and for letting me enjoy your view.”
First placing his glass next to hers on the table, he stood, stared down at her. “You are very welcome, Sarah, but I should be thanking you.”
The intensity in his blue eyes about had her almost sitting back down because of wobbly legs. “For what?”
“Providing excellent dinner company and turning my night into something memorable.”
She hadn’t done that. Wasn’t going to do that. Was that what he thought she was there to do?
“I’d best be going,” she ventured, not breaking eye contact with him but taking a step back.
His eyes twinkled. “In a rush?”
“It’s been a long day. I look forward to going to sleep.” Yes, she had put emphasis on the word “sleep”. “I’m sure you feel the same.”
One side of his mouth crooked upward. “Then I guess I have no choice but to say good night.”
Sarah barely held back her sigh of relief. Which was just as well, because Jude did the unthinkable.
He kissed her.
Just a short peck on her mouth with his warm lips, but one she felt ricochet all the way to her toes and bring every nerve cell to life along the way. The power of Zeus, she thought again, knowing she’d been struck by lightning.
“Goodnight, Sarah,” he said, his lips still so close she could feel his warm breath caress her sensitized mouth. He looked straight into her eyes, his full of what she could only describe as desire.
Desire. For her.
No doubt hers shone the same way.
Because she felt desire. For him.
His lips touched hers again, this time slower, exploring her mouth with his soft, tender touch. He stared 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
