Read Full Exposure: A Loveswept Contemporary Erotic Romance for Free Online Page B

messages.
    Now, however, she wasn’t nearly as certain. Now she was scared—for herself and for Kevin. What if this guy was violent? Jealous? Completely obsessed? She’d seen that kind of obsession firsthand, knew how vicious it could be.
    Resting her head in her hands, Serena pressed the heels of her hands against her weary eyes. As if the next few days didn’t already hold enough fun-filled activities to last her a lifetime, now she had someone following her every move—fixated on her and perhaps on Kevin as well.
    With her eyes closed, she couldn’t stop the events of the previous night from flipping through her brain. What had she been thinking? Her laugh was unamused as she realized the obvious answer—she hadn’t been thinking at all. She’d been too caught up in the blazing desire generated from being in the same room with Kevin to even attempt to think rationally. There was no other answer for her behavior, no other reason for the heat flooding her still.
    But she couldn’t afford to use her suddenly raging hormones as a guide to living her life. Even without her obscene caller and his threats, her life was entirely too complicated at present to consider starting a relationship.
    She had to stop this thing with Kevin before it really got started. Had to stop thinking about him, lusting after him when she should be working. She wasn’t afraid of the sex—that was the easy part. But she couldn’t just fuck him and move on. Because no matter how casually she intended this thing with him to be, no matter how desperately she tried to keep her emotional distance, she had a feeling getting involved with Kevin would be the equivalent of emotional quicksand. He didn’t have a casual, uncomplicatedbone in his body and even if he did, there was too much heat between them for things to be just sexual.
    Already they were teetering on the edge of emotional involvement and she didn’t
do
emotional involvement. He’d held her last night when she’d fallen apart, had soothed her and rocked her to sleep like a child. That in itself put Kevin in a category far different from mere sexual attraction. A small part of her, one she had thought long dead and buried, warmed at the memory of his care and concern. The rest of her was a mixture of fear and humiliation. Fear because of the curious melting in the region of her heart. Humiliation because Kevin had seen her so completely defenseless.
    She’d spent years cultivating her smooth outer shell—so many years that no one even remembered the girl she’d once been. Not even her. And now she’d let Kevin in—had let him see her with all her defenses down. She felt naked, exposed, and she couldn’t stand the vulnerability.
    Forcing herself to take a deep breath, Serena inhaled and exhaled slowly. Battled the rising panic and slowly unfurled her clenched fists. She could handle this. Compared to what had happened ten years before, compared to what awaited her in front of that parole board, getting through the next hour was a walk in the park. She just had to get herself, and her emotions, under control before she did.
    Pushing her chair back from the desk, she strode across the room and stared at herself in the mirror above the sturdy, unfinished pine dresser. She looked pale, frazzled, on edge. She laughed, but it was a sound tinged more with cynicism than humor. She
was
frazzled and on edge. How could she not be? She was in the middle of the biggest project she’d ever been involved with, perched to blow her career wide open, and she was falling apart.
    Her brown eyes were shadowed, made even darker by the purple circles underneath them. Her light summer tan looked sallow with her unnatural pallor and her mouth was drawn into a tight line. Quite a difference from the sexually charged woman of the night before. But the blackout last night, followed by the nightmare, had been one stress too many on her already maxed-out system. It would be a miracle if she managed to get