Free A Gentleman in the Street by Alisha Rai

still spread lewdly open. For the sake of principle, she took her time closing them, but didn’t bother to shove her skirt down. When she rose to balance herself on her elbows, her ruined shirt gaped over her breasts.
    He looked up from his contemplation of the rug, his gaze flying over her exposed body. She wanted to cover up. Which was exactly why she didn’t.
    Thankfully, she had braced herself, so she managed not to reel from the horror clearly written all over him. “My God,” he echoed.
    Jacob scrubbed his hand over his mouth, before pulling it away and staring down at it as if he’d been singed.
    She smirked. Her juices were all over his face. She hoped they set him on fire. She hoped she was imprinted on him forever.
    “This shouldn’t have… This can’t happen again.”
    You didn’t deserve to have this happen. Not a muscle twitched in her face. She made sure of it. “You started it,” she reminded him. Mild. Uninterested. Like he hadn’t just blown her mind.
    He raked his hands through his hair and launched to his feet. “I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know… I have no idea what I was thinking.”
    “Probably not with your brain.” She was proud of herself. Just get through this. Get rid of him. “Don’t worry,” she said, her tone as dry as she could make it. “I won’t take this little incident as a sign you like me or anything.”
    The look of anguish he gave her cut her to the quick. This was that painful for him? Really? “It’s not you—” he started to say, his vocal cords rough.
    “Shut up.” God, she couldn’t, wouldn’t sit here and listen to him tell her that inane, blatantly false platitude. Of course it was her. It was always her. “Just. Shut. Up.”
    “I’m sorry. It can’t…It won’t happen again. Please, just…forget it.” He backed away as he spoke, looking everywhere but directly at her. His hand groped behind him, and he found the door handle. “Goodbye.”
    The door shut behind his hasty exit. Akira stared at the door, aware she needed to rise, clean up, change into the spare clothes she kept in the office.
    But all she could do was sit there, in the wreckage of her garments, her defenses stripped, simultaneously satisfied and hungry for more. Hungry for him. Even when he made it perfectly clear how disgusting he found her.
    Underneath the frozen layer of calm she had adopted as a stopgap measure to keep him from guessing her true emotions, a small, hot kernel of rage bloomed.

Chapter Six

    He should have stayed home.
    One of the joys of Jacob’s career—other than wearing sweatpants to work—was that he rarely needed to interact with humans unless it was absolutely required. Parties and socializing could be kept to a minimum.
    It wasn’t that he hated people. Jacob rolled his shoulders, the bow tie around his neck foreign and uncomfortable. He simply didn’t like most of them as much as he enjoyed his own company.
    And when he’d spent the better part of a week turned inside out thanks to a certain beautiful woman and certain explosive events that had happened on the rug in her office, the last thing he wanted to do was put on a tux and mingle with people he barely knew.
    However, he had committed to this particular dinner months ago. After his father had died of a sudden heart attack, he’d started contributing his time to this heart disease prevention charity. Stephen King he wasn’t, but Jacob supposed he had become something of a public figure in the past couple of years as his books grew in popularity.
    He settled himself against the wall, a watered-down scotch in his hands. He had made some halfhearted bids in the silent auction and greeted the organizers. Once he finished this second drink, he would slip out and head home.
    His lips twisted. Home, where he could deal with Kati’s continued silent treatment and try not to wallow in guilt and self-disgust over his lapse in control five days ago.
    Like that was possible. If he wasn’t kicking