supposed to have the good sense to run faster than the wind.
But she didn’t run. And when his tongue found hers, an unprincipled kiss that was already pushing the boundaries of trouble suddenly dived straight off that cliff. He tasted dark and wicked. He tasted exotic and forbidden. He tasted like the most dangerous flavor she’d ever tried...yet her fingers loosened on his wrists, hovered for a second in midair, and then slowly wrapped tightly around his waist.
Her response wasn’t something she could justify, not in rational terms. Yet her never-too-logical heart seemed to think she’d known Pax forever. Maybe one tough, strong cookie recognized another. Maybe it took someone who’d never belonged to anything or anyone, to recognize how fierce and desperate that longing could be in someone else.
There were no maybes on her mind at that instant, just emotions taking her under with gale force. She kissed him back, as she’d never dared kiss anyone. She took him in, as if a pipsqueak-size woman could actually shelter a tall, strong man in the circle of her arms. Some need in Pax touched her heart. And damnation, no one had ever touched her heart, not like this.
Her feet arched up on tiptoe. Her breasts tightened, arched, ached against his chest. His belt buckle grazed her abdomen. The angle of stark moonlight on his face, the warmth pouring off his skin, the tight flex of his thighs and the shiver-arousing feeling of his arousal growing, pressed intimately between them—if she had been more razor-sharp aware of a man, she didn’t know when. She could feel his whole body shudder with tension—sexual tension that had suddenly become as volatile as lightning.
Kansas kept telling herself she should be scared—maybe even scared out of her mind—but she’d never known this crazy kind of heat even existed. If this was madness and mayhem, she’d been waiting for it all her life. Damned if she’d be afraid of something this rich, this wondrous and powerful. And damned if there’d ever been a man who’d made her feel this way. Liquid from the inside out. Needed. Desired. As if nothing else existed but the two of them at that pure moment in time.
It didn’t last. On a harsh groan, he tore his mouth free and reared his head back. Firm hands grasped her by the shoulders and forced a separation. His lungs hauled in air like he’d been underwater for the last year or two.
If putting some physical distance between them was supposed to cool him down, or calm him down, it didn’t seem to be working. His eyes looked dazed drunk in the moonlight. He looked at her, and then hauled in another lungful of air. “Kansas...I didn’t mean that to happen. Hell. I don’t even know what happened.”
Her relationship with gravity was still a little shaky, and she was having the same tough time catching her breath as he was. Still, she definitely didn’t share his problem with figuring out what happened. He’d kissed the living socks off her. And she’d kissed him back the same way. “It’s all right,” she said gently.
“The hell it is. I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“Yeah, there is. I don’t...I would never have...hell,” he said again, and clawed a hand at the back of his neck. “I apologize for jumping you. And I don’t want you afraid that it’ll happen again. It won’t.”
Kansas realized fleetingly that Pax was rattled. She rattled easily—didn’t take any more than a mouse running across the floor—but she suspicioned that Pax rarely let his control off the leash. He didn’t seem to know where to look, what to say, or what the Sam Hill he was supposed to do. And she was afraid it might go on forever—his swallowing hard and saying hell in between apologies—unless she took charge.
“Hey, there’s no problem here,” she said calmly. “Maybe I was surprised when you kissed me. Maybe we were both surprised. But people have been indulging in that particular pastime since the beginning of time...” Oops, she thought that might earn a smile, but no. “No one’s upset, right? No one’s mad. Everybody’s fine. And it’s late, like you said. Let’s just call it a night, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He leaped on that excuse to split, she noticed dryly, like a dog for a bone. Moments later, the Explorer’s headlights bounced out of her driveway.
She headed inside, intending to lock up, clean up and get ready for bed. She locked up, then completely forgot the rest of that game plan, and found herself standing in the front window, staring out at the empty driveway.
Her heart was beating like a revved up 747.
Thoughts were tumbling through her mind like dandelion fluff in a hurricane wind.
And every feminine hormone in her body was alive, awake and singing arias.
Inappropriate arias, Kansas mused. It was only a kiss. From a man who clearly wished he hadn’t indulged in the impulse, and in a place where she neither lived nor planned to stay long. As there was positively no chance to pursue a relationship, there was absolutely nothing to worry about.
And she wasn’t worried. She’d just never felt that fierce, instantaneous pull for anyone else. Before completely giving up men—which, as far as Kansas was concerned, was the most brilliant decision she ever made—she was no stranger to passion. Hal had been her last lover, and making love with him had been nice. Messy and time-consuming, but nice. Maybe she had an unusual pocketful of inhibitions, but she’d never been in a tearing hurry to get naked with a man, and Hal had been sweet, gentle, comfortable. Untenably, exasperatingly, as possessive as a bloodhound, but the intimate side of their relationship had been A-OK. She’d thought.
How startling, to discover at the vast age of twenty-nine, that a man could wipe all those previous preconceptions right off the map. If Pax had scared her, it was the most delicious scared she could remember. No man had ever kissed her like a lush slide straight into sensual oblivion, as if her whole world had been an arid desert until he touched her.
Kansas wasn’t about to mistake a molehill for a mountain—for both of them, it had probably just been a crazy, lost moment in time.
But she didn’t want to forget that kiss.
Kansas turned around, and forced her mind to concentrate on getting ready for bed. She had a bad, bad feeling that falling for Pax could be a terrible temptation. That wouldn’t do at all; not for him or her. For a few moments there, she’d almost forgotten that she was violently, sensibly and firmly off men.
It was a relief to remember that.
* * *
Pax turned down Cactus Court with a glance at the digital clock on his dash. Three o’clock on the button.
It was going to be a lot easier to deal with Kansas, he considered, now that he knew for sure she was a stark-raving lunatic.
His experience with her the night before couldn’t possibly have been more helpful. He had her measure now. She might be a wimp, but she had more guts—and recklessness—than any twenty women. And before getting any further involved in her brother’s problem, that was precisely what Pax needed to know—how she’d respond to trouble.
Now he knew.
She had no concept of trouble or danger at all. Skydive without a parachute—no problemo for Kansas. Pet a grizzly bear—what fun. Respond to a guy she barely knew with open vulnerability and passion and a free, naked invitation to do whatever the hell he wanted...damn that woman. Had she even thought about saying no?
Pax
