Secret Identity by Paula Graves Read Free Book Online Page A

prickled all over, like a deadened limb coming slowly, painfully to life. When he dipped his head to taste the swell of her breast peeking over the edge of her bra, her body hummed with delight.
He reached for the hem of her T-shirt and tugged upward. The soft cotton rasped against the scar tissue crisscrossing her back.
Ice replaced fire, freezing her in place. Rick didn’t seem to notice at first, sliding his hand under the loose cotton to trace the curve of her lower spine.
But as his fingers crept closer to the web of scars across her back, she grabbed his wrists and tugged his hands away from her back. “No.”
He took a faltering step backward. “What?”
“No,” she said more firmly, her skin crawling where the scar tissue gathered. There were other scars, more than just the ones on her back.
The al Adar rebels had not been gentle.
He walked away from her, toward the lone window in the tiny bedroom. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” she said again, her tone apologetic. “I just—I can’t go back.” For so many reasons.
He flexed his injured arm, frowning with pain. “Okay.”
“We’re supposed to be fixing your arm,” she said gruffly.
“I think I need a shower first.” He waved toward the door. “Think you could get the supplies out of the Charger?”
“Of course.” She headed outside and took their bags from the car. When she returned, the shower was running in the bathroom. She dropped the bags by the door and sat on the end of the bed, trying not to look too closely at the faded, threadbare bedspread.
She and Rick would have to share that bed tonight, after what had almost happened between them a few minutes ago.
How on earth were they going to get through the night?
Rick emerged from the bathroom wearing only his jeans and a towel wrapped around his neck. He gave her a wary look as he approached the bed, his eyes dark and pained. “I think I cleaned most of the grime out of the wound,” he rasped.
She felt an instant twinge of sympathy. “Sit here and I’ll bandage you up.”
While he settled on the end of the bed, she dug through her duffel bag for the first-aid kit. Gathering the supplies she needed and returning to his side, she got to work.
“If we can keep ointment and bandages on it for the next few days, you ought to be able to avoid infection.” Her voice came out in a tremble, but her hands, at least, remained steady as she dabbed a generous layer of antibiotic ointment across the bloody gouge in his upper arm. She flattened a thick gauze pad over the wound and taped it down. “There we go.”
He caught her hand as she started to back away. “I really am sorry about before. I took the charade too far.”
A dart of pain hit its mark just beneath her breastbone. “Yeah. The charade. Just like old times, huh?”
“It wasn’t a charade back then,” he murmured.
“Sometimes it was,” she countered, keeping her voice deliberately light. “That was the fun of it.”
His lips curved slightly. “Sometimes,” he conceded.
She took her time gathering up the supplies and putting them back into the first-aid kit, needing that little bit of distance to get her emotions back under steely control.
“Maybe we should have paid extra for the phone,” Rick commented as she was putting the kit back into her duffel bag.
“Thinking of ordering a pizza?” she asked over her shoulder, pleased with the easy tone of her voice.
“I am kind of hungry,” he admitted.
She pulled a couple of protein bars out of her duffel bag and tossed him one . “Bon appétit.”
He caught it, shooting her a wry grin. “Merci.”
Not trusting herself to sit on the bed beside him, she settled cross-legged on the floor at the end of the bed and unwrapped her own protein bar.
“But what I meant about the phone was, I think I should call my brother Jesse.”
Her gaze snapped up, meeting his. “No.”
“Whoever’s after you probably doesn’t know or care who I am. They may not even know about me at all. They’re