One Dirty Night

A honk wrenched me from my thoughts.

I jumped a mile, guilt coating me like the thick clouds above. Flashing a look at the green light, I glanced at the stranger, drinking him in as if to imprint his beauty for all those long, lonely nights in my future.

Damp skin, wet jeans, black hair plastered to his handsome face. His powerful chest and wiry muscles made me picture him as an acrobat: sculpted, toned, and lithe.

Wonder what he looks like without the jeans—

The honk came again, louder and obnoxious.

I glared at the older woman in my rear-view mirror. She flipped me off, and my mouth dropped open. Jeez, how rude could some people be?

Grinding my teeth, I put my cantankerous Toyota into gear and took off. My tyres squealed a little, wrenching the guy’s eyes to mine, snapping us together across the road and rain.

My heart stopped.

He froze as our gazes locked as I rolled past.

For a second, he frowned as if annoyed at something but then he grinned. A grin as decadent as the big top he erected, full of secrets and sin.

The fire between my legs turned into an uncontrollable blaze.

Look at the damn road!

He tracked me, and just before our eyes unlocked, he freaking winked.

Winked!

As if he could hear all my dirty thoughts about him and wouldn’t mind obliging me by stripping off rain-logged jeans and showing me exactly what he packed beneath them.

My foot slipped on the gas pedal.

Something primitive shot through my body. Something hungry and filthy and not at all me. I’d never been one to let desire cloud my head, yet here I was, well and truly in a fog.

Giving me a seductive wave, he raised the sledgehammer again and returned to his task.

Ripping my eyes away took inhuman strength; my foot pressed a little too hard on the accelerator. My tyres squealed again, and my cheeks blazed as the man threw his head back and laughed.

Damn man and his stupid muscles.

Didn’t he know I favoured petri dishes and microscopes over a human specimen? I hadn’t studied all my life to be a microbiologist and not know about the chemical reaction my body was undergoing. It wasn’t anything more than feminine instincts wanting to mate with a nice example of male flesh.

Nothing more.

Nothing worth getting flustered about.

Focus, Ella.

You’re a scientist. You’re above these biological impulses. You—

Something sodden slapped against my windscreen.

“Ah!” I jumped at the sudden lack of visibility. Fighting the urge to swerve, I flicked on my wipers, trying to dislodge the purple paper.

But then I stiffened, pulled over to the side of the road, and slammed on my brakes.

I didn’t believe in fate. Never had. Never will. But…it seemed as if the world had given up on simple nudges and slapped me around the face with what I needed. My workaholic nature had slowly been crippling beneath the very real, very urgent need to be free. To indulge in the sexy, starving part of me that wanted to live and touch and do wickedly bad things.

There had to be more to life than working in a lab all day, every day. More to life than sleeping alone, eating alone, and ultimately doing absolutely everything…alone.