Traceless by Debra Webb Read Free Book Online Page B

Emily. Nope, she'd picked a guy who'd barely managed to survive his senior year. He'd missed nearly as many days as he'd attended. Austin had had a bit of an ego himself, but his vast charm had rendered most females blind to its presence. Emily's father had called him a thug.

    Em, you stay away from that boy. He's trouble.

    She'd known it was true, but that hadn't kept her from fantasizing about him. After all, fantasies were supposed to be about the forbidden.

    A detail as simple as the way his clothes had fit made her heart beat wildly and her foolish adolescent hormones surge. The T-shirts that had molded to his body, the faded, tattered jeans that had wrapped his lower anatomy, were nothing short of sinful. Everything about him, the way he talked, the way he moved, all of it, had been designed for sex appeal.

    He would slide those dark sunglasses into place and spin out of a parking lot in that racy red Firebird and she would long to go with him. To have the wind rushing through her hair... to have him put his hand on her bare thigh and foster all those forbidden sensations that just breathing in the same airspace as him had the power to ignite.

    She remembered the way his lips would tilt when he smiled. That sexy curl that no mere woman, much less a teenage girl, could hope to resist. He'd teased her, flirted with her ruthlessly. Each time, she'd turned her back on him. Pretended not to notice. She'd been a good girl; she hadn't associated with boys like him outside her fantasies.

    At first he'd laughed at the way she ignored him. Then it became a sort of challenge to him. See just how far he could go before she turned tail and ran.

    Once they'd even kissed.

    At the movie theater he'd sneaked up behind her and put his hands over her eyes. She'd whirled around to face the culprit. He was the last person she'd expected to see. He'd never gotten quite that close before, never once touched her Shock had frozen her to the spot when their gazes collided and his fingers lingered against her hair. Something had shifted in her small world as he'd stared into her eyes. She had known in the deepest recesses of her soul that she was about to be kissed.

    It was her first.

    His lips had met hers and she'd leaned into the incredible sensations... had reached her arms around his neck and let her trembling body rest against his strong, lean one. He'd kissed her long and deep, used his tongue in ways she'd only read about. His palms had cupped her face, those long fingers threaded into her hair. A kind of heat she'd never before experienced had flowed through her, settling between her thighs.

    As if the voice of reason had suddenly kicked in, he'd drawn away, winked, then walked off without so much as a word. She'd been humiliated. Even that infuriating episode hadn't made her stop wanting him.

    A deep shadow fell across the driver's side window and jolted her back to the present. She looked up, blinked. He stood right outside her open car window.

    Fear exploded in her veins.

    How could she have not heard his approach?

    Her brain issued all the appropriate flight commands, but her hands... her fingers refused to act.

    With her heart clanging and the blood funneling like a hurricane in her ears, she couldn't think. She couldn't piece together what to do next.

    He didn't move, just stood there and waited for her to do or say something.

    She reached for the ignition, but Heather's face, frozen in cameo on her gravestone, suddenly flashed in Emily's mind.

    No.

    This was a public road. It was a free country. She could park here if she damn well wanted to. He couldn't touch her, not without risking a violation of his parole.

    Daring him, she wrenched open the door. He backed up a step to avoid being hit by it as she got out.

    She grabbed on to her fledgling courage with both hands and pretended not to be scared to death. "Is there a problem?" she demanded, staring directly into those seething gray eyes, her hands planted on