Far From Perfect Read Online Free PDF Page B

she was telling the truth.
    He wanted a drink. He wanted to clear his head, which was suddenly aching. He wanted release, and whether it was emotional or just pure sex, he didn’t care.
    “Well, in view of the fact that I never asked you for specifics at the time…was I satisfactory?” he demanded, “Did I ‘get the job done’, as you so delicately put it?”
    To his surprise, Anna laughed. A light, sexy laugh that should have broken the tension, but didn’t. “Nick! You are kidding, aren’t you? If you couldn’t tell from all the—” her eyes skittered away just a second, and she swallowed furiously, “—all the fuss I made, then you obviously aren’t the all-conquering sexual love-rat everyone believes you to be.”
    “Reports of my sexual prowess have been greatly exaggerated,” he murmured dryly, but inside he found a smile, stupidly pleased at the idea of “getting the job done” and well.
    Because she’d pleased him. Per Dio , how she’d pleased him. He’d never had quite the same sublime experience since, and he’d had lovers who were world-class beauties, sexually voracious and practiced seductresses to boot.
    Looking down at Anna’s face, he saw courage and fire in every perfect contour. Her mouth was luscious yet determined and her eyes held his, not quailing, not hiding anything.
    She did want him, but she was wary. Her slender body had an almost feline quality of readiness, as if she were gathering herself to dart away from him if he made the slightest wrong move. Either that or she was poised to attack him. Even ravish him.
    But everything about her made him want to launch his own counterattack. To haul her against him and kiss her until the last sub-atomic particle of hostility in her had melted and she was eager and aroused in his arms. As eager and aroused as he was.
    Instead, he dropped onto the sofa again, taking care to observe her personal space while every fiber of his being howled at him to invade it. “Is that what you think of me? That I’m a love-rat?” He patted the seat beside him, and felt a ridiculous, almost boyish happiness when she sat too.
    He recognized his peril when close proximity surrounded him with the delicate drift of her perfume. It was very light, yet as rich as a basket of summer flowers, and it was exactly the same fragrance she’d worn in bed at Villa Rosa. It had been the only thing she’d been wearing that night and it had filled his head with madness.
    As it did now.
    “It’s a pretty crude way of putting it, but essentially…yes.” She glanced down at his thigh, and hers, almost touching, and he could tell she wanted to move, but he wasn’t quite sure whether away or closer. “According to those—” she nodded to a pile of shiny magazines lying on the nearby coffee table, “—and what everybody says, you do seem to work your way through a lot of women.”
    “So you believe the made-up tales of trashy magazines and evil-minded gossips?” he murmured, irrationally wounded, but knowing he shouldn’t blame her. He as good as promoted that image of himself, so his lovers wouldn’t be cruelly disappointed when forever wasn’t on offer. “I’ve always credited you with more intelligence than that, Anna.”
    Nick felt an intense desire to defend himself. Take her by the shoulders, look deep into her intelligent green eyes and convince her by sheer force of personality that he wasn’t the unprincipled womanizer the sensationalist press and his self-created persona portrayed him to be. But what would be the point of that? She was safer thinking he was a womanizer. At least that way she knew where she stood.
    “I enjoy women,” he conceded, “And I enjoy variety. But I don’t set out to misrepresent myself. Every woman I sleep with knows the score. No strings. No commitment. No wedding bells. Long-term relationships and me aren’t a viable mixture, Anna. Haven’t I always told you that?”
    Anna’s eyes narrowed again, and her brow