The Rebound Guy by Fiona Harper Page B

did it. He looked down at her shining eyes and her full lips, and the next second his arms closed around her and he was tasting those lips. She went rigid, and somewhere in the back of Jason’s brain a thought knocked to be let in. A thought that maybe this was the dumbness talking and maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.
    For the first time in his life, he was on the verge of stepping back and apologising for kissing an attractive woman.
    And he might have done too, if not for the fact that she started to kiss him back.

FIVE
    Something inside Kelly’s head was screaming at her, tugging at her frantically, telling her to pull away, have a little dignity. She slapped whatever it was into silence by snaking her arms around Jason’s neck and pulling him closer.
    Oh, she’d forgotten just how good this could be. Just how simple and uncomplicated and wonderful a first kiss could be.
    It had been more than a decade since she’d had one of those. And, in the interim, kissing had turned from blissful and passionate to comfortable and familiar and finally to infrequent and guilt ridden. On Tim’s part, anyway. At the time she hadn’t known why he’d avoided her touch. In her darker moments she’d thought he’d been put off by the thought of kissing a woman who’d just been diagnosed with cancer.
    But this—she sighed against his lips—this was perfect.
    Then a chink of reality invaded her lovely warm haze.
    This was also her boss. Wonderful as it might be, this was definitely not ‘simple and uncomplicated’.
    He’d shocked her, though. The moment she’d responded to him he’d stilled, as if he was surprised. Odd, when he’d been the one to initiate the kiss, when surely that was what he’d been slowly building up to all evening. The stillness hadn’t lasted long, however. Moments later he’d pulled her to him and shown her just how high and how hot the flames of their insane chemistry could burn. She was surprised the illuminated Tube sign above their heads hadn’t exploded in a shower of sparks.
    The kiss quickly deepened into something more primal—and far less decent. If they kept this up, they were in danger of getting arrested.
    It seemed Jason had come to the same conclusion because he pulled away. ‘Which way is home?’ he whispered in a husky voice that sent shivers down her spine.
    That was the logical conclusion to what they’d just started, she knew. They’d gone way beyond a polite, end-of-a-first-date kiss, even though they’d skipped the date and gone straight for the lip action. But suddenly that wonderful something she’d been feeling congealed and became much more cold and slimy.
    She couldn’t take this guy home with her! What was she thinking?
    More importantly, what was he thinking?
    Scratch that. She knew exactly what Jason was thinking, and she needed to put him straight fast. She unhooked her hands from around his neck and dragged herself from him, backing away a few steps to put some distance between them. Maybe she should have felt better to see that, far from being slick and in control, he seemed to be just as disoriented as she was, but she didn’t. She didn’t want to feel any kind of sympathy for him at this moment. She needed to be angry with him. Because if she was angry with Jason, she couldn’t be angry at herself for being so weak and stupid.
    â€˜We’re not doing this,’ she told him shakily.
    Jason just looked a little confused.
    â€˜I told you it was a bad idea,’ she reminded him. ‘Against my personal policy—and it really should be against yours too!’
    â€˜I remember what you said,’ he replied, ‘but that was before you were on the verge of ripping my shirt open. I kinda guessed you’d had a rethink on those rules of yours.’
    Thinking hadn’t been any part of the equation, unfortunately. But,