Sin on the Run by Lucy Farago Page A

couldn’t make her walk away. It was that she always took second seat. Her needs, her wants, never came first. Was it so wrong to want to be first for a change?
    Then again, look what life had dealt her now. The one time she’d decided to do just that, she ended up fighting for her life in a hotel bathroom.
    â€œNo, you can’t leave. Nor do you have to keep checking on me. And yet, here you are. You could send Dozier.”
    â€œBut I have the medical training.”
    â€œYou were here three times this afternoon,” he said, driving his point home.
    He had her there, but no way was he winning this argument. She had flaws. Didn’t mean she liked anyone knowing them. “Okay, I admit it. You’re just too hot to resist. And you’re even hotter sleeping there, all pathetic like. I can’t help myself.”
    He looked at her for a very long time. So long, she thought he’d bought her bull.
    â€œI’ll ignore the ‘pathetic’ part. It’s because of your father, isn’t it?” he asked.
    â€œWhat does my father have to do with you being so beautiful angels are jealous?”
    â€œIt couldn’t have been easy,” he continued. “All those years. Being the parent, when all you must have really wanted was to go outside and play, maybe stay out late on a date, not take a job that would pay all his bills?” An obvious reference to her stripping. “No one would have blamed you if you’d walked away. He was a drunk. But you stayed.”
    â€œHe was my father. Flaws and all, I loved him.” So why had she been relieved when he died? What kind of a daughter did that make her?
    â€œYes, so much so you took a job with Maggie.”
    â€œIt paid the bills.”
    â€œBut he’s gone now. Why don’t you do something else?”
    â€œAre you ragging on me for stripping?” Just because she didn’t like stripping didn’t mean anyone else could take her to task for doing it.
    Blake didn’t like Rhonda stripping, but not for the reasons she’d think. She deserved better than to have all those horny pricks staring at her, imagining things they had no right to imagine. But she didn’t belong to him, and he had no right to comment on it.
    â€œI don’t have a problem with women who want to strip. It’s the ones who are forced into it I take issue with.” His haughty grandmother would disagree, but there were many things she and he disagreed on.
    â€œThen we don’t have a problem.”
    â€œYou and I have never had a problem. Look, I . . . I just don’t want you to feel like you have to take care of me. I can handle this. And Dozier can help with the bandage on my back.”
    â€œYou’d rather have Dozier helping you?”
    He sighed heavily. He was never going to make her happy. “I’d rather have your hands on my body, thank you very much. It makes me wish I could push you beneath me and fuck you senseless.” He was just being honest. “But you look pissed every time you come in here. So I don’t think it would be very wise to tell you how good your hands feel when you touch my forehead or brush your fingers against my face.”
    It took her a minute to resume blinking, the stunned expression on her face a good indication he’d caught her off guard. That made two of them. But, damn, the woman was exasperating.
    â€œOkay then,” she finally said. “I’m confused.” She scratched her forehead. “Do you, or don’t you, want Dozier to help?”
    He could see only one way out of this. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he reached out and pulled her across the table, where he kissed her with everything he had. It hurt like a son of a bitch, but her taste was worth it. Hell, the woman’s mouth was meant for kissing . . . and other things he had no business wishing for. He knew damn well their one night together was simply that, one