Men to Trust. Diana Palmer

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      His lips teased over her full mouth, nibbling her upper lip while he tasted it with a lazy stroke of his tongue. Violet jumped and shivered. The contact was completely out of her experience. She’d dated a few boys, but she didn’t seem to appeal to any of them physically. This was different. She wished she knew what to do, so that he wouldn’t stop.

      He lifted his head and looked into her rapt, expectant eyes. She was breathing like a distance runner. Her breasts were shaking under the whip of her pulse. He’d thought she was at least a little experienced, but it seemed he was wrong.

      His thumb moved to her lower lip and tugged it down gently as his head bent again.

      “We have to start somewhere,” he breathed as his mouth opened against her full, soft lips.

      Violet shivered. Her hands went to his arms, her fingers digging in. He was muscular. He didn’t look muscular in his suits, but she could feel the strength at this range. She moaned, a whisper of sound that drew his head up.

      His eyes met hers, and there was no teasing in them now. They were intent, darker, hungry.

      Her fingers lifted to his cheek, hesitantly. “Don’t…stop,” she pleaded in a soft, shaky whisper.

      A muscle in his jaw tensed. He bent again, his own heart racing. “Violet,” he whispered.

      This time the kiss wasn’t teasing, tender, or brief. He ground his mouth into her soft lips. She moaned again, and this time her hands met behind his neck and dug in. His mouth grew demanding.

      There was another moan, but this one wasn’t passionate.

      His head jerked back. Violet reached down and grabbed her ankle just as Yow drew back, hissing.

      “Yow!” Kemp exclaimed, moving around the chair to shoo the cat away while he knelt and examined Violet’s ankle. It was bleeding. “I’m sorry! I wouldn’t have had this happen for the world!”

      “I must have stepped on her tail, poor thing,” Violet faltered. It was exciting to kiss Blake Kemp. It was equally exciting to have him at her feet, concerned for her.

      “You were kissing me,” he corrected. “They’re jealous of any attention I pay to other people.”

      “This has…happened before?” she asked miserably.

      “Yes. Well, no, not like this,” he said. “Mee sank her teeth into Cy Parks one day when he was having coffee with me in the kitchen.”

      “I see,” she began.

      He gave her a wicked grin. “I wasn’t kissing him.”

      She burst out laughing.

      He stood up, pulling back her chair. He tugged her to her feet and suddenly swung her up into his arms. She gasped and clutched at his shoulders.

      He raised an eyebrow rakishly. “Now it’s my ankles that will be in danger. I have to clean that and put antiseptic ointment on it,” he mused as he turned and carried her down the hall toward the bedrooms.

      “I’m too heavy!” she protested.

      “You’re not,” he assured her. He looked down at her in his arms. He felt several inches taller. She was delightful close up. He enjoyed kissing her. He’d liked to have done it again, but this wasn’t the time.

      He put her down on the vanity in the huge, blue-patterned tile bathroom. There was a whirlpool bath and an enormous space that held commode, vanity, chair, and a linen closet, as well as a large medicine chest.

      He fumbled in the chest for what he needed, tugged a washcloth out of a drawer and proceeded to clean and bandage the wound.

      Yow peered into the bathroom, her blue eyes huge in her triangle-shaped face.

      “No tuna for you tonight, young lady,” Blake told her firmly.

      She flattened her ears and hissed at Violet.

      “And none tomorrow, either,” he added curtly.

      Yow turned her back and flounced out. Mee, in a conciliatory tone, meowed at the door and walked in, watching the byplay curiously but without much antagonism.

      “Beautiful girl,” Violet mused, lowering her fingers for the cat to sniff.

      Mee sniffed them, rubbed her face against them, and then wrapped her lean body around Violet’s legs.

      “You can have tuna,” Blake told the cat.

      The purring grew louder.

      Violet stroked the cat, but her eyes and her heart were on Blake’s bent head as he put a sticky bandage over the scratch.

      “It should be fine,” he said.

      “Of course it will be,” she assured him, smiling down as he finished. “Thanks.”

      “I’m really sorry,” he said again as he gathered up the first aid supplies and put them away. “Yow’s spoiled.”

      “I love cats,” Violet said, still stroking Mee. “I’d have loved to have some, if Mama wasn’t allergic.”

      “I don’t know what I’d do without mine. Although there are times when I’m tempted to try,” he added, with a glowering look toward the door where Yow had reappeared and was hissing again.

      “You live alone,” she said. “It’s natural that they’d resent strangers.”

      He bent down and drew her gently to her feet. “You’re no stranger,” he said huskily as his eyes searched hers. “I don’t think you ever were.”

      She felt such elation that she could hardly get her breath. Just weeks ago they’d been mortal enemies. Then, suddenly, they were almost intimate. It was a shock. It was…wonderful.

      “Your eyes can’t hide anything,” he murmured, bending toward her.

      She glanced worriedly at her ankles, and he laughed.

      He picked her up again, shifting her in his arms. “Feel safer?” he murmured, staring at her mouth.

      “Much,” she agreed, and her arms tightened boldly around his neck.

      With a long sigh, he bent his head and kissed her, very tenderly. His teeth nibbled at her lower lip until her mouth opened. He took immediate advantage of the opportunity, and she felt her whole body go hot as he dragged her closer, so that her full breasts rubbed against his muscular chest.

      He groaned, and the kiss grew hotter, longer, more passionate. His arms contracted hungrily.

      She gave him back the kiss with more enthusiasm than expertise, but he didn’t seem to mind. She sighed under the hard crush of his mouth and sank into dreams. It was sweeter than she’d ever dared hope it might be.

      She felt as if her whole body was shattering with pleasure.

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