Read The Good, the Bad and the Wild for Free Online

without seeming rude.
But then he whisked his wet jumper over his head—and she forgot to breathe, let alone look for an escape route.
‘It’s always freezing down here,’ he said, crossing towards her. ‘Even in the summer.’
She stared, her gaze riveted to his naked chest. Not just giddy any more but light-headed.
Goodness .
She’d never seen anything so beautiful. Bronzed, olive skin defined the bunch of muscle that looked so much leaner and tougher than the steroidal excess of the romance cover modelsshe’d once fantasised about. She certainly wouldn’t be fantasising about them any more.
A faded tattoo of a coiled snake writhed on his left bicep as he rubbed the garment over his hair, making it stick up in rough spikes. Her gaze locked on the springy curls of hair under his arms, which also grew much more sparsely around flat brown nipples. The dusting of hair angled down into a thin line that bisected the ridges of his six pack before disappearing beneath the low waistband of his jeans. Her heartbeat bumped against her neck as she noticed the thin white scar that stood out against the bronzed skin of his abdomen, slashing across his ribs to follow the line of his hipbone. She struggled to breathe, horrified and yet entranced by the other smaller scars she spotted marring smooth skin. She’d known he was dangerous, but she hadn’t realised quite how dangerous.
Her eyes jerked to his face as he lobbed the wet sweater into a wicker laundry basket beside the washing machine. Stepping closer, he lifted the helmet out of her hands, a confident smile edging his lips. She could have sworn she could feel the heat of his skin. Or maybe that was just her body temperature going haywire, because she was about to pass out?
She drew in a lungful of air. And tasted the clean spicy scent of him.
‘You cold?’ he asked, dumping the helmet ona shelf. She shook her head, knowing speech was probably a bad idea.
‘Come on, the apartment’s a lot warmer.’
‘Okay,’ she mumbled, as if she needed any more heat.
Having retrieved her bag from the bike box, he hooked it over her shoulder, then guided her towards a wooden staircase that led out of the back of the garage into the rain. ‘You’ll need to lose the ankle-breakers,’ he said, the weight of his palm on her back causing the now familiar sizzles of electricity. ‘The stairs get slippery in the rain.’
She nodded, still mute, and slipped off the slingback shoes. Before she could bend to pick them up, he scooped them off the floor.
He clasped her hand and they dashed through the rain together, drops splashing on the wooden decks as they climbed to the top landing. Her breath sawed out as he led her through terrace doors into a long, narrow room with high ceilings and a marble fireplace thrown into shadow by the twilight. The starkly modern leather sofa and chairs and huge flat-screen TV contrasted with the old-world charm of the cornices on the ceiling. A light clicked on illuminating a spotlessly clean, granite and glass kitchen at the far end of the room.
‘I’ll get some towels,’ he said, disappearing down a corridor to the right of the kitchen.
She shivered violently. The room was warm,cosy even, with the sound of the sleeting rain lashing the terrace doors, but the sight of his naked back retreating from view did nothing to stop the shaking.
Dropping her bag on the kitchen counter, she spotted her mobile in the side pocket, its message light flashing.
She read the text from Tess. ‘Where r u???’
She paused with her fingers over the key pad. What should she say? How did she explain where she was and what she was planning to do? She took in a shuddering breath.
Keep it brief. Keep it simple. And don’t go into too much detail or you might chicken out .
She keyed in: ‘I’m with Nick.’
The mobile buzzed almost instantly with Tess’s reply. ‘OMG! U wild woman.’
A smile quirked on Eva’s lips, excitement dispelling the last of her terror. Finally,