Carnal Compromise Read Online Free PDF Page A

with the outfit this long anyway, and if he left now, at least he’d still have…something. Someone he could actually run into a few years down the road and not feel the need to duck out of sight to head off any kind of awkward emotional confrontation. Someone he could casually shoot the breeze with once every few years. Someone he gave a shit about but wasn’t too wrapped up in.
    So why in the hell did it feel like he couldn’t leave until he’d had Brent Andersen in his bed? When had the game turned into a challenge he had to win at any cost? Generally he was a canny player who knew when it was time to fold and hit the road in search of a more attainable goal, but fucking Brent was becoming an obsession. He could have him and he knew, felt it deep in his bones, that Brent wanted him just as much.
    Joe kicked a gravel rock off the shoulder into the short, frosted grass on somebody’s lawn. Dammit, this was exactly how gamblers lost their money, their homes and eventually their families at the poker table. They kept playing long past the point of no return, risking everything good in their lives on that desperate certainty a big payoff was just around the corner. They lost sight of when the risk started to outweigh any potential gain and ended up with less than nothing.
    He had the sinking feeling he was doing that now. His brain was barking, Fold now! Leave before you lose it all! But the payoff was so tantalizing…a virgin. And not just any virgin but a masculine, attractive, intelligent virgin who’d never even thought about playing for the other team until they met.
    He’d never have another opportunity like this one and he damn well knew it. There was more silver in his hair every day, and soon he’d be too old and grizzled to attract anything but hookers.
    And then there was AJ… She dressed like a man and carried herself like a man, but damn, if he’d ever had any doubts she was a female, they’d been obliterated by the sight of her gorgeous body tangled up in his dirty T-shirt. Now there was a woman in desperate need of a man’s—or men’s—attentions, and it would be his pleasure to see that she got them. Hopefully the challenge of getting her to cut loose with them would take the edge off this suicidal determination to corner Brent and fuck the living daylights of him.
    Main Street was lined on both sides with cars and pickups, and after a quick look, he crossed to the diner on other side. It wasn’t hard to spot AJ in a booth near the front—her silky white-blonde hair stood out like a beacon in the sea of comb-overs and seed caps.
    Joe’s eyes narrowed. If Seth sat any closer, he’d be in her lap.
    Then AJ saw him and flinched, her blue eyes skittering away as color flooded her cheeks, and Seth leaned even closer to tell her something.
    Since he wasn’t one to let another man poach his prey, Joe felt no compunction about inviting himself to join them. He ambled right up and sat down next to Tim, shoving his sorry ass into the corner.
    “Make yourself at home, Joe,” Tim grumbled.
    “Don’t mind if I do.” He looked around at the three paper placemats. “What are we having?”
    “ We already ordered,” Seth told him with a facefull of belligerent. “Don’t know what you’re having.”
    Joe eyed him with amusement. “What’s your problem, Junior?”
    “AJ’s all worked up over something this morning, and judging by the look on her face when you walked in, I gotta figure that something is you.”
    AJ slouched even lower in the booth and kept her eyes on the table. “Seth, don’t,” she said, twisting her water glass in circles with both hands. “Really, it’s nothing. It was my own stupid fault.”
    “That may be, but I don’t care for the way he’s lookin’ at you.”
    “Why don’t you two scram,” Joe invited with a friendly look that didn’t match the steel in his tone. “Brent’ll be right behind me, and this booth ain’t big enough for all of us.”
    Seth