Midnight Man Read Online Free Page A

your security. Nothing like a live demonstration to convince people. You weren’t supposed to faint on me.”
     
    She wasn’t even listening to the words. His voice was a deep meaningless rumble in his chest. She rested her forehead against his collarbone, palms up over his pectorals.
     
    He was holding her tightly, so tightly she could hear—even feel—his calm strong heartbeat, one beat to her two.
     
    He’d been out in the rain. He smelled delicious—some heady mixture of male, rain and leather. She moved her right hand slightly under his jacket and felt a leather harness of some sort. Intrigued, she moved her hand further across his chest and encountered grained wood and a steel barrel.
     
    He wasn’t letting go. She was going breathless from another type of shock now. One big hand covered the back of her head, the other clasped her about the waist. He pressed hard with that hand and her stomach came into contact with something equally hard.
     
    Not a gun.
     
    She jumped back as if scalded. Some dim part of her brain realized that she was able to do that only because he’d opened his arms the instant he felt her jolt. Otherwise there was no way she could have freed herself from his embrace. The muscles she’d pushed against to jump back were like steel.
     
    Wordless, she stared at him.
     
    “You need a new security system,” he said.
     
    She opened her mouth but nothing came out. New security system. The words circled around her head but couldn’t find a place to land. She couldn’t get a handle on them, on her emotions.
     
    His expression was completely unchanged. Set, unsmiling, serious. She couldn’t begin to read his reaction.
     
    If he even had one. He seemed completely unaffected. And yet she knew he had been affected in at least one big way.
     
    Embarrassment was coming in right after the shock, in great rolling waves. She could feel the heat of it rise in her face, together with another heat, completely uncontrollable.
     
    Suzanne searched in her depths for some way to deal with the situation. Some nice neutral ladylike etiquette that would help her handle having felt the penis of a complete stranger.
     
    Erect penis, if you please.
     
    Huge, erect penis.
     
    Oh God.
     
    Her gaze shot to about six inches above his head. Her throat was dry and her lungs hurt.
     
    “You need a new security system,” he repeated. New security system. New. Security. System. She needed a new security system.
     
    Well…yes. If he was able to break through her system in the time it took her to place a phone call, she probably did need a new one.
     
    “Okay,” she croaked. She cleared her throat. “Okay. I’ll look into it as soon as I can. I’ll ask around—“
     
    “Don’t bother. I’ll install one for you. One not even I can get through. As a thank you for your designs.”
     
    “You don’t need to—“ Suzanne looked at his face. Not a face you said no to. “Okay. Thanks.”
     
    “What’s your favorite restaurant here in Portland?”
     
    She huffed out a little breath, shifting gears. “Well, I suppose… Comme Chez Soi. But why do you—“
     
    “We can talk about your new system tonight, over dinner.” He stated it as a fact, like gravity.
     
    “Dinner?”
     
    He nodded. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”
     
    Suzanne fumbled to get her bearings, but balance eluded her. She couldn’t even begin to think, not with this man in the same room, sucking out all the oxygen and taking with it all her common sense.
     
    She said the only thing she could say. “Okay.”
     
    “Bring a key for me because I won’t be able to install the new security system until the day after tomorrow at the earliest. I’ll be sleeping here tomorrow night. I’ll bring my bed first thing.”
     
    Bed. His bed. Suzanne could imagine him only too well in his bed, big body sleeping in tangled sheets.
     
    “Okay,” she whispered.
     
    He stared at her for another few seconds, dark eyes boring into