Long Summer Nights Read Online Free PDF

own not quite deserved pride in her career. And some of it was because he belonged to the world of the intelligentsia and the literati. It was a nut she wanted to crack, a place she wanted to belong. At the paper, the halls were filled with people who dropped rhetoricaldevices at the drop of a hat. Instinctively she knew he lived in that high-brow existence, as well. His careful assessment of his surroundings, his use of language, his absolute moral certainty. So, who was he?
    “I’m assuming you’re not a reporter. What is your job?”
    He waited a long time before replying. But eventually he met her eyes casually. Too casually. “Writer.”
    “Journalist?” she asked, not because she believed he was, but merely to see him dump all over the profession again. There was much to be gleaned from a person’s prejudices.
    “Fiction. Not so different.”
    A writer? Sure, there was something bohemian about him, but he seemed a little more intense than the unambitious dreamers who sat alone in their cave, waiting for the muse to come down and strike them with brilliance. No, this man would beat his muse senseless before he depended on someone else for his words.
    He belonged somewhere else. Like Brooklyn, for instance.
    “Why are you here?” she asked. “Why aren’t you out among the teeming masses, mingling with the great unwashed dregs of humanity, obsessed with the eight million stories in the naked city?”
    “Do you have to keep bringing up naked?”
    He looked so upset at the idea of weakness, so worried that he was actually afflicted with something as common as lust, that Jenn wanted to shout childishly, “Naked, naked, naked,” or perhaps, less childishly, to rip off her T-shirt and see what he’d do. Prudently she abstained from both and changed the subject.
    “You’re here to write? No, strike that. I still don’t getyou. How you can stay here without going bonkers? Don’t you want to know what’s happening in the world?”
    “Are people still getting robbed, are hurricanes still blowing, is the country still poised on the edge of ruin?”
    Okay, he had a point, but it amazed her that anyone could stay so unplugged from the events of the world, the personalities, the happenings that affected them all. He didn’t seem as though he’d be disinterested in the world. Maybe he didn’t want to think that way, but she’d seen him watching her phone, she watched him at the inn earlier.
    “But it’s news,” she protested, speaking out in defense of the American media institution. How could anyone ignore…everything?
    “It’s not news. It’s old. Old as history, old as time.”
    “Old as sex,” she contributed, noting the blush, pleased at his response.
    “You promised,” he protested. It was halfhearted, and his eyes warmed with lust and want, watching her the same way he watched everything else. Not liking it, not comfortable, but unable to stop.
    “I didn’t promise. You assumed,” she answered, flirting dangerously, because she didn’t want him to stop. She liked the want in his eyes, the way it made her heart pump with courage instead of fear. She liked the powerful heat in her blood.
    Suddenly he was very close, a whisper’s breath away. His legs were nearly brushing hers, the muscles in his arms tense with frustration. All she had to do was move one inch…
    “Woman, you are the gate of Hell, the temptress of the forbidden tree. You are the first deserter of the divine law.” The words were low and raw and she’d never felt so completely aroused in her life.
    “Cecil, again?” she whispered, inching closer.
    “No, Tertullian.” His eyes met hers, fogged with desire. For her.
    “Anytime,” she whispered, feeling the curling tension inside her, the budded nipples straining against her T-shirt, begging for attention.
    His astute gaze rested on her T-shirt, and his mouth strained as well, causing her nipples to harden in a completely Pavlovian manner.
    “I should go,” he