply, thinking of the month he’d been planning for himself, and the one that was actually coming down the pike. Trapped in a rehab centre with a bunch of drunks and junkies whining about their miserable lives. Without even a beer now and then to take the edge off.
    And then another thought struck him, such an awful one that he involuntarily tightened his arms too hard round Hengist’s neck, making the poor dog squeal and scrabble back in panic.
    ‘Oh, no ,’ he groaned. ‘Clooney and Pitt are going to rip me a new one when they hear about this!’

 
Skye
    I f Tinkerbell were completely naked, and if she worked as an exotic dancer in a Manhattan strip club called the Midnight Lounge, she would look exactly like Skye Simmons did that Saturday night. Skye gleamed like she’d been brushed with gold. Her blonde hair was pinned back at the crown, falling down her back in an arrangement of carefully arranged curls. Her big blue eyes looked huge, thanks to her battery-operated eyelash curlers and three coats of lash-building mascara. Her lips were glossed, her cheekbones highlighted with a dewy gel stick. She smelled of peony and chypre, and if someone had licked her, they would have tasted strawberries.
    Skye examined her nude body in the mirror as she affixed a pair of gold pasties to her nipples. Yup, she looked good enough to eat. It was the umpteenth confirmation of what Skye had known ever since she got her first training bra; her pretty angel face, combined with her tight, curvaceous body, had meant that she’d had guys chasing her ever since she could remember. At school it hadn’t been just the boys; teachers had hit on her too. She couldn’t walk down the street without hearing hoots and catcalls or, if she was in a Hispanic area, hisses of appreciation from between their teeth at every involuntary swing of her hips.
    Skye’d grown up in Trenton, New Jersey, an ugly manufacturing town where more people were laid off than had jobs, and the prospects were only getting bleaker: huge clusters of concrete buildings, the factories that were still open spewing filthy smoke, tens of thousands of people crammed too close together. Always guys hanging around, like nobody ever went to work, or at least had the kind of job where the IRS took a cut of your paycheque. Men on every street corner, every doorway, every alley, whistling and yelling and hissing at Skye.
    Not that it wasn’t good to know you were sexy. Whenever Skye had complained about it to her mom, all she’d heard was, ‘Honey, when the guys stop whistling, that’s when you should worry.’ Living a hardscrabble existence with five kids by two different guys, neither of whom had stuck around to help her raise them, had taken its toll on Leanne, and she had no sympathy to spare for a daughter whose problem was being so pretty and sexy she practically had to fight men off with a stick.
    Well, Skye had learned that lesson. No point in getting mad, no point in asking for help. So she figured out how to roll with it instead. Guys were still staring at Skye – more than ever – but now they had to pay for it. She put on a damn good show, she worked it with everything she had, and all those years of hassles and catcalls and filthy propositions were turned on their head. It was Skye who had the power now. And she loved to use it.
    She picked up the giant can of Elnett