JoAnn Ross - Thirty Nights

“I never would have taken you for a white cotton girl,” he murmured with a faint note of amusement as he eyed her utilitarian bra.

“Cotton’s comfortable,” she protested breathlessly.

“It’s also not the least bit erotic.” Imprisoning both her wrists in one hand, he released the front catch with a deft flick of his wrist.

“I would think I should be allowed to wear whatever I please,” she whispered as her heart started to beat faster. Harder. “The days are my own.”

“I lied.” The long hard fingers of his right hand cupped her breast. “Feel how your body warms to my touch,” he said. He lifted her breast and kissed the pale crevice beneath it, causing heat to pool in her lower body.

“I could take you right now. I could make you come…again and again. I could give you the best sex of your life, Gillian. And leave you begging for more…”

His words both shocked and aroused her. And somehow bound her to him as inexorably as a pair of velvet handcuffs might bind her to his bed.

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I’d like to share a secret with you: Thirty Nights was not originally written for publication. It began as a story I made up to amuse myself—and my husband—while snowed in at our mountain cabin. My personal fantasies have always revolved around the dark and dangerous. Even as a child I preferred Beauty’s Beast to Cinderella’s Prince, Batman to Superman, and my favorite movie was The Phantom of the Opera.

I adore reluctant heroes with tragic pasts, men who’ve put themselves in harm’s way and have been wounded, physically, emotionally, or both in the process. Hunter St. John is such a man: the quintessential “beast” hiding away on his remote island, he’s built an impenetrable wall around his emotions. But Gillian Cassidy is determined to tear down that hateful wall, unlock those chains around his heart and expose Hunter to the healing powers of love.

Thirty Nights is a very special book to me. Writing it allowed me to follow my characters on their edgy, erotic journey. Hunter is not an easy man to love, but by the time I wrote The End, Gillian and I had both fallen madly, passionately in love with him. I hope you will, too.

I love to hear from readers. You can write to me or sign up for an electronic newsletter at www.joannross.com.

Warmest,

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Epilogue

Cambridge, Massachusetts

TO A CASUAL VISITOR, the leafy campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located on the banks of the Charles River, would appear to be a peaceful glade. In this case, appearances were definitely deceiving. Inside a sixty-year-old ivy covered red brick building a battle royal was raging.

Hunter St. John was furious enough to kill the man he’d mistakenly considered a mentor. If this had been the Stone Age, he would have picked up the nearest club and bashed George Cassidy’s head in. Civilization being what it was, he was forced to fight with mere words.

“You stole my research and used it as your own.”

“There you go again, being overly dramatic.” The older man dismissed the complaint with a brief wave of his hand. “Sometimes I worry about you, St. John.”

“The gene-splicing project was mine,” Hunter insisted.

“You’re my research assistant, everything you do while a student here rightfully belongs to me. Including that little gene-splicing experiment.”

“That little gene-splicing experiment just won you a research grant from the National Institutes of Health, dammit.”

Cassidy’s features took on an expression of smug satisfaction. “It was well deserved.”

“It was my project.” Hunter’s growl was that of a wolf who’d just come across an interloper approaching his den. “I came up with it, I pushed it, I babied it along, going without sleep to work on it during hours I wasn’t working on your research. You had no right to it.”

To Hunter’s amazement, Cassidy actually had the nerve to smile. “You’re a bright young man, St. John. However, I fear that you lack the emotional restraint necessary to succeed in the research field. Along with a keen intellect and a deep-seated curiosity, a scientist must possess a clear and cool head. Which you lack. Which is why I regrettably had to notify the administration you were no longer suited to work here.”

Hunter had always known George Cassidy to be an egotistical, coldhearted son of a bitch. Since that seemed to be the norm in the world of scientific research, he hadn’t been particularly bothered by his behavior. But this treachery was beyond anything even he could have imagined.

“You had me taken off the project? I’m canned?”

“That’s not exactly the word I would have chosen, but yes.”

A fury like nothing he’d ever before experienced surged through Hunter. He curled his hands into fists at his sides to keep from pounding them into the supercilious bastard’s handsome face. “I could kill you.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t want to do that,” Cassidy countered. “Believe me, Hunter, my boy, the laboratory facilities in prison are definitely not up to your standards.”

When Hunter didn’t even bother to respond, the older man shook his head in mock remorse. “You’re making too much of this,” he repeated. “You’re a young man, only twenty years old—”

“I’m twenty-one.” Following in his brilliant late father’s footsteps, he’d already garnered a medical degree from Harvard and a master’s in biochemistry from MIT. The gene-splicing project Cassidy had so blithely pirated had been Hunter’s doctoral work.

“You’re still a wet-behind-the-ears pup. There will be more projects for you to work on.”

“I had a project, dammit. Until it was stolen from me.”

“Really, my boy, your choice of words is not only inaccurate, it’s redundant.” Appearing bored with this conversation, Cassidy opened a cage, pulled out a white research rabbit and prepared to draw a blood sample.

It was not in Hunter’s nature to surrender without a fight. “I could go to the administration and tell them what you’ve done.”

“And whom do you think they’d believe? A student who’s already been thrown out of two undergraduate schools due to his hot temper? Or a respected, world-renowned, award-winning scientist who’s on the shortlist to be nominated for the Nobel Prize?”

Both men knew the answer to that rhetorical question. Just as they both knew that Hunter’s time here had come to an abrupt, inglorious end.