A Blazing Little Christmas(37)
She swallowed.
“You don’t have to excuse yourself with me.” He reached out to touch her cheek with the back of one knuckle in a move that was too familiar by half and yet the slow drag of his skin over hers made her eyes flutter dazedly in response. “I’m liking everything I see.”
Her heart rate kicked up a notch as her rational mind acknowledged he stood too close to her. Still, having zero experience with this level of immediate sexual attraction, Heather found the magnetic pull too strong to step away.
“It’s not polite to stare.” Her mother’s words leaped out of her mouth before she could stop them, the automatic response kicking in because her own thoughts were all deeply engaged in wishful physical scenarios with the man in front of her.
His bark of laughter was the sort of blatant amusement she often took at her mother’s attempts to instill manners on the world around her.
“Do you want me to stop?” His question was direct and to the point and she didn’t know if she could answer it honestly.
His dark eyes bored into hers, seeking the truth, and something about the way he posed the question assured her he would respect her wishes. He wasn’t playing games.
“No.” Even though she took pride in acting on instinct, this was pushing it. But damn it, that was the truth. This man’s eyes were pure aphrodisiac. “But if you’re going to stare I think you at least owe me the courtesy of acting on those powerful looks you keep sending my way.”
His hand fell away from her cheek and she could tell she’d surprised him. He might not be playing games, but he’d expected her to play them.
“Not here.” He withdrew his wallet and slapped a twenty on the table, securing it with his half-empty beer bottle. “Will you take a walk with me?”
He gestured toward the wooden boardwalk that led out into the marshes among the tall grasses. The walkways snaked all through the wetlands before winding up back at the bar that sponsored the outdoor entertainment every Friday night.
Heather knew what kinds of things went on out on those darkened paths even though she’d never ventured out there herself. Extending her hand to him, she gave the high sign to her girlfriends and nodded her consent.
“It’s about time, Army-man…”
* * *
The stinging in her hands pulled Heather from memories of that unseasonably warm Savannah night and the man who’d seduced her with his eyes long before he’d touched her. She wondered where that man had disappeared since the Jared Murphy standing in front of her now bore little resemblance to him. Physically they were the same. But the eyes that had captured her right from the start five years ago were shuttered now. Distant.
That remoteness would make it a lot tougher to seduce him in order to take a little sensual revenge.
“You really need a pair of gloves.” Apparently unconcerned about the snowball to his back, Jared lifted her hands and cupped them between his own.
The unexpected touch set off trip wires all over her nervous system, sending her whole body into hyperawareness mode. It didn’t help that she’d just been daydreaming about their first meeting, a time when she’d allowed herself to be hypnotized by the delicious pull of sexual chemistry.
She’d been so wrapped up in those old memories she hadn’t noticed him leave her suitcase on the dry sidewalk while he followed her into the snow-covered courtyard in front of the lodge.
“I’ve got a better way to warm up.” She blurted the statement with all the finesse she’d used when she first met him and she’d parroted her mother’s words. Of course, her comment now was a hell of a lot less starchy.
And she had to start somewhere if she was ever going to get him in bed this weekend.
Jared didn’t speak for a long moment, as if weighing the wisdom of continuing the conversation. Now this facet of him, the brooding thinker—she recognized. He might have grown more aloof in the past five years, but at least now she’d spotted a hint of the fiery depths she remembered beneath the controlled surface.
“As a veteran of North Country winters, I think I might know a little more about warming up than you.” Still cupping his fingers around hers, he drew their interlaced hands up to his mouth and breathed into the gap between his thumbs.
The warmth of his breath soothed her raw fingers stinging from those moments when she’d plunged them into the snow. Their eyes met over their joined palms and she felt the electric jolt of that connection clear down to her toes.
She swayed toward him like a hypnotized woman, her whole body responding to the source of heat that could set all of her on fire with the merest of prompting. She licked her lips in preparation for more.