Lightning That Lingers by Sharon Curtis, Tom Curtis Page A

her neck. His mouth caressed her cheeks and then returned to ride liquid fire into her lips.
    “Do you know,” he whispered, “this sweet little mouth has been haunting me. I could feel it against my skin when I closed my eyes.…” Warm sharpening strokes parted her lips, and his tongue swept over the access to her mouth and then inward in a light tease over the uneven line of her teeth, igniting heat waves that spread like velvet shimmers inside her chest.
    The fragrance of his hair, fresh and piney, was potent in her senses. His lips tasted of the night breeze and the vivid tang of winter. His hands, moving with heart-lifting candor, had begun to burn through her coat, and then they returned to cradle her head, dragging her into his kiss, his ardent breath coming with thrilling rapidity against the damp tissues of her mouth. His palms brushed the underside of her chin and gently, carefully, spread open her coat. Her temperature fluctuated, flooding her veins with shuddering heat.
    “Are you cold, Jenny?” he murmured, his tongue rimming her earlobe, his hands on her waist pressing her into him. “Let my body keep you warm. Jenny, darling Jenny.” His whisper teased the inside of her ear. “Are you uncomfortable now?”
    His hands wove gentle up-and-down patterns on the sides of her body, tracing her shape through her smooth sweater, caressing her ribs, the flatness of her stomach, and her rounded hips, molding her softness with exquisite sensitivity.
    “Yes …” she breathed as his fingertips skimmed the underside of her breasts, and as his fingers gently covered her tenderness, driving the aching need deep within her, “yes … yes …”
    His laughter came quietly against her cheeks, then her lips, and she drew a hard concussive breath when his fingers, wending downward, began to feed thick dreamy pleasure to the inside of her thighs. “Darling, if you’re still uncomfortable”—his lips sought and nuzzled hers, showing her the outline of his smile—“I think we could find the cure.”

Four
    His words brought her chin up, which hardly surprised him, and her wide-set eyes gazed up at him with dismay. For a moment, she was painfully open, her unguarded sensitivity carrying the simplicity of a line drawing—Tweetybird in a tough predicament. He knew suddenly why she had grown up to be so cautious. Jennifer Hamilton was very vulnerable.
    He enfolded her in his arms, watching the top of her head as her face sought the false refuge of his chest. Her fingers clung to the sides of his coat and he heard her make a soft sound, something less than a word, more than a sigh.
    He knew surrender when he saw it in a woman. This was something else. Numb shock, probably. He had a sudden unsettling vision of himself as a predator—the puma holding a small struggling creature under one paw. The thought disturbed him enough to bring discipline to the fire in his senses.
    The riveting sweetness of caressing her mouth with his tongue had taken him off guard. This was new to him, this overpowering need to be with a woman. The one thing he was not capable of doing right now was letting her leave his life. It was ironic that after all this time and all he’d experienced, the feeling should come in the arms of this tender, unripe person. This wasn’t the way he’d expected it to happen.
    He put his hand against the back of her head, stroking the sleek healthy strands of her hair, watching its subdued sheen glow like jet in the starlight. God, he thought, please don’t let me hurt this woman. He knew that if he pushed deftly enough in the right direction, he could probably have her with him tonight. That knowledge brought him nothing but a weary self-accusation. A fast, easy, efficient seduction would wound her no matter how much it met the demands of his body. For her, he had to relearn intimacy.
    When he felt her trying to withdraw from his arms, he let his grip slacken immediately and watched in sympathy, touched