Take My Breath Away. Christie Ridgway

she wasn’t turning any pages.

      Time passed.

      More time passed.

      The hail changed to a torrential rain that was a dull roar against the roof. The walls seemed to close in, creating an intimacy that was unwelcome. Risky. Still, Ryan adjusted his position on the cushions, pushing his back deeper into the sofa’s angle so he could pretend to read and watch her at the same time. She continued to stare straight ahead, thinking...what?

      Then she turned her head quickly, too quickly for him to redirect his gaze. She’d caught him. Their eyes caught, too.

      The walls drew closer.

      He tightened his hold on his book, though he wanted to throw it aside, then grab her to him and escape March and all its terrible cruelties in her fragrant female body. He knew what lust was, knew its power, and it was gathering in his loins, in his chest, and he wanted to give in to it. The landlady wasn’t afraid of him or immune to him, he could see that by the flush on her face, the quick flutter of the pulse in her neck.

      Why the hell couldn’t they indulge?

      Because after the deed was done he would still be himself, he knew. It would still be this particular month, and if he wasn’t able to get away from her in the morning—unlikely, as it appeared she’d remain stuck in his cabin—then he chanced dragging her down into hell with him.

      Nothing good ever came of March.

      Her gaze still not leaving his, she wet her lips with her tongue.

      Ryan’s body tightened all over. He was more than half-hard, and he forced himself to look away so that he wouldn’t go full-ready. But shit, that mouth— Don’t think about her mouth.

      Clearing his throat, Ryan shot up from his seat. “You want a drink? Coffee? Beer? Wine?”

      “Caffeine keeps me up,” she said.

      Since he was already uncomfortably up himself, he took that as a sign to go for beer or wine. God knew he needed something to take off the edge. In the kitchen, he found the opener and a bottle of red. Since she had stocked the cabinets, he didn’t suppose she’d object to drinking out of the large glass tumblers.

      He placed one in her hand, careful not to touch her, not to look at her. Careful not to think about her mouth. Kissing her mouth.

      Knowing he couldn’t go back to pretend-reading, and because thoughts of bed just made him jumpy, he looked about for an activity to occupy them. A box of jigsaw puzzle pieces sat on a nearby shelf. He grabbed it up.

      “You like to do this sort of thing?” he asked, dumping the pieces onto the coffee table in front of the sofa.

      Poppy set her book aside. “What’s it a picture of? It’s something else I found at a garage sale, but I didn’t look at it too closely.”

      He sat beside her and sifted through the cardboard snippets, turning some faceup. They all seemed pinkish in color. “This isn’t the original box. Maybe it’s one of those really difficult ones that are just the puzzle, no helpful photo.”

      “Those take a lot of time,” she said, starting to move pieces around, as she sipped at her wine.

      “And concentration,” he added. We won’t be able to think of anything perilous.

      “Look for the corners first,” Poppy advised, apparently getting into the spirit of the thing. With a triumphant sound, she held one up.

      “Good for you.” Ryan found a couple of pieces already joined and set them in the center.

      They both continued to work, each of them seeming to find a part of the whole that they claimed as their own. The fire crackled. The very generous pour of wine in each glass was consumed. After some minutes went by, Poppy murmured, “Oh, there is a picture. I think it’s a woman. I have some of her face.”

      He glanced over, noting she’d constructed a nose, and part of one eye. “I’m still getting nothing but pink,” he said, trying to work a little faster. As diversions went, the activity was a success, and he congratulated himself on his brilliant idea.

      Until...

      It stopped being brilliant.

      He stared down at the section of the puzzle he’d completed. “Uh...”

      “Hmm?” His companion-in-puzzles fit one piece to another, tossed back the last swallow in her glass, then set it aside.

      “Maybe we should quit,” Ryan suggested.

      “What? No.” With a frown, she turned her head, then jerked it back when she saw what he’d wrought.

      Naked tits. Overinflated, pearly pink and topped with tight, upstanding nipples.

      A squeak of horror escaped Poppy’s lips, followed by a moment of stunned silence. Then she started to laugh. As she laughed harder, she put one palm over her belly, and the other over her mouth.

      Need—rash, blazing and no longer deniable—overtook Ryan. That mouth, he thought again. He was going to have that mouth. It was imperative he taste the laughter bubbling from it, inhale the sound into his shrunken soul. He had to kiss her.

      * * *

      POPPY’S GUARD WAS down, thanks to an outrageous pair of puzzle breasts. Maybe because of the wine she’d drunk or maybe because she’d been walking a tightrope of tension all evening, hyperaware of Ryan’s very-male presence in a room that had kept getting smaller by the second, but for whatever reason the sight of those naked boobs had tickled her sense of the ridiculous. Aware she might sound the tiniest bit hysterical, she pressed her hand harder to her lips, still giggling like mad when Ryan reached over and drew it away.

      The gesture didn’t immediately alert her to a threat. She still couldn’t believe that she’d been so anxious to smother the sexual vibrations humming in the room that she’d gladly dived into working a puzzle...of an X-rated image. Even with the knowledge that her car and her cabin were half-ruined lurking at the back of her mind—or because that knowledge was lurking at the back of her mind—it struck her as hilariously funny. Even now another laugh rose in her throat.

      “Poppy,” Ryan said, his voice soft.

      Her gaze shifted to his face, and the glow in his blue eyes sent her to serious in a hurry.

      But it didn’t send her body anywhere safe. Instead, she sat frozen on the couch, her hand cradled in his much larger one. The contrast made her feel feminine and breathless and...oh, boy, curious. Because she knew what that tone in his voice signaled. She knew what was coming.

      And she hadn’t been kissed in over five years.

      So sue her, she had a curiosity about kissing. Strike that. She had a curiosity about how Ryan would kiss.

      And then...and then he was showing her. His mouth brushed over hers, the touch as light as a snowflake, though the brief caress sent heat racing like a flash fire over her skin. When his lips came back a second time, she parted her mouth, hoping to entice him to make it firmer. Hoping he’d brush his tongue with hers.

      It had been aeons since she’d been French-kissed.

      On the third gentle pass, she speared her hand in Ryan’s hair to keep their lips locked. He made a sound, low in his throat. Gratified? Smug? She didn’t care. Her muscles tensed, her body quivering as she anticipated his next move.

      His tongue, all right, but now it brushed like damp butterfly wings against her bottom lip. Her thighs clenched and he rubbed his thumb over the knuckles of the hand he held. Soothing, every stroke of his soothing, as if he knew she was all of a sudden so keyed up that a stronger touch might shatter her. Who would blame her for that?

      Five-plus years without a proper kiss.

      Ryan’s free arm came around her shoulders to draw her closer. She breathed in his scent as tears stung the corners of her eyes, and she squeezed them tight, mortified that she might have to