Baby, It's Cold Outside by Jennifer Greene, Merline Lovelace, Cindi Myers

tugged, smoothed. Used the heels of her hands. Her mouth. Her breasts and abdomen. And while she explored sensations on him, with him, she stealthily went after his clothes.
    He’d started out with more layers on than she had—sweater, shirt, then a tech top beneath that. And his pants didn’t want to come off those long, lean legs. He was such an alien species, so different from the manicured city men she knew. He was all calluses and hard edges, all muscle and brawn. In so many ways he struck her as a pirate, a stealer of virtue and senses, a man who pillaged a woman’s common sense, who took and took and gave her back…
    Everything.
    At one point, they both seemed to rear back, gasping for breath. He stared at her as if trying to comprehend where all the fire was coming from…. Her? Him? Whatever the source, they seemed to be compounding it with every touch, every sound, every taste. By the time she had him completely naked, his skin had been sheened by the fire, gold and damp.
    And she wasn’t waiting any longer. Her heart seemedto think she’d waited her whole life for this, for the chance to experience making love with no pretenses, no agenda, no worrisome expectations. She knew him somehow. He wasn’t a friend or a neighbor or a medical community person or any of the other people she saw every day of her life.
    But she knew Rick in some unexpected basic, primal way. His heart—she sensed how to reach it. His emotions—she sensed how to touch them. His naked vulnerability—and yeah, they were both naked by then. It was more than bare skin against bare skin. It was her mouth, confessing loneliness and need. It was his hands, expressing tenderness and wonder. It was both of them, coming together in fear and fire, not alone for the first time in so, so long….
    Emilie realized, for herself, that it was the first time in forever.
     
    R ICK FELT AS SAPPED AS a beached whale. He’d yanked a cover over her. Got up, because he had to, couldn’t let the fire go down…but after feeding the monster fresh logs, he sank back against her as if he couldn’t hold himself up a second longer.
    Her eyes were closed. He thought she was napping. She should need a week of solid rest after all the energy she’d just vented, luxuriously, on him. His gaze roamed her face, the tangle of hair, the golden shoulder in the firelight. Where had all that passion come from? Who’d have guessed so much explosive power could be contained in such a compact little body?
    Abruptly he realized she was awake. Her eyes weresleepily looking right back at him. “Pretty serious look on your face, fella,” she murmured.
    “Just trying to figure it. How the two of us could have moved heaven and earth, yet if we had that kind of power, how come we haven’t been able to shut down the blizzard?”
    A shy smile turned into a chuckle and made her face softly radiant. “I was hoping I wasn’t the only one who heard the earth move.”
    “Oh, no. You weren’t alone.” He wanted to see that radiant smile again, couldn’t believe how it transformed her from a damned pretty woman into…breathtaking. It seemed a measure of how unhappy she’d been, how long since she’d just let loose a natural, simple, easy smile. “I told you I tended to be suspicious of women, didn’t I?”
    “You did,” she affirmed.
    “And I told you I’d kind of turned into a…well, basically a misogynist.”
    “You definitely implied you were allergic to women these days, yes.” She lifted a hand, knuckled his scrubby cheek. “Listen. If you go around hating women like this, I’m surprised you haven’t collected a harem over at your place.”
    Darn woman warmed his heart. Nobody warmed his heart. His heart had atrophied into stone a long time ago. Or so he’d thought. “Hey.”
    “Uh-oh. That sounded like a serious ‘hey.’”
    “It was.” He clutched in a breath. “I didn’t plan this, I swear, Emilie.”
    “I doubt either of us dreamed there was any