A Kiss to Seal the Deal / The Army Ranger's Return: A Kiss to Seal the Deal / The Army Ranger's Return. Nikki Logan
his, but she didn’t speak. She just studied him in that all-seeing way of hers. His explanation was more for his own benefit than hers. She wasn’t asking anything of him, not tonight. ‘Having someone who I could connect with—identify with—it would have helped.’
‘Helped how?’ It was more hiccup than anything else.
‘Made me feel less alien.’
Her sympathetic hand slid up to his shoulder. ‘You didn’t feel like you belonged here?’
Not until this month. ‘Never.’
Kate sighed, long and deep. ‘So sad. We’ve both lost so much of our lives.’
Somewhere deep in his brain he knew what she meant—that they’d both suffered loss. But the words echoed around the car, blew a trail through her loose hair, mingled with the wholesome scent of Kate, and all he could think about was not wasting one second more …
His left hand cupped the back of her head more comfortably and his right pressed against her cheek and tipped her face up towards his. He knew then that he’d been thinking about this for days—specifically not thinking about this for days. About how she would feel. How she would taste.
How she would react.
But she surprised him. Although her body stiffened against his initially, she didn’t pull back as he lowered his mouth gently onto hers. It was soft and salty from her tears, but full, honest and courageous like the woman it belonged to.
Kate’s head spun a lurching figure of eight at his closeness. His strong, distinctive cologne seemed to shimmy around her like scent released from the heat of a candle. She held herself suspended, lips gently parted against his first touch, assessing, and then leaned infinitesimally towards him, gently increasing the pressure of their kiss. Heat burst through her and crackled out to lick at the place their lips joined. Her mouth slid across his, tasting, breathing his air, melding perfectly.
He nipped and nibbled, sucking her bottom lip between his, then releasing it to slide across the neglected top lip. His big hands forked up through the waves of her hair, messing it around her face until it hung, wild and natural, like it sometimes did at the end of a long day on the rock-shelf.
She pulled back to gaze into eyes darkened with green heat. His thumbs learned the delicate line of her cheekbones and rubbed the last of the tears from her damp lashes.
She sucked in a breath to speak, but he slid one thumb down to silence her lips, closing the gap between them and taking her mouth with his again. It blazed against hers, his tongue hot, confident and branding its possession. Her skin burned wherever it rubbed against his which, squeezed as they were in the front of his car, was just about everywhere.
Her breath grew thin and desperate deep in her chest, but freeing herself for air was the last thing on her mind. Grant’s hands slid down over her shoulders and found their way to the sides of her ribs and under her arms. Then he pulled her more comfortably against him, sliding himself sideways to give her more room, freeing her to climb that masculine chest and latch on more firmly to his talented lips.
Heavy eyes simmered into hers and Kate suddenly grew shy, uncertain. His large, work-roughed hand stroked up her throat to rest under her chin and encourage her gaze back to his.
‘You will always look like this to me,’ he murmured thickly, kissing her brow, her jaw, her lips. Making her lashes fall to her cheeks. ‘Wild. Hot.’
Kate let her head fall back and Grant mouthed his way up her throat. Just as well she was lying half-across him, because there was no way she could have kept standing. Feelings she’d begun to think she’d forfeited for life came surging forth in sharp, exquisite lances deep in her body. Her fists clenched high on his open-necked sweater, giving her strength but letting her fingers spread to tangle in the scattered hair there, against the furnace that was his flesh. The forbidden feeling of the skin she’d tried not to ogle that first day made her smile and Grant’s lips moved instantly to the deep dimple that formed on her left cheek.
His tongue dipped in and out, his smooth teeth sliding against her cheek as he matched her smile. ‘I’ve wanted to touch those since I first saw you.’
Not that she wasn’t unexpectedly thrilled to hear such sentiments but, while she was busy making sense of words, she wasn’t drowning in the pleasure sensations of his body moving against hers. His mouth feasting on hers. She speared her fingers up into his short hair and forced his head back so she could glare into his eyes meaningfully. ‘That’s lovely, but you want to talk or you want to kiss?’
His answer was practically a growl.
And then it was on—both of them clamouring for the best position, the most access, surging, devouring and consuming each other. Grant reached down to the side of his seat and activated the recliner and both of them mechanically lowered until they stretched almost into the back seat. Kate lay across Grant’s chest, along his straining body; his hands had free access, at last, to the rest of her. They slid up and down her length, from shoulder to hip, rib to thigh, learning her contours. Blood rushed, thick and molten, through her arteries keeping her hyper-sensitive cells acute and full of oxygen, and keeping her grey matter thoroughly distracted about what the rest of her was doing.
And with whom.
Then suddenly, with no warning, the vehicle shot forward with a lurch.
Kate managed to suck in a breath and expel a scream at the same time. Grant yanked on the handbrake, crunching into Kate’s hip painfully, and then jammed the automatic gearstick into park position. Dimly, between the heaving breaths she drew in, she realised she’d pushed the automatic vehicle into gear with her hip as she crawled more fully onto Grant’s prone body.
Oh my God …
Heat surged into her cheeks as the full picture they presented finally dawned on her: sprawled out in his Jeep like a pair of sexed-up teenagers, her dress hiked up, shoes kicked off. She reached blindly for the steering wheel, anchored herself to it to haul herself back into the driver’s seat and then sat, puffing, as Grant moved his seat back up into the upright position.
Reality ran in rivulets down the car’s windows where they’d seriously fogged them up in the hot, sultry minutes that had just passed. Kate cracked her door open and sucked in the cold night air. There were two ways out of this and neither of them offered much in the way of a dignified exit. She could cry foul and leap from the car with indignation or she could be flippant about what had just happened and try to extract herself with as much dignity as possible, as though she did this kind of thing every day.
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