Sheltering Dunes Read Online Free

two-hundred-dollar jeans had flirted with her, offering to buy her a drink in exchange for a ride on Mica’s motorcycle, Mica had laughed it off. She’d been afraid her homies would somehow sense the way her stomach twisted and she got all hot inside when the girl had smiled at her with just the tip of her soft pink tongue tracing over her full lower lip. Watching the redhead’s tongue slide over the rosy surface, she’d gone liquid in places she never did when Hector touched her. She’d feared what Hector would do if he even suspected she enjoyed the Anglo girl’s attention—less afraid for herself than for the girl. So she’d turned away, straddling Hector’s lap at the bar instead, making a show of kissing him. But that night in the small alcove off the living room where she slept behind a blanket tacked to the archway, she’d thought about that redhead and her nipples had tingled and she’d gotten wet. When she woke in the morning, aroused and uncomfortable, she’d made herself come thinking about the redhead’s tongue moving in slow motion over her pussy.
    Flynn made her think of those rich girls with her clear, flawless skin and handsome face, but she was nothing like them, not really. Flynn looked at her with calm, certain eyes—eyes that asked for nothing. Those other girls had taunted and teased and flirted, all the while flaunting their privilege and fleeing back to their safe neighborhoods in their expensive cars as the night grew dark and perilous. She’d never slept with the redhead. She’d never slept with any of them. But she’d secretly wanted to.
    “I never said I’d take the straps off, but I can loosen them,” Flynn said, reaching for the buckle on the nylon belt across Mica’s chest. She released that one, then the one across her hips. “Dave is a good driver, but I don’t want you getting dumped on the floor. Is that better?”
    Mica’s tank had pulled up, and her bare stomach tingled where Flynn’s fingers had brushed over her skin. No one had touched her in months, and those hands had been rough and hurried. Not careful and caring, like these.
    Mica tried to turn her face away, afraid Flynn, with her piercing blue eyes, would see too much. “This thing on my neck is worse than the straps. Can you take it off?”
    “I can’t, I’m sorry. I think your neck is okay, but I don’t want to take any chances until Dr. King clears you.”
    With every passing second, Mica’s mind cleared and the churning in her midsection grew. She knew what these clinics were like—cold, impersonal, harried places where the sick and the injured were an inconvenience at best, targets for the frustrations and disappointments of others at worst. She would be sucked back in when she was so close to being free. What could she say to make Flynn let her go? “I can’t pay.”
    “Do you have any insurance?”
    Mica laughed mirthlessly. “Do I look like I have insurance? I can’t pay for this. You’re not helping me by forcing me to do this.”
    “I’m sorry. I don’t want anything to happen to you. I’ll talk to Dr. King. There are ways to—”
    “No. I don’t want you to talk to anybody. I’ll take care of things,” Mica snapped. The last thing she needed was someone else asking questions about her. “You’ve already made enough trouble.”
    “I’m sorry, you’re right. I’m overstepping,” Flynn said softly, and the concern in her voice softened the edges of Mica’s anger.
    “Never mind,” Mica said. “You don’t have to be sorry. I’ll handle it.”
    “Okay. Whatever you want.” Flynn squeezed her forearm lightly. “We’ll get you checked out, you can call your boss, and Dr. King’s office manager—Randy—can sort out the financial stuff.”
    Mica grimaced. As if anything could be that simple. “Sure. Whatever.”
    The ambulance slowed, made another turn, and crunched over gravel, finally stopping. The siren died with a lingering wail that echoed the ache in Mica’s