Take Me Tonight by Roxanne St. Claire Read Free Book Online

financial…it’s personal.”
    “It always is.” He kissed her forehead and tipped her chin up. “Now, tell me one more thing. Are you going to sign up for another kidnapping?”
    “Why?”
    “I want to put in a request to be your rescuer.”
    The way he said it made her smile. Worse, it made her stomach flutter and her heart stutter while everything south of that just pooled into a big mess of female response. Under different circumstances—like, if he wasn’t a prostitute —she could really like this guy.
    “Are you?” he asked. “I need to know if you plan to do this again.”
    She shook her head. “I think you have to wait a certain amount of time before they let you register again, right? Plus, I don’t have that kind of money without a—” She almost said roommate. “Regular job.”
    He seemed satisfied with that. “Well, good luck.” He was still holding her chin when he lowered his face and kissed her so softly that she almost didn’t feel it. “Next time, though, buy some tomatoes and I’ll make puttanesca. You could use some comfort food.”
    She sat motionless until she heard the front door close. Then she fell back on the pillow, still warm from him, and sniffed the lingering scent of musk and man. Her first paid sexual encounter, and she’d lost him with the flash of a press badge.
    She pulled herself up, drawn to the computer across the hall. The laptop was still running and the face of Johnny Christiano was still frozen there. She knew nothing about him. Nothing. Except that he liked to cook.
    Pasta puttanesca . Didn’t that mean “whore” in Italian?
    Only one person would get the irony of that. Keisha.
    She stared at Keisha’s warm, dark eyes on the poster, and wished like hell she was still here. “Okay. I know. Complete disaster. Total flipping blowout from beginning to end.”
    Keisha’s camera-ready smile beamed, frozen in time, forever happy. If only she were there, curled in her bed, ready for the postdate girl talk they’d shared since the day they’d both walked into a dorm room at Boston College and said hello. The frat boys had called them Salt and Pepper and they had been inseparable for years. Loneliness kicked Sage in the stomach.
    “You know what’s really funny, Keish? I actually liked that guy. There was something so damn sweet about him.” She swallowed and touched the face that would never laugh or tease her again. “I’m so sorry I didn’t find out what happened to you. I made a total mess of trying.”
    “What happened to her?”
    Sage jumped at the voice, a gasp caught in her throat. She stared at the man who took up the width of the doorway and burned her with a look that was anything but sweet.

Chapter
Four

    I t couldn’t be good news at this hour. But at least whoever was pounding on Ashley McCafferty’s door distracted her from her nightly insomnia. She peered through the peephole and sucked in a breath.
    Bad news for sure.
    She whipped the door open and stared at her boss. “What’s the matter?”
    “Did you give Sage Valentine the password?” Glenda made the demand quietly in deference to the neighbors in the high-rise.
    Ashley blinked, determined to hold her ground. “It’s one o’clock in the morning. I have to dance tomorrow night. Couldn’t you have called?”
    Glenda glanced down the hall, as though communicating with someone at the elevator banks. One of her boys, no doubt.
    Ashley involuntarily touched her face. One of Glenda’s paid thugs could end her season with one crack of his knuckles.
    “Did you give Sage Valentine the password?” Glenda repeated.
    “So what if I did? She’s had a rough time. She’s looking for fun.”
    “She’s looking for answers to why her roommate killed herself.”
    “So what if she is? I didn’t think it would matter if she signed up. I didn’t think—”
    “Don’t think!” Glenda pushed the door farther open with an angry thwack. “That’s not what you get paid to do.” She