Serial Book 1- Tempted to Submit Read Online Free Page B

out loud, right there at the end of Main Street.
    Then I was trying to stay upright on legs that were trembling ferociously. I stared up at Zach with what I knew was raw need and confusion in my gaze.
    I watched as he pulled that second Zach back over himself like a cloak, the Zach who was calm and reasonable and not governed by desire. I opened my mouth to say—well, I don’t know what I would 22 Surrender to Temptation Part I: Tempted to Submit / Jameson, Lauren
    have said. He cut me off before I could try to frame a sentence.
    “Stay away from me.”

    ***
“Excuse me. Miss Reid?” I tried to erase the scowl from my face as I turned toward the clerk who called me over to the front desk where he stood. It wasn’t his fault that I had lain awake half the night with dark dreams that left me sweaty and trembling. It wasn’t his fault that my early morning walk along the beach hadn’t been able to erase any of the feelings that had been stirred up the previous evening.
    “Yes?” The Sand Pebble Inn was a lovely, clean motel, and I was expecting the young man to ask me to fill out a customer survey, or something of that nature.
    Instead, he slid an envelope across the desk to me. DEVON was written across the white paper in masculine lettering that was surprisingly tidy.
    “A gentleman left this for you while you were out for your walk.” I saw his eyes flick down to the sand that caked my calves, the sandals that I carried in my left hand, but instead of feeling embarrassed, as I normally would, I grabbed for the envelope.
    I only knew one person in Cambria, unless you counted Suzanne from the diner.
    “Thank you.” I refrained from opening the envelope until I was back in my room, where I sank down on the bed. With shaking fingers, I ripped into the paper and drew out a thick rectangle of paper.
    A business card.
    The card was simple, the lettering black, printed on paper of lemony cream. The words Phyrefly Aviation were worked into a logo with a small, sleek airplane. Below the logo were a phone number and a San Francisco address.
    I turned it over, searching for Zach’s name. The reverse had a handwritten message, but was otherwise blank.
    IF YOU NEED A JOB, YOU WILL FIND ONE HERE.
    Surrender to Temptation Part I: Tempted to Submit / Jameson, Lauren 23
    That was it. No signature, no nice to meet you . No thanks for letting me grope you last night . Still, I knew without a doubt that it was from Zach, and even as I huffed with exasperation at the short, blunt words, I knew what I would do next.
    I was going to San Francisco.

Chapter Three
    Phyrefly Aviation quite literally took my breath away.
    In the first moment to myself that I’d had all day, I inhaled rapidly, over and over again, trying to catch my breath—I felt as I had been sprinting since six o’clock that morning.
    It had been two days since I’d received that business card in Cambria. One day since I’d arrived in San Francisco. Still reeling from the prices of hotel rooms in the city, I had decided that a job was my first priority.
    Well, truthfully, pursuing anything that might connect me with the man who had taken possession of my mind, incessantly haunting my every waking thought and my sleeping ones, too, was more important still.
    I didn’t see why the two couldn’t go hand in hand.
    “Miss Reid.” The man who entered the office where I had been placed had to be at least six and a half feet tall, and couldn’t have weighed more than one-fifty if he’d been drenched with a garden hose.
    Hair that was a forgettable shade of brown flopped messily around his head, and he had a moustache, more, I think, from forgetting to shave than by design. “I’m Glen Stevens.”
    “Pleased to meet you.” Standing, I held out a hand for him to shake. It was my third interview at Phyrefly that day, and I was exhausted. When I had torn open that envelope and found the business card, I had expected that the company was something along the line of a