Free Flushed by Sally Felt

not like regal, wounded and undeniably
passionate Isabelle Caine, the Immovable Object.
     
    So much for perfect. Isabelle turned her gaze out the dark
window, feeling as alone as she had in bed last night. She’d started to trust
Kim, to suspect he had a conscience, some kind of code he lived by. But a man
who had nothing nice to say about his family was a man without roots. And she
knew what happened with those kinds of men.
    Just another reason to be glad she’d been clear about
tonight’s arrangement.
    By the time they pulled up at the squatty suburban strip
mall where Mirabelle made its unlikely home, she wasn’t sure she could even
fake her way through a meal.
    Kim parked. “How did we meet?” he asked.
    “What?”
    “Our relationship. Did you call for a plumber? Or did our
eyes meet across the ice rink at the Galleria?”
    Oh.
    “Kim, I don’t know if I can do this. Maybe you should take
me home.”
    “Hang on.” He came around, opened her door and waited until
she took his offered hand as she stepped down to the pavement. The touch of his
sandpaper fingers surprised her again.
    “Okay,” he said, still holding her hand. “If you’re going to
break my heart, do it here. It’s always better face-to-face.”
    “Oh, please. As if you are ever the break-ee.”
    His voice changed from joking to blanket-soft. “If you had
any idea how much I want to kiss you, you wouldn’t say that.”
    “Then tell me,” she said. “Tell me how much. Make me
believe.”
    And he did.
    Her awareness shifted from a white scar that interrupted his
right eyebrow, to a fan of dark eyelashes, then down to his parting lips and
cleft chin and…mmm. Isabelle slipped her hands beneath Kim’s open coat. She
spread her fingers across his silk-covered chest as his arm wound around her
and pulled her inexorably closer.
    This time, there was no teasing of her lips or polite
hesitation. He was drinking her, drawing her, promising her something that had
no words. Her body understood. She stepped closer, one of her feet between his,
leg to leg, belly to belly, chest to chest.
    Warmth and humidity and the sense that something very old
was being shaken awake. Oh my.
    Her hands felt restless. Her pulse, heavy. Her body itched.
She pressed herself closer, hip to hip, heat to heat. Kim’s hand cupped her
neck, sliding up into her hair, his rough skin making her shiver against him.
    She gasped.
    He eased back, still holding her cheek in one rough palm. Their
bodies were still pressed together. His eyes seemed very dark in the parking
lot’s eerie sulfur light. She knew he was seeing nothing but her and it made
her feel like the most desirable woman ever to draw breath on earth.
    And she was looking at the most desirable man.
    “Maybe you should take me home,” she said again for entirely
different reasons.
    “Isabelle.” The longing in his voice made her shiver again.
    “Change of plan,” she said. “We are sleeping together.”
    * * * * *
    They needed a chaperone.
    Kim sat opposite Bob at their square table at the restaurant
and decided the word might be old fashioned but the concept was as relevant as
ever, at least if the couple in need cared about staying clothed and out of
jail.
    Trouble was, he and Isabelle had become the couple in need.
Even if they weren’t dating.
    He should know by now that kissing Isabelle Caine was no
casual matter, that once he kissed her, it became hard to think about anything
other than kissing her again. And when she’d ignited in his arms in the parking
lot, suddenly a heated, willing accomplice in what had become the most
confusing attraction of his life, he couldn’t. Think of anything else, that is.
Unless thoughts of getting her out of that dress counted.
    This was out of hand.
    Isabelle’s friend Stacey sat to his left. Tonight, the
blonde was wearing a sleeveless dress, black of course, cut to frame her
cleavage. Bob seemed unable to look outside the frame.
    Kim understood. Every time he