Uncommon Pleasure Read Online Free PDF

opened. He’d zipped his pants. As she watched he shrugged out of the shirt and tossed it toward his duffel, then braced a shoulder against the frame and folded his arms while he looked at her. He stayed in the doorway, and it occurred to her that he wasn’t likely to get within five feet of the bed until she’d left it. She got to her feet, sent a mental threat to her knees to steady up, then walked past him into the bathroom. “Excuse me,” she said.
    In the bathroom she wet a washcloth and cleaned up, taking her time as she swiped the cloth behind her neck, down her throat, along her belly. Between her legs. She splashed water on her face, combed the worst of the tangles from her hair with her fingers.When she emerged he was sitting in one of the room’s two chairs, her dress pooled in his lap as he deftly reattached the shoulder strap to the bodice with a needle and thread.
    The night was one surprise after another. Astonished, she perched on the edge of the rumpled bed and watched him. His big, rough hands took neat stitches in an ecru thread that almost matched the lace, no less. It took less than a minute, then he snapped the thread with a quick jerk of work-roughened fists, stuck the needle back in the travel sewing kit, and held out the dress.
    Ty Hendricks was a six-foot-tall, hard-muscled, prowling contradiction.
    She took her dress from his outstretched hand, pulled it over her head, and twisted her hair into a loose knot at her nape. She was decent to get home. “Thank you,” she said.
    He tore the plastic bag from around a paper cup next to the brown plastic ice bucket and poured a good two inches of whiskey into it. His throat worked as he swallowed, then he sat back, arms dangling from the arms of the chair. All sign of the connection arcing between them during sex had disappeared from his angular, expressionless face. “Want a drink?” he asked carelessly, without meeting her eyes.
    A women’s magazine she’d flipped through in her doctor’s office contained the theory that a man’s walls crumbled when he was having sex, an idea her scientifically trained brain considered and discarded in the time it took to close the magazine. But living, breathing proof of the hypothesis was sitting in front of her, walled off like a compound, proving her wrong. She smoothed her palm absently over the silk dress and considered him, but, drink offer aside, he couldn’t possibly be less inviting. “Thank you, but no,” she said. She picked up her purse from the spot where it had landed by the door and rummaged through it. Cell phone, keys, credit card, driver’s license. She was good to go.
    She’d gotten exactly what she wanted. Going back to his room with him should have satisfied her curiosity as well as her body, but as the room’s shadows sidled toward him, making a home in his dark eyes, neither was satiated. Every cell in her body remained on high alert, attuned to the chemistry still crackling between them, to the odd emotional resonance swirling in and out of the shadows. But she had no idea how to go about illuminating what haunted him, and twenty minutes of conversation over dinner taught her how unwelcome her efforts would be.
    “Good night, Ty,” she said quietly, stepped out into the hall, and let the door close behind her.

Chapter Four
    The briefing started at eight. Ty pulled into the parking lot of Langley Security at 7:58 a.m. He downed a fast-food sausage and egg biscuit in three bites, finishing just as John Langley’s black Ford Explorer parked beside him. Ty got out of his car while John and his girlfriend, Lucy Monroe, emerged from the SUV. John wore slacks, a dress shirt, and a tie, which meant he was due at a sales presentation at some point during the day. Lucy was dressed for her day as a partner with a local accounting firm in a slim, fitted black jacket and a skirt that ended just above her knee, killer spike heels, and the amber necklace she wore almost daily. Her hair was