Her Dangerous Promise - Part 2: (Romantic Suspense Serial) by Ashley Stryker Page A

her soundly. His hands cradled the back of her head and prevented her from slipping away from the intensity of it. His tongue parried past her lips and she surrendered to him. He tasted warm and mellow. Mary hungered for more. Her every breath seemed to come from him, filling her mind with his scent and flavor and texture. Thom’s embrace slipped lower, pressing her breasts into his torso, then lower still framing her hips as they ground into his. When he withdrew, Mary couldn’t inhale for a full second.
    “Are you okay?” he asked. His smoldering look tinged with concern.
    “What? Yeah, uh-huh.” Mary nodded as if her neck muscles consisted of wet construction paper. “I’m good.”
    The rhythm of her breathing returned and she could maintain it almost without conscious effort. Each breath forced her breasts against his chest, sending pulsing vitality through the points of contact and corkscrewing to places lower.

Chapter Twelve

    “Good,” he repeated. His hands released her hips and slid up and down her arms. She felt delicate under his touch, breakable.
    He forced himself to take a full step back. What on Earth was he thinking? He could protect her, bring her justice but never open his heart to her. Never love her. Not the way she deserved to be loved. More than that, the way she wrecked her car in a panic earlier that day proved her fragile emotional state. And now he’d gone and let his libido compromise the tenuous trust he’d established with her. The last thing Mary needed was a man coming on strong to trigger some post traumatic stress reaction. After pulling a stupid stunt like this, he’d be lucky if she didn’t shut down on him completely. With her kidnapper still on the loose and sending her threatening messages, he couldn’t afford to lose her cooperation. Her life depended on him.
    Mary stared up at him with her big rescue-me eyes and he wanted to scoop her into his arms and carry her off to his bed. Since he’d plundered her mouth she hadn’t even moved, like some vulnerable rabbit too stunned and afraid to bolt.
    Idiot. Damned idiot.
    “Come on,” he said, pushing open the door. She slipped past him into the dark interior. Thom grabbed his shirt off the railing, followed her inside and flipped on the lights.
    Sheets covered the jumble of furniture in the center of the living room like a snow covered model of a mountain. Half the room gleamed with a fresh coat of bluebell high gloss, leaving the other half with the flat, stained original white walls. A brush carelessly left in an old plastic butter bowl of paint had hardened into a concrete piece of modern art. Thom heard the call about Mary’s abduction over his scanner in the middle of the job and he hadn’t bothered to stop and clean it up.
    The scanner, pushed in the corner of the room, chattered loudly and Thom snapped it off. “Sorry about the mess. Renovations.”
    Thom snapped off the sheets covering the television set and leather sofa and tossed them in a pile next to the paint cans. He rearranged the furniture quickly. “Have a seat. I’m just going to clean up.”

Chapter Thirteen

    Mary stared at the dance of muscles on Thom’s beautifully nude back as he headed for the stairs in the back of the kitchen and mused how he possessed the physique of an Olympic diver. Her palms tingled with regret. If she hadn’t kept her arms behind her back, she could have indulged her growing desire to explore those planes and bulges. As Thom disappeared up the steps Mary blew out a breath that puffed her bangs off her forehead and barely cooled the sweltering longing that burned her skin.
    And that kiss—Mary tugged the front of her dress repeatedly to fan herself—that kiss did wicked things to her nether regions. The voltage in that brief encounter surged through her like a zap from a defibrillator that brought to life parts of her body and yes, possibly parts of her heart, she hadn’t realized were dormant. A man who could kiss