Wolfe Wanting Read Online Free PDF Page A

breaths. With her inner eyes, she could see the lot, see her car, see herself hurrying to the car, unlocking it, sliding behind the wheel, inserting the key in the ignition even as she tugged on the door to pull it shut.
    “I was closing the car door when...suddenly it was yanked wide open again...jerking my arm...pulling me down and sideways, nearly out of the car.” Her breathing was now shallow, quick, and the words were tumbling out of her parched throat.
    “Then there was a large shape looming into the opening. A hairy-backed hand grabbed my shoulder...shoved me down...and back inside.” She was trembling, uncontrollably, and she was unaware of her fingernails digging into the flesh of the hand clasping hers. “My face...the side of my face scraped the steering wheel as I was pushed down...down...”
    Reliving the horror, Megan didn't hear the door to her room open, didn't notice the figure of Dr. Hawk standing just inside the door, quiet, watchful, poised to go into action should she deem her patient in need of her attention.
    “He was all over me!” she cried in a terrified croak. “The hand that had grabbed my shoulder moved down to clutch at my breast! His...his other hand...” She was gasping now, barely able to articulate. “He shoved that hand between my legs!”
    “I'm here. You're safe.”
    Soft. Rock-steady. Royce's voice penetrated the ballooning fog of panic permeating Megan's mind. The fog retreated. Her entire body shaking from reactive tremors, she clung desperately to his hand and purged the poison from her system.
    “Somehow I managed to work one of my legs up, between his. I...I... rammed my knee into his groin! He cried out, 'you bitch!' and hit me, in the face... Then he pulled back...just enough so that I could raise my leg farther. I worked my foot up to his belly. And then...and then, I pushed again, as hard as I could. He...he fell back, onto the macadam.”
    “Go on.”
    “I—I—” Megan choked, coughed, sniffed, swiped her free hand over cheeks wet from tears she was unaware of having shed. “I...don't remember, exactly. I turned the key as I struggled up, behind the wheel. I drove away from there...from him ...with the door wide open. I don't know when or where I thought to pull it shut. All I knew, all I could think, was that I had to get away!”
    Megan heard wrenching sobs, and didn't even know they came from her tight, aching throat.
    “I don't remember hitting the guardrail!” She blinked, stared, and found sanctuary in the compassion-filled blue eyes staring back at her.
    “I don't re— I don't re—”
    “It's over,” he inserted in a low, calming voice. “It doesn't matter. Let it go.”
    “Yes. Yes.” Megan's chin dropped onto her chest, and she began to cry, not harsh, wracking sobs, but a quiet weeping of utter exhaustion.
    They let her cry, the state cop and the doctor, let her weep the catharsis of healing tears.
    Megan fell asleep with her hand still gripping his.

Three
    D amn, she was tall!
    Megan Delaney was being released from the hospital this morning. Royce had offered to drive her home.
    He felt a tingling thrill of pleasure as he stared at the woman standing next to the hospital bed—a thrill of pleasure that contained a hint of attraction. Being so tall himself, Royce did appreciate height in a woman, but there was more entailed here, something beyond mere appreciation, something Royce didn't want to examine or even acknowledge.
    The very fact that he was taking pleasure from such a simple thing as a woman's height startled Royce. What did Megan's height have to do with anything? he asked himself, frowning in consternation. And the other underlying sensation...that didn't bear thinking about.
    Dismissing his reaction and the unmentionable accompanying sensation as unimportant, Royce focused on Megan Delaney. Yes, she was tall, and she was unquestionably attractive, but at the moment every inch of her slender form was taut, visibly tense.
    Royce