Midnight Vengeance by Lisa Marie Rice Read Free Book Online Page B

of watching through her living room window as his vehicle drove away, the thought of never seeing him again, was almost more than she could bear.
    She wanted sex with him, so she had to man up, fast.
    “Wait.” Her voice came out a hoarse whisper. Her throat was almost vibrating with emotion. “Would you—”
    “Yes.” His voice was so deep she almost felt it in her diaphragm more than hearing it.
    Lauren gave a half laugh. “What?”
    “Whatever you were going to ask, the answer is yes.”
    “Yes?” She blinked in surprise. He’d taken her aback. “No matter what? Suppose I asked you to paint my house? Or—or to give me a million dollars?”
    Jacko turned his head to look at her full in the face. His dark eyes were steady on hers. “I’d paint your house, no question. I don’t have a million dollars but if I did, I’d give them to you if you asked.”
    Her heart gave a huge thump. She smiled shakily. “Then it’s a good thing I was just going to ask if you wanted a coffee or a nightcap. My headache’s better.”
    “I guess you know the answer, then.”
    He got out in the snow in only his shirt, rounded the front of the vehicle and opened her door. He held out a huge hand and she took it gratefully. The ground was a long way down.
    He looked down at her, still holding her hand in a warm, strong grip. His face was sober, even grim.
    “Yes,” he said.
    * * *
    Lauren trembled as they walked up to her front door. Okay. Jacko had basically already said yes, to anything she proposed. So how hard could this be?
    Very hard, it turned out. Because that rush of conviction in the SUV driving over here had dissipated, leaving her feeling sad and foolish.
    She’d heard the stories about him from Suzanne and Allegra, though they’d tapered off lately. But still, they’d been plenty colorful.
    How he was a player and he liked them young and super sexy. Biker chicks, mostly. That wasn’t her. She wasn’t very young anymore and she was anything but sexy. A B-cup at best, in her more optimistic moments.
    She wasn’t even that good in bed, or so she’d been told. What did she know? It all seemed so very mysterious, right now, walking up to her porch, with a light snow falling around them. That whole Sex Thing seemed alien, something Martians did.
    Another woman would know precisely what to do and would be a firecracker in bed.
Firecracker.
That was the term one of her stepfather’s goons had used to describe a wannabe model-du-jour he’d bedded. What did firecrackers
do?
Sex was such a basic activity, what room was there for improvement?
    And yet there had to be room for improvement because Lauren knew, without a shadow of doubt, that no one would ever, ever call her a firecracker in bed. Not even a sparkler.
    Oh God. This was a really really bad idea. They were at her door and the whole Sex Thing loomed behind it. And really, in her experience sex wasn’t
that
great. Maybe it would leave a bad taste in her mouth, cloud up her happy memories of Portland.
    Had Jacko realized that for a brief moment of lunacy she’d contemplated dragging him to bed? Because though he always looked impassive and impervious, he was actually pretty observant. How humiliating if he realized it, shuddered at the thought, politely accepted a shot of her whiskey and made a fast escape.
    And, and even if he did throw her—what was it called?—a mercy fuck, what would that gain her? She’d never see him again. She was going to embark upon a long trip tomorrow with no idea of the destination. She’d need a good night’s sleep, not a night faking orgasms.
    Thoughts buzzing in her head like angry hornets, she scrabbled uselessly in her tiny evening purse for the key. She was close to a full-blown anxiety attack and her hands were numb. Ah, there the key was, on her silver paintbrush fob. But her hand was trembling; she couldn’t fit the damned key into the lock, one of those fancy ones Jacko had bought for her and had installed