The Switch by Sandra Brown Read Free Book Online Page B

shrug. "I always sit with my legs crossed."
    "In high heels?"
    "Usually."
    "In a short black skirt?"
    "It's not that short."
    "Short enough to carry my imagination up to its favorite vacation spot."
    She pretended to take umbrage. "I'm a lady, Colonel Hart." "Every inch of you."
    "Your look doesn't make me feel much like a lady." "Oh, so it's my look now."
    "Turnabout is only fair."
    "Okay. How am I looking at you? How does my look make you feel?"
    "Like it's a hot evening in the summertime and I'm an ice-cream cone."
    Several seconds laden with sexual undercurrents ticked by before he leaned forward to set his glass on the coffee table. "Melina?"
    "Are we going to sleep together?"
    A dart of excitement found its target and caused her to catch her breath. "I have a reputation to uphold."
    "So do I."
    She laughed softly. "But your reputation is that of a lady-killer."
    "And yours is of fending us off."
    Hesitating only a heartbeat, she answered, "No." Then slowly she stood up and stepped around the table to stand directly in front of him. "Ask anybody about Melina Lloyd, and they'll tell you that she's impulsive. She does whatever seems right at the time."
    He remained seated on the floor, but his eyes had followed her up, taking their time to track the terrain of her figure. Huskily he asked, "What seems right?"
    Dale Gordon's apartment was only slightly warmer than the temperature outside, but tonight when he let himself in, the single room seemed especially musty and close.
    The single-car detached garage had been converted into living quarters a decade before Pearl Harbor, and few improvements had been made since that original renovation. Its one nod toward modernity was an air-conditioning window unit that belched humid cool air in summer and humid warm air in winter. Unfortunately, it fit into the dwelling's single window, which was not only a gross violation of the fire code, but created a ventilation problem. Consequently, the air that Dale Gordon now sucked into his thin body with a high, whistling sound, was stale, dense, and insufficient.
    He peeled off his T-shirt and tossed it onto the narrow, unmade bed. He swiped his hands over his bony, almost concave chest, skimming off the sweat that had beaded on his pale skin and prominent ribs. His nipples were erect with a sudden chill. They were very red and sparsely ringed with long, straight blond hairs.
    With almost frantic haste, he moved around the cluttered room, lighting candles. His hands shook as he held kitchen matches to wicks that had been relit so many times they were thick with char. Habitually he burned his candles down until there was no more wax to burn.
    The heat and smoke from so many candles increased the room's stuffiness, but Dale Gordon didn't notice that as he kicked off his rubber thongs and peeled off his khakis and underwear.
    Naked, he dropped to his knees before a crude altar. His kneecaps sounded like cracking walnuts as they struck the bare concrete floor. Dale Gordon was unaware of the sound and unmindful of the pain that accompanied it. His pain was emotional, spiritual, but it was real. To him it felt as though all the demons of hell were inside him trying to claw their way out through his vital organs.
    He had waited in his car until the Lexus pulled out of The Mansion's driveway. Gillian Lloyd was alone in the car. She was going home. After hours of fornicating with the tall, dark man who looked Indian except for his brilliant blue eyes.
    Dale Gordon didn't care about him. He didn't even need to know his name. It didn't matter who he was. What mattered was what Gillian had done with him. Dale had no sexual experience of his own to serve as a point of reference. Nevertheless, he knew what men and women did together when they were alone. He'd seen pictures. He'd seen movies.
    Each time he envisioned Gillian's lustful foreplay and imagined her shapely limbs twined around the man's body as he rutted with her like an animal, he was seized by