No Holds Barred by Paris Brandon Read Free Book Online

she’d told herself she’d never see again.
    While Jake made dinner she went upstairs to shower and change. She changed clothes a couple of times and everything she tried on emphasized the slope of her breasts so she opted for jeans with a rust colored tee shirt. She didn’t bother using the mirror again, just ran a quick brush through her unruly curls, angry with herself for being such a coward.
    Jake was right, she wasn’t patient. Patience required trust and Ella didn’t trust herself. All her talk about bravery was just lip service. She was scared to death. She needed some perspective, focus. This was their week of unbridled-no-holds-barred-anything-goes sex, nothing else.
    A year was a long time between sexual liaisons. Hell they hadn’t even had phone sex, which in retrospect was—odd.
     
    “Why didn’t we ever have phone sex?”
    Jake almost dropped the skillet full of scrambled eggs. He turned around and found Ella, her face flushed, brow furrowed as if she’d just asked him the most important question of her life.
    “I wanted to be looking into your eyes the next time we had sex.” Oh crap, he almost sounded girly but he didn’t want to come out and admit he was afraid she’d run again once they’d had some form of sex. There was a point at which women became irritated with sensitive men and he was afraid Ella was going to reach it sooner rather than later. What would a Viking marauder do—with his hands encased in oven mitts?
    She frowned, shaking her head. “You’re just not going to be shallow are you?”
    He breathed easier. “Stop looking for reasons to find something wrong with me. They’ll show up as soon as you’re tired of having sex every three or four hours. And all it will mean is that we need to take a break.”
    Her brow was still furrowed. “You could be making big bucks. Women would line up to tell you their problems.”
    He set the skillet back on the stove with a little more force than he intended and she jumped. “Both my parents are shrinks. Relationships were normal dinnertime conversations. I figured out early that most women bored me because I knew what was going to come out of their mouths before they said it, knew what they were going to do before they did it. I made a game of it just to make it interesting then figured out I was being a mean bastard and stopped it.” He stripped off the oven mitts and dropped them on the table.
    “I never know what’s going to come out of your mouth, Ella. I can’t pinpoint what you’re thinking and you fascinate the hell out of me. You have since that first night. And if you want to have phone sex could we please eat first because I’m pretty sure I’m going to want to fuck you until you scream after we get off the phone.”
    She pulled out her chair, still staring at him after his rant. “You do realize that you can make egg salad out of cold scrambled eggs. Don’t you?” Then she sat down and smiled up at him. “Just trying to live up to my reputation,” she said, spearing a forkful of eggs and putting them in her mouth but her fork was shaking and she didn’t look as sure of herself as she sounded.
    He ate faster than she did, threw both of their plates into the sink and shook when he told her to find her phone.
    His battery had died so they decided to use the intercom system between his studio and the house. He stretched out on the towel-covered chaise in front of his easel and unzipped his pants, sliding them off his hips while he listened to her settle into the bed.
    “Why didn’t you ever suggest this before?” he asked, because he’d already told her why he hadn’t initiated it. He wanted to know why she hadn’t. She hesitated for a moment.
    “I think I was afraid it would change the way we talked. I liked being to be able to just tell you about my day, good or bad. I like that you called me, drunk, from your best friend’s bachelor party to tell me you were bored and wanted to leave but couldn’t, even