She’d never experienced anything so amazing in her life as Hotwire’s kiss. She moaned out her approval while gripping the front of his white silk dress shirt in her fists.
He growled something she could not understand against her lips and then his hands skimmed down, over her naked shoulders and around to the exposed skin of her back. His fingertips touched bare skin between the velvet lacing and played tantalizingly with the bow.
Man alive, what would she do if he untied it? She’d read about being branded by a man’s touch, but had never known what it meant…until now. Her skin grew hot under his fingers, so hot she would swear burn marks would be left behind. Only it did not hurt like a burn.
It felt too darn good for her sanity.
Without really thinking about it, she opened her mouth. His tongue tangled instantly with hers and took immediate and absolute possession of the interior of her mouth. Pleasure jolted through her body, spearing her right between her legs and she arched her pelvis toward him.
His hands traveled down over her bottom to the backs of her legs below her skirt hem, then came up under her skirt and back up her legs. She almost jumped out of her skin when he touched the sensitive flesh of her inner thighs. He curled his big fingers around them, holding her while his thumbs kneaded her bottom and he lifted her into closer contact with his body.
She undulated against him in a move that felt entirely natural, but froze in shock as her mound brushed against the hard roll of his erection.
He wasn’t so inhibited. He used his grip on her to move her up and down the length of his engorged and rigid penis, making a low, masculine sound of pleasure as he did so. Tremors more powerful than a Richter 10 earthquake went off inside her.
“Stop trying to seduce my maid of honor, Hotwire. It’s time to throw the bouquet.” Josette’s voice crashed through the passionate haze surrounding Claire, bringing her back to reality with a thud.
What in the world had she been doing?
Hotwire jolted like a man shocked by a live electric wire and broke the kiss, practically tossing Claire away from him. She tottered on her unfamiliar heels and almost fell. He reached out to steady her, his expression pained, but snatched his hands back the moment she stopped wobbling.
The silence between them was more charged than the air after an electric storm.
“You have five minutes and then I’m tossing the bouquet,” Josette said, her gaze faintly amused and assessing, before she turned to head back to the reception.
It would take Claire five minutes just to get her breath back. How was she supposed to walk back into the reception on top of that?
After several more seconds of charged silence, he said, “I’m sorry. That was way out of line.”
“I liked it,” she admitted. Way too much, but hot kisses were one thing, doing the deed another, and she really didn’t want him thinking she was open for that kind of play.
“No doubt,” he said, sounding terribly arrogant. “I’ve never had any complaints on my technique, but I was out of line all the same.”
“If you say so.”
“Look, I’m not in the market for a committed relationship, and you’re not the type of woman to settle for a one-night stand or even a short affair.”
“Of course not.” Her distaste for the very thought had to have been written on her face because he winced.
The thing was, she didn’t think Hotwire was a one-night stand kind of guy himself. Only, for some reason he wanted her to think he never got serious with women. She realized that was the message he’d been giving her since the day they met, but it simply did not ring true. He had too much integrity to be a true hound dog. Regardless, patently, he had no desire to get serious with her, and that’s all that really mattered.
Besides which, she wanted a relationship with a man like she wanted to retake her finals from last semester and flunk them all. There was no place in her life for a man…not even a super-sexy stud who made her insides go nuts with something as simple as a kiss.
“Right, we’re at opposite ends of this particular data array,” he said. “So, no more soul kisses.”
“That felt more like a groping, marauder kiss to me.”
“I do not grope.” Hotwire looked truly offended.
“So the fingers I felt on my behind were a spectral phenomenon?” she mocked.
“I’m not a ghost.”
“I can vouch for that,” she said with a small smile, still tingling in places she never talked about.
Chapter 2
“Claire,” Josette yelled from the other room.
“That’s my cue to go.”
“Good luck,” Hotwire said.
“Aren’t you coming to watch?”
“No.”
“Marriage isn’t a disease, you know. You can’t catch it being in the same room as Josette and Nitro.”
He smiled a little. “It’s a good thing, since I was at the wedding.”
“You really are clinging to your freedom, aren’t you?”
“I’m not ready to settle down, no.”
She shrugged. Marriage wasn’t her idea of life happily ever after, either, but his single status was almost a religion for Hotwire. “Thanks again…for getting me my locket back.”
“Hey, no big deal.”
Wolf had told her that Hotwire had spent precious extra minutes searching the offices of the terrorist group they brought down the month before, risking his very life to get her necklace back. Hotwire was hero material for sure…she, however, was no princess, and she didn’t believe in fairy tales anyway.
“It is to me,” was all she said, and then she turned and walked away, her hand rising of its own volition so her fingertips could press the swollen contours of her lips.
Hotwire watched Claire walk away and damn near went after her when she touched her mouth as if holding onto their kiss. He hadn’t been this turned on in…hell, he wasn’t sure he’d ever been this turned on.
Claire did nothing to entice him, and he spent every second in her company wanting to strip her naked.
If the near debilitating desire wasn’t enough, he actually enjoyed her company. He’d once told Nitro that he and Claire had nothing in common. And in some ways that was true. The woman was a vegetarian and a pacifist. Not exactly best-buddy material for a former mercenary.
But she was also smart and understood computers with the same intrinsic ability as he did. She shared his passion for new technology as well. He’d never met another woman like her.
She didn’t dress to her best
