Free Out of Bounds by Kris Pearson Page A

experiment,
if she was honest.
    Anton turned slightly in his sleep. His lips
nuzzled her hand and he muttered something she couldn’t decipher.
His breath warmed her skin, hot, damp and thrilling.
    With a stealth she didn’t know she possessed,
she extricated her hand from his in tiny increments. She stepped
away and looked down—only to find that somehow in his sleep he’d
sensed the presence of a woman. The fabric of his shorts now
strained upward in a tent that rivaled anything Uncle Graham had
ever shown her. She couldn’t help the anguished moan that burst
from her throat as she flung the blanket into the air and dashed
from the room.
    “Hmmmmph? Anton muttered as it landed on him.
“Hmmmm?”
    Jetta woke to blinding sunshine, positive
she’d never been asleep. But somehow the whole long night had
passed. Somehow she’d relaxed enough to doze off—even if it had
only been to see Anton again and again, stretched out half clad, or
unclad, or so rampant her thighs jerked with fright and
longing.
    All night she’d thrashed around, trying to
find a cool, calm place in her bed. Trying to find a cool, calm
place in her imagination too, but it was smoking hot in there.
    The pictures in her brain had become ever
more vivid. Ever more lustful.
    Uncle Graham was nowhere to be seen; it was
all Anton. Anton who was due any minute to start painting again—if
he’d ever gone home. Maybe he was still in Gran’s room?
    Shocked by that thought, she scrambled from bed,
pulled her most concealing robe around her, and yanked the belt
tight, but when she cleared her throat loudly in the hallway and
called his name, there was no reply. She peered around the
doorframe. He’d left her blanket neatly folded, but he’d gone.
    Anton took another gulp of coffee, set the
cup down, and broke a second egg into the spitting fry-pan. The
bacon smelled fantastic, and he was starving.
    He’d woken an hour ago in a room he didn’t
recognize, under a blanket that smelled like Jetta. Hard as hell
inside his shorts, and totally confused. What was he doing
there?
    The previous night slid slowly back into his
head. The impromptu birthday dinner. Jetta’s curvy butt in those
black leather trousers. Hallie and Bren’s cheerful ribbing. The
cupboard doors.
    And something else that couldn’t be for real;
Jetta bending over him like a guardian angel, stroking his hair,
holding his hand, and then disappearing in a puff of smoke.
    He knew she’d found him asleep some time
after she returned home. The sweet-smelling blanket proved
that.
    The rest made no sense at all. She was hardly
going to caress him in his sleep. Throwing a bucket of water over
him was a lot likelier.
    He flipped the eggs and shoveled the bacon
onto a plate, still speculating. The ethereal angel had seemed much
more real than the raunchy dreams that followed. He knew them for
what they were—total fantasy.
    The toast popped up and he threw the hot
slice beside the bacon, slid the eggs on top, and took the plate
outside to the sunny courtyard.
    His mother had always cooked bacon and eggs
for Sunday breakfast, even when her money must have been terribly
tight.
    With the wisdom of hindsight, he saw it might
have been an attempt to stop his Saturday night dates lasting
through into snoozy Sunday mornings in girlfriends’ beds.
    Clever woman, Isobel Scott. Not that he
hadn’t spent plenty of snoozy mornings…
    He grinned to himself, and then wondered how
she and her sister were getting on. Would they soon be eating bacon
and eggs on their holiday island off the Australian coast? No, much
more likely they’d be on some sort of sisterly diet thing and
getting into guilt-free bowls of mango and pawpaw and melon.
    He finished breakfast and leaned back against
the trellis for a few minutes, savoring the sun on his skin,
knowing he’d have to start the wall painting again soon.
    Jetta was up. Water was running at number fifteen and
he presumed she was showering. Not hard to imagine