Secret Identity by Paula Graves Read Free Book Online

bag.
Rick pulled a Swiss Army knife from his pocket and handed it to her with a curious look. “Is this about to get kinky?”
She opened the sharpest blade and sliced through the neckband of her T-shirt, tearing the fabric down the front until the tops of her breasts, cradled in a lacy blue bra, were exposed. She glanced his way. “Trampy enough?”
His gaze settled on her breasts. The air between them felt like a furnace blast, thick with heat and tension.
“That’ll do.” He cleared his throat and looked away.
The manager’s office was a tiny room at one end of the one-story motel. Just outside, Rick threw his good arm around her shoulders, tugging her close to his side. An overwhelming sense of familiarity rocked her, sending a tremble through her legs. He was hard and lean-muscled, masculine to the core despite his outer veneer of sophistication. She’d always known there was a hard-loving, hard-fighting Alabama country boy lurking beneath the surface of the urbane charmer.
It was one of the things she’d loved most about him.
At the front desk, a balding man in his early fifties sat behind the counter, reading a Zane Grey novel. Knights of the Range. One of her favorites. He didn’t look up immediately.
Rick caught her chin in his hand, drawing her face up to his. As his lips descended, she felt like a fly trapped in a web, watching the spider’s inexorable approach.
His lips met hers. Soft at first, then fierce and hard, as if fueled by an impatient hunger he was desperate to sate. The world around her reeled, forcing her to clutch him with both hands to stay upright.
He dragged his lips away and turned to look at the desk clerk. He’d finally looked up from his book at their public display of hormones.
“One hour, two hours or the night?” he asked, his gaze dropping to Amanda’s breasts.
“The night,” Rick answered, bending his head to suckle the skin at the base of her neck. Electricity shot through her, heading straight for her sex. Her knees wobbled again.
“That’ll be forty bucks. Phone and TV extra.”
Rick licked the curve of her collarbone, his tongue rough-textured and hot. Heat settled low in her belly as his voice rumbled through her. “All we need is a bed.”
The clerk laughed, his gaze still firmly affixed to the front of Amanda’s ripped T-shirt. Rick pulled his lips away from her neck long enough to hand the clerk two twenties and retrieve the key the man handed him.
He walked outside with his arm still around Amanda’s shoulders. She knew, as they moved down the breezeway toward the room, that she should move away from him, but her body wouldn’t listen to the warning bells clanging in her head.
Rick handed her the key when they reached the room. As she unlocked the door, her hands trembled violently. She tried to tell herself it was delayed reaction from the day’s events, but that attempt at self-delusion didn’t last past the first step inside the motel room, when Rick slammed the door shut behind them and flattened her against it with a hungry growl.
His mouth descended, hot and fierce against hers. Twining his hands with hers, he pressed them against the door, pinning her in place for his slow, thorough exploration of her mouth.
He felt so familiar she ached, but there was also a newness to his touch, as if he were an entirely different person from the man she’d taken willingly to her bed a few short years ago. The contradictory sensation was both exciting and disconcerting, setting her pulse racing.
His hips pressed against hers, the hard ridge of his sex pushing into the softness between her thighs until she was aflame with anticipation. The denim between them was too much. She needed to feel the hot silk of his skin on hers, creating friction and fire.
She pulled one hand from his grasp and reached between them, cupping his sex in her palm. His breath burning against her lips, he growled a low profanity that only spurred her to stroke him more firmly.
Her body