Free Wild Child by Molly O'Keefe

know. But … we seem to bring out the worst in each other and it’s just not worth it. Nothing is ever going to happen between us.”
    The sound of his footsteps approaching was loud in the dark, a pebble skipped across cement. “I think something already has.”
    Oh, how young he seemed with his lines, his cocky assurance. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that she’d seen it all before. “You know what the largest erogenous zone is for women?”
    “Your skin,” he murmured and her body responded. Amazing! Her body, which felt so little, so shallowly, felt his voice all the way down to her bones, pulsing in her womb.
    “No. My brain.”
    “Are you saying I have to seduce your brain?”
    “I’m saying you don’t stand a chance.”
    “Do you like sex?”
    “Oh my God.” She turned, stomping away. “Leave it to a man to hear a rejection and think it’s because I don’t like sex.”
    The asshole had the balls to smile as he caught up to her. “No. I’m just asking because every other woman in my life who has told me I have to convince her brain to have sex lets her brain get in the way during sex.”
    She tripped over the edge of the sidewalk. “Aren’t you a regular Dr. Ruth?”
    “Hardly.” He put a hand on her arm and it was warm and heavy. Real. She felt every callus at the base of hisfingers, along his thumb. The mayor worked with his hands. And her body—weak, weak, weak—imagined him shirtless and sweaty, nailing shit together, his muscles ropy and ripped. A tool belt, some of those low jeans …
    Agh! He’d gotten to her.
    “I am a man who hasn’t had sex in two years,” he laughed, somehow so easy with this confession when every other man she’d ever known would never dream of saying such things, “and has spent endless, and I do mean endless, nights reimagining and replaying every sexual encounter I’ve ever had. The women I’ve disappointed, the way I would have done things differently, the women I’ve pleased and who have pleased me.” He pointed to his head. “It’s all right here.”
    She stared at him. “What am I supposed to do with that?”
    “I don’t know.” He sighed. “But I do know that I have not felt the way I feel about you in years.”
    “It’s just sexual attraction, Jackson. It’s chemistry.”
    “I know. And it’s awesome.” He nearly fist-pumped. He nearly danced with his excitement.
    She laughed, because he sounded like a kid and part of her … part of her had forgotten—if she’d ever really known—what pure chemistry felt like. She’d confused it plenty in her youth. Manufactured it. Mislabeled it. Pretended it was there when it wasn’t. Faked it.
    But what she felt for Jackson—it was real.
    “I’d like to kiss you.”
    “Jackson—”
    “Say no if you want. But I’d like to kiss you.”
    She didn’t say no and he stepped closer. Still she was silent, and he moved closer again. The hem of his tee shirt touched her shirt and she shouldn’t be able to feel that, but she did, somehow. She felt everything—the night air, his breath, the attention of his eyes. It was asif her skin had slipped away and all she had was raw sensation.
    Flirting with Jackson, kissing him—it could be a problem, she understood that. But when was this ever going to happen again? A man who didn’t expect anything from her? A man she really and truly—despite his idiotic behavior and perhaps her own idiotic behavior—wanted.
    It was so rare in her life these days. Rare enough to make her throw caution to the wind.
    If not now, when? she wondered. Time was creeping ever onward and she was more alone by the moment.
    She put a hand against his chest, over the pale blue shirt that made his eyes look like the sky on a hot August day. Beneath the cotton she felt the warmth of his skin, the tensile strength of his muscles, and beneath that, the heavy pounding of his heart.
    When he stepped forward again, their bellies touched. The most intimacy she’d