Taming Romeo Read Online Free

like dominos at a nursing home. Okay, I’m here doing the my-dog’s-better-than-your-dog thing with Romeo. Must be lack of oxygen to my brain. How much time have I been jogging, er running? Thirteen minutes.
    A sharp pain spears my right side. Yeoch. And here I thought I’d get a runner’s high by now. The pain rips through my rib cage and has me gasping for air. I’m about to slow down when I hear the roar of a motor behind me. What if it’s one of the rich boys in my neighborhood? Didn’t my parents mention Olympic snowboarder Shaun White used to have a house here? Fake it until you make it. I swing my arms harder and lengthen my stride, taking deep, gasping breaths. Run through the pain. No pain, no gain. But my calf muscle has other ideas. It seizes and when I grab it, the roar rushes by me too close and I fall into a ditch.
    Some asshole on a motorcycle zooms by. Jerkowitz.
    My medical school self assesses the damage. Scraped knee, second-degree abrasion, slight bleeding, not deep, probably won’t scar. First-degree abrasion on palm and strained calf muscle. Hands on my knees, I blow out my carbon-dioxide laden breath and check my phone. Nineteen glorious minutes of running translates into how many calories?
    The motorcycle whirrs toward me from the opposite side of the street.
    Romeo. What art thou doing?
    He circles around and stops in front of me. “Hop on.”
    “Excuse me?” I yell to be heard above the sputtering motor.
    He does that tilt of his head, and like the silly teenaged girl I used to be, I place one hand on his shoulder, step on the foot peg and swing myself onto the long banana seat. Romeo removed the sissy handle long ago, for obvious reasons. I gather he doesn’t let anyone ride unless he wants to make a move on them. Well, I’m twenty-three going on twenty-four. I’m not the quivering teen groupie wannabe. I’m not holding onto his waist, because dangit, if I got my hands under his tight t-shirt, oh yeah, I can see the dips and planes of his laterals and obliques, there’s no telling where my fingers might wander.
    The engine revs and whoosh, Romeo kicks off, throwing me backward. My baseball cap is history. No sissy bar. My inner thighs clench and I throw my arms around his waist, my face pressed to his broad back. He leans and corners around the hairpin turns, almost scraping my knees, but I hang tight, quivering and shuddering.
    There’s nothing quite like the feel of a vibrating bike between my legs and the chill of the wind slapping my thighs. But most of all, I feel young and free again, melding to the rippling warm man I once knew and wondering if things might be different this time around.

Chapter 5
    Romeo takes the roundabout way back to my parents’ house. After all, my almost twenty minutes of running would have been but a split second on his bike. He loops around the Rancho Santa Fe golf course and navigates the twists and turns through eucalyptus-lined lanes before depositing me on my slanted driveway.
    “Thanks for the ride.” I’m more breathless than I was while in the throes of running uphill. And my heart? It has left the realm of normal EKG results somewhere back on La Granada. I wave and walk backward toward my front door.
    He removes his helmet and hangs it on the handlebar, then cuts the engine.
    “Come closer.” He jiggles his finger. “I told you I’m not done with you.”
    I punch my hands onto my hips and glare. “You haven’t even apologized for sending me into the ditch.”
    He cocks a lopsided grin. “As I recall, you were grabbing your calf and falling before I passed you.”
    “Well, I have to irrigate my wound and dress it.”
    He gives me that look, a halfway wink, a single brow lift, and a tilt of his jaw.
    The prepubescent teenybopper in me melts; the adult narrows her eyes and purses her lips, adding a hostile nostril flaring for good measure. I turn my back and my teen self whimpers, he wants a kiss, can’t you tell? He’s into