Free Dangerous Curves Ahead: A Perfect Fit Novel by Sugar Jamison Page A

feeding a broodmare?”
    “Stop it.” He grabbed her chin between his thick fingers and forced her to look him in the eye. She saw anger there. He was angry with her. “I don’t ever want to hear you talk about yourself like that again. Do you understand me? It’s not funny,” he said in a low voice. “It’s not some kind of goddamn joke. You’re beautiful. You’re sexy and any man in his right mind can see that. Why can’t you?”
    Ellis froze. For a second she felt like crying. After hearing nothing but put-downs from Jack for the last six months of their relationship, Mike’s words were like balm to her bruised soul. She had a hard time seeing herself that way, a hard time believing his words because somewhere along the line a tiny part of her had started believing what Jack had said.
    His cobalt eyes bored into hers. “I don’t want you calling yourself that word around me anymore. Okay?”
    She nodded. It was all she could do. He lifted the strawberry to her mouth and this time without protest she opened her lips and let him feed her.
    Suddenly the emcee’s voice sounded across the bar. Sheet of papers and pens were handed out. Trivia night was beginning.
    *   *   *
    Mike noticed that Ellis had gone quiet during the first few rounds of trivia. She gave answers when she knew them, showing off her intelligence. He had no idea who wrote The Glass Menagerie or the year the first Peanuts comic premiered. Colin seemed very pleased with her performance. He nodded at Mike three times, their private signal that he approved of a woman. How could he not approve of her? By the end of round three they were tied for first place and Colin was enjoying himself with Ellis’s friends. Or at least he was pretending to.
    Colin had always been a good wingman and tonight was no different. He managed to keep Ellis’s friends well occupied while Mike was doing things to her he shouldn’t have. Rubbing the strawberry across her lips, for example, but Ellis had such pretty pink lips and watching her lick them was like watching one of his fantasies come to life. He was attracted to her and damn it, he didn’t want to be.
    Sitting next to her, with her soft body pressed into his side, talking for those few minutes, Mike got the chance to learn about her in a way he never got to learn about most women he came in contact with. Some man, somewhere along the way, had convinced her that she wasn’t beautiful, which was a shame, because her brown eyes contained little flecks of gold and her skin looked as smooth as the cream they were eating. That man also had probably broken her heart. Mike didn’t do needy, insecure women. They were too messy. But Ellis didn’t strike him that way. She had steel running through her, and he liked that. She also wasn’t looking for the package. The husband-and-family thing. He could be around her without worrying that she had ulterior motives. Tonight he realized he did want to be around her: Even though they bickered and things weren’t as easy as he liked, there was something about her that kept him wanting to get closer.
    “I like you much better when you’re quiet,” Mike said into Ellis’s ear between the third and fourth rounds.
    “Bite me,” she griped.
    He grinned at her. “Only if I get to pick where.” He deliberately took his time studying her body. She wore tight black jeans tonight, with black leather boots and a red wrap top. It was sexy without being slutty and had him wishing she would stand up just so he could see how well her jeans fit her backside.
    “God, you’re such a smarmy pervert.”
    He shrugged, unrepentant.
    “And why are you sitting so close to me?” She wiggled slightly to get away from him but all she managed to do was rub against him in the process. “You’ve been with so many women I’ll probably get a STD just sitting next to you.”
    He took slight offense to that. It hadn’t been that many. “How do you know how many women I’ve been with?