the laughter bubbling from it, inhale the sound into his shrunken soul. He had to kiss her.
* * *
POPPY’S GUARD WAS down, thanks to an outrageous pair of puzzle breasts. Maybe because of the wine she’d drunk or maybe because she’d been walking a tightrope of tension all evening, hyperaware of Ryan’s very-male presence in a room that had kept getting smaller by the second, but for whatever reason the sight of those naked boobs had tickled her sense of the ridiculous. Aware she might sound the tiniest bit hysterical, she pressed her hand harder to her lips, still giggling like mad when Ryan reached over and drew it away.
The gesture didn’t immediately alert her to a threat. She still couldn’t believe that she’d been so anxious to smother the sexual vibrations humming in the room that she’d gladly dived into working a puzzle...of an X-rated image. Even with the knowledge that her car and her cabin were half-ruined lurking at the back of her mind—or because that knowledge was lurking at the back of her mind—it struck her as hilariously funny. Even now another laugh rose in her throat.
“Poppy,” Ryan said, his voice soft.
Her gaze shifted to his face, and the glow in his blue eyes sent her to serious in a hurry.
But it didn’t send her body anywhere safe. Instead, she sat frozen on the couch, her hand cradled in his much larger one. The contrast made her feel feminine and breathless and...oh, boy, curious. Because she knew what that tone in his voice signaled. She knew what was coming.
And she hadn’t been kissed in over five years.
So sue her, she had a curiosity about kissing. Strike that. She had a curiosity about how Ryan would kiss.
And then...and then he was showing her. His mouth brushed over hers, the touch as light as a snowflake, though the brief caress sent heat racing like a flash fire over her skin. When his lips came back a second time, she parted her mouth, hoping to entice him to make it firmer. Hoping he’d brush his tongue with hers.
It had been aeons since she’d been French-kissed.
On the third gentle pass, she speared her hand in Ryan’s hair to keep their lips locked. He made a sound, low in his throat. Gratified? Smug? She didn’t care. Her muscles tensed, her body quivering as she anticipated his next move.
His tongue, all right, but now it brushed like damp butterfly wings against her bottom lip. Her thighs clenched and he rubbed his thumb over the knuckles of the hand he held. Soothing, every stroke of his soothing, as if he knew she was all of a sudden so keyed up that a stronger touch might shatter her. Who would blame her for that?
Five-plus years without a proper kiss.
Ryan’s free arm came around her shoulders to draw her closer. She breathed in his scent as tears stung the corners of her eyes, and she squeezed them tight, mortified that she might have to explain—again—a crying jag. It had just been so long since she’d snuggled up to something this big, this warm, this human.
“You smell better than Grimm,” she said against Ryan’s mouth.
He drew back a little. “What?”
She discovered her tears had dried up and she was on the verge of more giggles. How much wine did she have floating around in her system? “You smell good,” she said, nuzzling beneath his chin.
“You’re suddenly friendly,” he murmured as she pressed tiny kisses along the edge of his elegant jaw.
“I’m curious,” she corrected, drawing her lips over his chin.
“Me, too,” he whispered, then tilted his head to take another kiss.
Oh. Oh, God.
His tongue plunged into the cavern of her mouth. It was no longer a subtle exploration, but a sexual onslaught, masculine, deliberate, hot.
Delicious.
Poppy clutched at the hand that held hers and pressed close to his hard chest as her head fell back and he took what he wanted from her. This wasn’t a French kiss, this wasn’t anything cosmopolitan or civilized in the least. This was a Neanderthal kind of kiss, one that might involve caves and the pulling of hair and the ripping of fur robes—if only she had the guts to beg for such things.
Just as she ran out of air, he lifted his head and they both sucked in ragged breaths, staring at each other. Poppy’s head swam a little, from lack of oxygen or perhaps from a surplus of libido. She wondered about trying to work up some regret or concern about the kisses, but her heart was pounding too hard for clear thinking. A little muddy logic was good, she decided. It kept her mind off unpleasant things, such as why she was at Ryan’s cabin in the first place.
For that alone, she owed him. “Definitely better than Grimm,” she said.
Still holding her close, Ryan’s expression turned bemused. Then he glanced toward the snoozing dog. “I’m starting to worry, Poppy. Do you mean to tell me you let your dog kiss you? Am I going to catch something with you being the conduit between me and getting a sloppy from your pooch?”
Such a silly conversation, she thought. She didn’t get kisses from Grimm. But the silliness made it perfect for the giddy, dizzy mood Ryan’s thorough kisses had left her in. “Absolutely not,” she said, stroking the placket of his flannel shirt with her fingers. Poppy Walker, touching beautiful Ryan Harris’s flannel!
“You’re not going to make me believe a dog’s mouth is cleaner than a human’s,” he said. “That’s an urban myth.”
“But you’re in the mountains now,” she pointed out, smiling a little as she teased him.
He shook his head. “God, you’re cute,” he said, then pressed a kiss to her nose. “But let’s be real. Out in the woods I’ve seen your dog sniffing some extremely suspicious substances.”
Thank goodness he appeared to want to avoid serious or second thoughts as much as she. Poppy wiggled on the cushions and found a comfortable place against Ryan’s side. His hand stroked idly over her hair, and the atmosphere turned almost companionable, though the smoke from those powerful kisses lingered like a haze in the air. She stretched her legs, displacing some puzzle pieces as she propped her heels on the coffee table. “The bacteria in a dog’s mouth is species-specific,” she informed him. “Which means you’re much less likely to catch something serious from a dog than another human.”
He glanced down at her, the amused light in his eyes making her heart jerk, once. “Where did you come across this bit of knowledge?”
It was the kind of thing the mother of a young son knew, especially the mother of a young son who adored his furry pet. But she didn’t want to tell Ryan about Mason. Her little boy and her status as a mother were secured in another compartment for the moment. Mason’s mommy didn’t cozy up to handsome men by crackling fires. Mason’s mommy didn’t want to share some more of those potent kisses.
But Poppy did.
Because she was tipsy, or tipsy on Ryan’s taste or maybe because she needed further diversion from recalling the damage the storm had wrought on her life. Her mind began to flash on the crack of sound as that heavy limb—
No.
She twisted toward Ryan, grabbed
