The Naughty List Bundle with The Night Before Christmas & Yule Be Mine. Fern Michaels

or the choices that were to be made.

      But there was most definitely something she could do about Griffin Gallagher. And, more to the point, with Griffin Gallagher.

      He wasn’t the enemy any longer. He wasn’t her savior, either. She knew that. He was merely the harbinger of change. None of that mattered.

      Melody couldn’t have described in any accurate detail how it was they managed to store cupcakes and cakes and get up the back stairs to her place over the shop.

      She fully acknowledged the pure insanity of the moment. And simply didn’t care. Her whole life was on the brink of massive change. Again. Even if she decided to do nothing, her world was going to change. She had absolutely no idea what she was going to do, what she wanted to do.

      And there was Griffin. The man who was both refined class and raw energy, who was presently all but carrying her up the stairs over his shoulder, caveman style.

      She stopped thinking about tomorrow, and all the tomorrows after that, and grinned when he slid her down the front of his body in front of the door leading to her personal rooms. “I’ll warn you,” she said a bit breathlessly, “I keep my kitchens and store immaculate, but my personal space, not so much.”

      He was kissing the side of her neck, nibbling her earlobe, making her gasp. “I’m no’ findin’ the least bit of anything wrong with your personal space,” he murmured as he continued his delicious journey along the sensitive skin beneath her ear, trailing kisses and nips down the side of her neck, pushing the heavy, starched collar of her chef’s coat off her shoulders so he could continue his quest.

      Melody fumbled with the door handle behind her. She always locked the door at the bottom of the stairs, so this one was usually left open. The door swung in rather abruptly beneath their weight, and the two of them stumbled inside.

      Normally she’d have been a bit mortified for someone she was interested in to see her place in its current condition. But Griffin wasn’t someone she would be seeing again, so what did it matter?

      He certainly didn’t seem to be noticing. “Bedroom?”

      She grunted and nodded her head in the general direction, as he stripped off the light blue, long-sleeved Henley she wore under her white jacket. She was trying to do much the same with his pale green button-down shirt.

      “Small space,” he managed, as they tripped past the orange suede ottoman that sat in front of her stuffed, chenille-covered chair, then banged chins and calves on the small, wrought-iron base of her glass-top coffee table. They managed to squeeze by the couch without further damage, leaving clothing behind on the lush, floral-print arm at one end.

      “I’m not up here much. I don’t need much room,” she panted.

      Griffin lifted his head long enough to shoot her the most wicked grin. “Oh, but I do, luv.” Then he pushed her backward through her bedroom door, and all the way to her brass four-poster.

      “Stepping stool,” she cautioned. The antique bed frame held her deep pillow-top mattress high up off the floor.

      “Right,” he said, then merely tossed her gently into the middle of it as if she was lighter than a feather.

      She let out a surprised laugh, which ended on a indrawn breath of anticipation as Griffin stepped onto the stool, and loomed over her.

      “You’re a beautiful, beautiful woman, Melody Duncastle,” he said, simply standing there, taking in his fill of her.

      Rather than make her feel uncomfortable or self-conscious, his words had her all but quivering with the need for him to get off the damn stool and put his hands on her.

      She was wearing nothing more than a bra, hot pink drawstring surgical pants, which were her preference when putting in long hours in the kitchen, and whatever panties she’d pulled out of the drawer in the dark that morning. She didn’t even bother to look down to find out. She didn’t care.

      He raked his gaze over her like a man starved for days who’d just been shown the buffet table. She was hoping he viewed it as an all-you-can-eat arrangement—she was feeling rather carnivorous herself.

      “Are you going to stand there, or—”

      “Or,” he said quite definitively. Rather than jump her, which she’d have been quite happy with—and expected, given their rather animalistic approach to things so far—he knelt down on the edge of the bed, and gently, slowly, tugged her loose pink pants down her legs, pushing her knees up so he could slide her pants and ankle socks off completely. He tossed those over his shoulder, the twinkling glint in his clear eyes making her shiver, though she didn’t feel the slightest bit of a chill. Quite the opposite. She felt like she was burning up from the inside out.

      “Your turn,” she said, her voice quavering with need.

      He shook his head, and lifted her foot up so it rested on his shoulder. His dress shirt hung open, and the white T-shirt he wore underneath clung to a frame that belied his career as a businessman and looked far more like that of the street tough she’d earlier imagined him to be. Had it only been that morning?

      Her mouth watered, imagining what the smooth, taut muscles of his chest and shoulders would feel like—taste like—once she got him naked.

      But he had other ideas. He turned his head just enough to kiss the sensitive skin of her ankle. Then he gently bit her instep before moving his mouth back along her ankle and up over her calf. She was shuddering in pleasure, quivering with each, individual, hot kiss, her hips already quaking.

      Her skin felt like a mass of live wire endings, feeling his every touch like a tingling series of shock waves, every one of which pulsated straight to her core. As he worked his way closer to the inside of her knee, he shifted his weight more onto the bed, sliding her other calf over his thigh, as he continued to kneel between her legs.

      His gaze found hers as he began to slowly lick and kiss his way up the soft skin of her inner thigh. Her hands were splayed beside her head, her nipples two exquisitely sensitized nubs rubbing at the fabric of her bra as he made her back arch again and again with his devilish assault.

      He pushed her back up the bed, so he could stretch more fully between her thighs. He slid one hand up over her stomach, cupping one breast, catching and rolling the nipple between two of his fingers.

      “Griffin,” she gasped, and would have arched violently against him, but the weight of his arm, and his shoulder pinning down her other thigh, kept her body right where he wanted it as he toyed with the elastic band of her panties.

      “Are you ready for me, Melody?” he murmured against her thigh, not so much as taking a breath away from his steady decimation of her entire defense system.

      “Do you…have…?” She’d had some thought in her head about protection, but that concern slipped away like mist, replaced only with thoughts of how the tip of his tongue, sliding along under the edge of her panties, was so close…and yet, so damn far away from—“Oh!” she gasped, then another, longer, almost groaning “oh” followed as his tongue slowly, torturously, found its mark.

      She didn’t arch hard, but rolled her hips up to meet him, groaning deep inside her throat as the waves of pleasure washed over and through her, each one building to a higher and higher crescendo. He grunted his own encouragement, and continued making her move, dip, and sway beneath his oh-so-clever tongue. Then making her gasp and arch when he slid a finger into her, bearing her down onto the bed with the force of his flicking tongue, while he pushed.

      She climbed up that last peak in a full rush, going straight over the edge, her body pulsing, almost convulsing under him. It didn’t stop. And he didn’t stop.

      “Griffin, I can’t—you have to—”

      “Shh,” he whispered, and his soft breath alone shot her straight up all over again. “Aye,” he said, between kisses “but ye can.”

      He proved he was right. More than once.

      Only