Chistmas In Manhattan Collection. Alison Roberts
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into her eyes, searching them as surely as his mouth explored her lips.
She shouldn’t be kissing him. He was a scoundrel, a good-for-nothing womanizer who used women.
Only, deep down, he wasn’t.
She shouldn’t be kissing him. He wasn’t her type.
Only, deep down, he was.
She shouldn’t be kissing him. She wasn’t his type.
Only he was looking at her, kissing her, as if she was.
His kiss was so sweet, so addictive, so electrifying, that she didn’t want him to stop.
So she kissed him back.
Kissed him with the same exploration of his lips, his mouth, that he had kissed her with. At some point her hands found their way to his shoulders, to his neck, to his soft dark hair that she now threaded her fingers through, toying with the silky strands.
Never had she experienced a kiss like this.
Never had she felt a man’s body like his.
Strong, hard, capable of amazing things, focused completely on her every movement, her every response, her every breath.
She didn’t stop him when he cupped her face to kiss her more fully, when his hands worked their way down her shoulders, to her back to settle low and pull her against him.
Oh.
He was long and lean and hard. All man, the kind who rushed into burning buildings to save little girls. The kind who could sweep a woman off her feet without having to catch his breath. The kind whose eyes seduced with just a glimpse.
The kind whose body made a woman want to explore every inch, feel every inch, claim every inch as her own.
That’s how she kissed him, not bothering to hold anything back. What was the point? The moment was some anomaly in time that would never happen again. She’d worry about regrets and recriminations later. Much later.
Jude kissed with a passion she found addictive and she gave in to how she craved him.
His hands shifted to her shoulders, and to her surprise he pulled back, stared into her eyes with ones that appeared as dazed as she felt.
Which was saying a lot. Her legs had all the strength of melted butter. Which was a pretty accurate description of how the rest of her felt, too.
“That was some goodnight kiss, Doc.”
She wasn’t sure how to take his comment. Was he making fun of how she’d kissed him after claiming he wasn’t her type?
“Um, y-yeah, it w-was,” she stammered. “Nothing like any I’ve encountered, for sure.”
“Really?”
He seemed intrigued by her comment and Sarah regretted her wine-induced confession. At least, she was blaming her blurting out that she’d never been kissed like that before on the wine.
Honestly, she could just as easily blame it on his kiss because the man’s mouth had outright intoxicated her.
Squaring up her shoulders and trying to achieve a look of nonchalance, she nodded. “Don’t act like it’s a big deal because I’m sure you get that a lot.”
“Get what a lot?”
Oh, the things she could respond with, but, even though she should be blaring a reminder over and over in her head, the last thing she wanted to do at the moment was think about him with other women.
“The reaction that you are a way above average kisser.”
Looking more than a little pleased at her answer, he chuckled. “Way above average?”
His pleasure in her response, that he was looking at her with affection rather than mockery, freed Sarah of her embarrassment at her confession.
Or maybe it was the wine freeing her of her inhibitions. Yep, she was going to keep blaming the wine. Nasty inhibition-lowering stuff.
“Okay,” she admitted with a little roll of her eyes and a smile of her own. “You’re phenomenal and make my previous kissing experiences seem like they were conducted by preschoolers.”
He stroked his thumb across her cheek. “Preschoolers?”
“They weren’t,” she assured him, thinking she should quit talking any moment now. “I have been kissed since preschool.”
His thumb made a circular caress over her cheekbone and her brain went a little fuzzy for a moment. For a moment? Ha, her brain had been fuzzy all evening. Looking at him made her brain fuzzy. Kissing him had completely fuzzed her.
“I wasn’t actually kissed in preschool,” she clarified. “Not even once, although this little boy named Johnny chased me around saying he was going to kiss me when he caught me, but I never let him catch me.” She should shut up, because why was she telling him about Johnny from preschool? “I have been kissed. By grown men. Good, decent men who were my type.”
At least, she’d thought they were her type. Now she wasn’t so sure.
“But they didn’t kiss like you.” Yeah, she really should quit talking.
The color of Jude’s eyes deepened, darkening with an emotion Sarah couldn’t label. Instinctively, she liked his warm expression, though. She liked it a lot.
“How did I kiss, Sarah?”
He cupped her face now, stared into her eyes, and his voice had a husky tone to it that made her want to listen to him say her name over and over.
All night long.
Wine, stop it.
“Like you could set my body on fire and make me happy to go up in flames.”
Oops. That had slipped out. Maybe she needed to zip her lips.
Zip her lips?
She was reverting to preschool.
Or maybe the way Jude was looking at her, touching her, had her intelligence on hold.
He quirked a brow. “You know my job is to put out fires, right?”
“My guess is that you’ve started more than a few, too.” She swallowed, half expecting him to sweep her off her feet and carry her to his bedroom all Rhett Butler style.
Would she stop him?
Or would she give in to the curiosity of how good Jude Davenport could make her feel? Because she knew being the focus of this man’s attention in bed would be unlike anything she’d ever imagined possible.
Before that moment, that was, because right now her imagination was endless.
Jude stared into her eyes for long moments. “What are you doing tomorrow evening, Sarah Grayson?”
CONFUSED, SARAH BLINKED. Tomorrow evening? Shouldn’t he be worried about what she was doing right then? At that moment? In the next fifteen minutes? No, Jude wouldn’t be a fifteen-minute man. He’d be hours and hours.
There went her imagination again. Endless.
“Working,” she answered, thinking he couldn’t really have just asked if she was busy, because she didn’t expect him to want more than just a rumble between his sheets.
Or was that his normal routine? Make the woman think he was interested in more than just one night before luring her into his bed?
Hadn’t he already figured out that she needed no further luring? She was curious and purring for more.
“How about Friday evening?” he asked, his thumb sliding across her cheek. “Are you working then?”
Her