High Country Christmas. Joanna Sims

She had to drop her boots on the floor in order to catch herself on the edge of the bed. “Darn it!”

      She had managed to stub her toe in the process. It wasn’t how she had played this out in her mind, but her exclamation of pain had done the job—he was awake now. Tyler rolled out of bed as if he was under attack, grabbed something off the nightstand and switched on the light.

      “Jesus, London...” Tyler lowered the revolver he had aimed at her. “I could’ve shot you!”

      London stopped rubbing her toe and stood upright. “Well, why’d you leave your stupid boots in front of the door for me to trip over?”

      “I didn’t know you were coming, now did I?”

      “You invited me!”

      “I’ve invited you a hundred different times, in a hundred different ways, and you’ve never taken me up on it before.”

      He had a point. She was embarrassed about her klutzy tumble over his boots and she was taking it out on him. This wasn’t the sexy scene she had imagined when she first decided to surprise him with a midnight rendezvous.

      “Why don’t you put your gun away, cowboy?” She nodded toward the revolver aimed down at the ground. “It’s starting to feel more like a hostage crisis and less like a seduction.”

      When he heard the word seduction, Tyler couldn’t get the gun out of his hand fast enough. He set the gun back in the nightstand drawer and pulled on a pair of jeans. He felt at a disadvantage standing in front of London in his boxers. He zipped up the fly but didn’t bother with the top button or a shirt. He didn’t want to risk the chance of London changing her mind while he was stumbling around trying to pull himself together.

      “I didn’t exactly think this through...” she said, watching him zip up his jeans.

      “I’m glad you didn’t.” Tyler walked over to her. “You wouldn’t be here if you had.”

      London was finally, unbelievably, in his bedroom. Over the years, his father had provided internships to Montana State University students who were majoring in agriculture or animal sciences. Most had been men, some had been women, but none of them had been like beautiful London Davenport. He had thought about this moment ever since he had first met her. But after she had rebuffed his every attempt to get to know her better, he hadn’t really believed that she would ever seek him out. And yet here she was—a Nordic beauty, six feet tall in her bare feet, with thick blond hair that fell all the way to her waist. Her oval face with its prominent cheekbones was scrubbed clean with soap and water. He’d never seen her wear anything more than sunscreen on that beautiful face of hers; makeup couldn’t enhance what nature had already blessed her with, anyway. She wasn’t girlie or prissy or squeamish; she was athletic and she worked the ranch as though she’d been born to it. And more often than not, she was just as covered in mud and manure as the men. He admired that about her.

      “I know this is going to sound like a horrible cliché...but I think this was probably a mistake,” she said. “I should go.”

      And there she was again, right on schedule—the London he recognized all too well. That was her MO: take one small step toward him and ten giant steps away.

      Tyler didn’t respond to her words with words; instead, he responded with a kiss.

      He didn’t hesitate or think it over. If he wanted her to stay—and he wanted her to stay—he had to bypass that overly analytical brain of hers and go directly to her heart. Her tongue tasted minty as he deepened the kiss. He wanted to kiss her objections away, kiss her doubts away. He had believed for a long time that if she would only let down her guard a little, she would see that they could be amazing together.

      Once he started to kiss her, London stopped thinking about leaving and started to enjoy the feeling of being in Tyler’s arms. She liked the way he tasted; she liked the way he smelled. She loved the feel of his strong callused hands on her flesh; she loved the feel of his firm, insistent lips as he kissed her as if he was hungry for her. Before today, Tyler had never kissed her. He had tried every tactic possible to get her to date him: joking, flirting and asking her out for dates. But today, in the barn, he’d used a different tactic entirely. During one of her usual explanations about why she couldn’t get involved with him, Tyler had grabbed her and kissed her. Midsentence, in the middle of the barn where anyone could see, he’d kissed her. And it wasn’t just a little peck. It was a long, deep kiss that had made her a little weak at the knees. That had never happened to her before.

      It was, by far, the sexiest kiss of her life. A kiss that had managed to unravel her carefully constructed determination not to get involved while she was in Montana. She only had one more semester to go, and then she was heading back to Virginia. It made absolutely no sense to get into a relationship that was destined to end. Especially with a cowboy like Tyler, who planned on spending the rest of his life ranching in Montana.

      But then he had kissed her. And that kiss sparked a flame of passion in her that she couldn’t seem to extinguish. She had tried for so long to suppress her sexual needs in order to focus entirely on her education that his kiss had opened the floodgate. Years of desire bubbled up to the surface and left her feeling so sexually frustrated by the end of the day that she wanted to scream from it. She’d tried to take care of it herself in shower; she had tried to ignore it until she fell asleep. But the frustration wouldn’t stop. It just kept building and building and building until she realized that she needed Tyler. He had started this fire; he damn well needed to help her put it out.

      Tyler didn’t stop kissing London until he heard her make a half pleasurable, half frustrated sound. When he heard that sound and felt her sway toward his body, he suspected that he had changed her mind about leaving.

      “I’m glad you’re here,” he said to her quietly.

      “I...” She wasn’t sure she could say the same. Was she glad that she was here? “...like the way you kiss me.”

      He smiled at her with his eyes and kissed her again. When his arms encircled her body, she stepped closer to him and returned Tyler’s embrace. She closed her eyes, closed out any doubting thoughts, and allowed herself to get lost in the moment. Tyler’s lips moved to her neck to drop warm kisses from her earlobe down to her shoulder. He lifted his head and slid his hands down her arms; there was a question mark in his cornflower-blue eyes.

      She looked at him directly, with a gaze that never wavered, and lifted her tank top over her head. She dropped it on the floor behind her. Tyler watched her with unabashed appreciation as she unhooked the front clasp of her bra. She slowly slid the straps of her bra off her shoulders and dropped it on the floor next to her tank top. She had wondered if it would be uncomfortable to be undressed in front of Tyler, but it felt completely natural to her. She wasn’t embarrassed. She wasn’t shy. In fact, the predatory glint in his eyes while he openly admired her naked breasts made her feel sexy and feminine—two feelings she didn’t often experience.

      She had answered his question with her actions. He needed to know if she had come for more than his kisses, and when she took off her top and her bra, it was all the green light he required. He caught her eye, smiled a lover’s smile and reached out to trace the curve of her breasts with his fingertips. London had to close her eyes; it had been such a long time since she had allowed anyone to touch her like this. She wanted to savor every wonderful sensation.

      “You are incredibly beautiful, London.” Tyler bent his head down to kiss her breast.

      The moment she felt his warm mouth on her breast, a thought loop started to play again and again in her mind.

       I need to feel you inside me. I need to feel you inside me. I need to feel you inside me.

      “I need to feel you inside me.” London held on to his shoulders and whispered the words aloud.

      Tyler lifted his head to study her face, his eyes darkened with desire, and then he easily lifted her into his arms to move her to his bed. Once there, London unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans. She lifted her