A Touch Of Silk. Lori Wilde

head first into the bulkhead opposite the lavatory and bruised her pretty face, and that would have been a crying shame.

      “Are you all right?” he asked.

      “Fine,” she whispered.

      Her voice surprised him. One more irreconcilable fact that added to her allure. He’d expected her tone would be more cultured, aloof, cool and reserved. Instead, the sexy sound of her had him remembering all those nights during high school and college that he’d spun records of throaty-voiced female blues singers at his family’s tiny radio station in Bear Creek.

      Unblinking, the goddess met his gaze and held it. The impact slugged him. Her sultry eyes, dark as coffee and surrounded by lashes as impossibly thick as paintbrushes, snagged something deep inside him and refused to let go.

      In the brief, endless moment he held her in his arms, he noticed everything about her.

      The tiny mole at the left corner of her mouth. The smooth, expertly penciled arch of her brow. The erratic throbbing of her pulse in the hollow of her neck. The slim curve of her waist. Her rich, fresh scent that made him ache to bury his nose in her hair and breathe deeply.

      And the unnerving realization that beneath her ultrasoft silk blouse and bra, her nipples were puckered.

      It wasn’t cold in the plane’s cramped confines. In fact, it was very, very hot.

      Had her breasts hardened in response to him? Quinn almost groaned aloud at the thought.

      Was he reading too much into this casual encounter? Was his desire for one last fiery sexual adventure before he found a wife and settled down for good feeding into his imagination and causing him to misread her reaction?

      Her lips parted, and he could see the pink tip of her tongue pressing against her top teeth. She looked as if she might say something to him, but she didn’t.

      Oh, Lord, he could feel her stockings rub against the leg of his jeans as she shifted in his arms.

      So many thoughts raced through his brain it seemed as if eons had passed. But it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds since she’d toppled into his embrace.

      She raised a hand to her cheek to brush away a strand of golden hair. He tracked her movement, peered into those compelling brown eyes once more.

      And stumbled. Literally lost his balance as the plane hit another pocket of turbulence. He tipped backward, taking Charlize with him.

      They ended up in the middle of the aisle, a jumble of arms and legs. The fall hadn’t knocked the air from his lungs, but nonetheless, he found it hard to breathe with her lying on his chest.

      “Are you okay?” There was that breathy whisper again, uncertain, a bit nervous. And unless he missed his guess, tinged with an acute awareness of him as a man.

      “Okay,” he replied, hating for this moment to end.

      “Please take your seats,” a flight attendant said sharply as she rushed over. “And buckle yourselves in.”

      “Let me help you up,” Charlize offered, rising to her feet with amazing agility and grace for a woman wearing three-inch heels and a mean pair of stockings.

      He almost laughed at the notion of a slender branch like her helping a tree trunk like himself to his feet. But he liked the idea of touching her again, so he put out his hand, which dwarfed hers, and allowed her to tug him.

      Quinn pushed against the floor of the plane, and his own momentum brought him to a standing position. The top of her sleek head only came to his armpit. Her hip was level with his upper thigh. She seemed as perfect and delicate as the first butterfly of spring.

      Without a doubt she was the most exquisite woman he’d ever met. Her straight blond hair was cut in a polished style and appeared as finely spun as silk. Her complexion was flawless, except for a small scar below her right earlobe. He had an almost overpowering urge to explore that scar with the tip of his tongue.

      How he wanted to say something more to her, to do something more with her, but the frowning flight attendant was clucking her tongue and waving at them to take their seats. Charlize scooted past him, her breasts lightly brushing his upper arm, causing a brushfire to leap up his nerve endings, and made her way to her seat.

      Kay was practically panting as she clicked the seat belt in place around her waist. Her heart pounded, blood suffused her skin. She couldn’t believe what had just happened and her body’s heated response to a stranger. Touching him had been far more electric, far more satisfying than her wildest imaginings.

      She didn’t look up, because she knew he was still standing there staring at her as if he’d been struck with a bolt from the blue. What was the matter with him? Didn’t they have women wherever it was he was from?

      “You sure you’re all right?” He squatted in the aisle beside Kay, defying the angry flight attendant, who looked as if she wanted to tie him into his seat but was too quelled by his size to approach.

      “I’m fine, don’t worry about me. Please, for your own safety, sit down.”

      “If you need me, I’m right behind you.” He touched her wrist with his massive paw, and her blood slipped through her veins like quicksilver. Intense. So intense. If she closed her eyes, she could see the two of them in a forest. Walking. Alone. On a bed of soft, mossy ground. The sunlight flitting through the trees.

      Stop it, stop it, stop it. Don’t you dare go into another sexual fantasy, Kathryn Victoria Freemont!

      She raised her hand to her face. The hand that had been wrapped in his. She smelled of him. Robust, masculine. Like pine needles, wilderness and soap. A shiver she could not suppress overtook her body. She could easily imagine him back there in his seat watching her with eagle eyes.

      What was it about this man that so stirred her blood? What was it that made her feel giddy and girlish and oh-so-happy to be alive?

      Kay was kidding herself, and she knew it. Just because he made her feel desirable didn’t mean she was licensed to jump his bones. She didn’t even know the guy’s name. What he made her feel was simply a reflection of her wishful thinking. She wanted rescuing from her life, and he was a convenient escapist illusion.

      Because lately, nothing in her current experiences seemed to satisfy her. Not her relationship with her parents, who were pressuring her to marry Lloyd and produce an heir. Certainly not her romance with Lloyd, if you could even call what they had a romance.

      Lloyd had proposed to her by e-mail two days ago in a manner as romantic as a root canal. His exact message had been “Your father says he’ll make me partner if we’re married by the end of the summer, guess it’s time to do the deed.”

      Whoopee! Sweep a girl right off her feet, why don’t you?

      She’d ignored Lloyd’s e-mail, pretending she hadn’t yet seen the missive, because she wasn’t ready to deal with it, and surprise, surprise, he hadn’t even called her in Chicago to see why she hadn’t responded.

      And even her job as a reporter for Metropolitan magazine no longer fulfilled her as it once had.

      “What happened to you?” she whispered to herself, grateful no one was seated next to her. “In college, you dreamed of writing novels and having adventures and taking a lover that was as kind and considerate and understanding as he was good in bed. Where did that girl go?”

      It seemed her entire youth had been spent trying to please Mommy and Daddy and striving to be the perfect Freemont. Her one tiny insurrection had been insisting on studying journalism rather than art history, as her mother had wished.

      “Lloyd Post comes from blueblood stock, dear, just like you,” her mother had told her when she called the day before to see if Kay had gotten Lloyd’s e-mailed proposal. Apparently Lloyd had already discussed it with her parents. Would have been nice if he’d talked things over with her first. “Give his proposition some serious thought. You could do worse than marrying him.”

      Hmm,