Read Online After Midnight by Katherine Garbera - Free Book Online Page B

really want her to see the man behind the bluster. He knew that, but at the same time he sort of wanted her to be the one person who knew the real guy under that cocky facade.
    “I imagine this is just one of your seduction techniques. The way you get woman to kiss you.”
    “Nah, it’s how I get women to
let
me kiss them,” he said, going along with her. He traced the bottom curve of her lip and held her to him with his arm around her waist. The ground was cold, but he didn’t feel it through his snow pants. He looked up at the cloudy sky and saw the first snowflakes falling toward them. One of them landed on the end of Lindsey’s nose, and he caught it on his finger and brought it to his lips to lick it off.
    She leaned down as another flake landed on his lips, and kissed him. The chilled snowflake melted under the heat of her kiss, and he felt the warmth spread from her mouth to every cell of his body. Slowly working over him until he wrapped both arms around her and kissed her as if nothing mattered except the two of them.
    As if there wasn’t anything else in the universe but him and her and this snowy clearing. Nothing but her lips moving over hers, her hands on his face and her body pressed intimately to his. Nothing except the taste of her happiness and the cold chill that couldn’t penetrate the heat they were generating.
    Nothing but he and Lindsey and this outdoor world that they’d both called home for so long.
    * * *
    L YING ON TOP of Carter with the snow gently falling around her was the perfect end to this crazy first day of the year. She had been running on empty, she realized, until he’d pushed her to go down the mound. She wasn’t perfect. It was silly to think one man would make that big of a change in her, but this was Carter.
    The bad boy who’d been teasing and cajoling her since the moment they’d met. But damn, could he kiss.
    Lindsey forgot about everything but how soft his lips were under hers. How right his tongue felt as it tangled with hers. And his taste. It was minty but earthy...and she couldn’t get enough of it. Of
him
. His hands were moving up and down her back, cupping her butt and pulling her more fully against him.
    Despite the cold, his erection was strong and solid between them, awakening an answering ache deep inside her. She wasn’t a sexual person, so this desire so quick on the heels of last night was new. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be this lusty. Not with Carter. He had already proved to her that he was different, or rather that
she
was different when he was around.
    He made everything she felt seem bigger somehow, but he also called to the parts of her soul she preferred to keep hidden from the world. She pulled her head back and gazed down into those blue-gray eyes of his. There was something almost harsh about his features, and she recognized the look on his face as smoldering desire. Last night had given her a glimpse into how passion changed him from that sort of mischievous badass into a man who knew how to seduce.
    “Let’s go back to my room,” he said, shifting her so he could sit up.
    She shook her head.
    “Why not? It’s not like—”
    Lindsey put her finger over his lips, rubbed it back and forth for a second. Then she brought her finger to her own lips and kissed it. She wanted to be able to dismiss him as easily as she always had. But she couldn’t. She thought about how awkward she’d felt this morning and how electrified she felt right now. She wanted him. Wanted to feel his muscled body moving against hers and over hers again. Not again. If she had sex with him again she had to be in control.
    “You have to stop thinking that you are the boss,” she said, lifting her finger from his lips.
    “I’m not?”
    “No, you’re not.”
    He swept an errant lock of hair off her cheek. “Then you aren’t on fire for me? You don’t burn when you think of both of us naked in each other’s arms?” His words fanned the flames that were