Texas Ranger, Runaway Heiress. Carol Finch

floor and kissed her back in a way she had never allowed a man to kiss her before. And now she knew why. It was entirely too intimate and personal and demanded more than she preferred to give.

      Yet, for a dazed moment, she forgot her objective of keeping the half-dressed stranger quiet until Eaton reentered his suite. She told herself that she should be thinking about scuttling to her room once the coast was clear. But first she had to recover from the titillating sensation of being swallowed up in the powerful arms of the raven-haired stranger, whose sensuous lips were making a feast of her mouth. Despite the abrasive brush of his whiskers, Bri enjoyed the reckless embrace—in an utterly wicked and devilishly delightful kind of way.

      Which was completely out of character for her. She didn’t go around grabbing men and kissing them until they gave in and kissed her back enthusiastically. She had become intrigued by kissing this brawny stranger. Then she had been swamped by a flood tide of physical pleasure that surely must be lust in its purest form.

      The erotic misadventure left her experiencing the most incredible sensations imaginable. The man tasted good and he felt even better while he pressed her familiarly to his muscled planes and contours. If she was going to behave recklessly and irrationally, who better to experiment with than a perfect stranger who didn’t know who she was and had no expectations except sharing a mind-boggling kiss in the dark?

      Bri gave herself up completely to the exquisite pleasure that consumed her and promptly forgot Eaton Powell II existed.

      Hud’s mind went blank and his body hummed with unbridled desire while the mysterious woman, who had darted into his room unexpectedly, kissed him deaf, blind and stupid. His initial reaction upon seeing the woman in gray, whose face was concealed by the droopy brim of her bonnet, had been to lunge for the pistol that he’d tossed on the bed. But she’d caught him off guard when she latched onto him as if he were the missing half of her soul reunited after an eternity.

      When she delivered that first lip-sizzling wallop of a kiss, Hud forgot everything he ever knew. It was the most bizarre moment of his life. He couldn’t see the color of her hair or the color of her eyes. He couldn’t tell much of anything about her appearance because she was no more than a gray shadow within the inky shadows of his dimly lit room. Yet, he kissed her for all he was worth and she clung to him with the same reckless abandonment.

      Damn, in all his thirty-three years he’d never been so bewildered or out of control. Even his years of soldiering and rangering hadn’t prepared him for a surprise attack that assaulted all his senses at once. The unidentified female left him aching with lust and shaking with need in nothing flat. He responded instinctively to the taste of her kiss and the enticing feel of her shapely body molded to his.

      After a long, hungry moment of pressing her hips against his hard arousal and kissing her as if there were no tomorrow—or the day after—he heard the door to the next room snap shut and the lock click into place. Then suddenly the kissing bandit lurched backward. Hud impulsively tried to pull her back into his arms but she bent his wrist at a painful angle and darted from his reach.

      “Ouch,” he said to the back of her bonnet-covered head. “Mind telling me what the hell’s going on here—?”

      “Shh-shh-shh!” she said without glancing back at him.

      Then poof! She slipped out the door and scampered down the hall.

      Hud craned his neck around the partially open door, noting the mysterious female in the dowdy gray gown and shawl was careful to cling to the shadows of the hall. When she reached the staircase, she turned her head away from him to conceal her facial features. Then she flew down the steps and disappeared from sight. He hadn’t had a clear view of her from her dramatic arrival to her abrupt departure.

      He couldn’t describe the elusive night visitor or identify her voice. Yet, he knew the appealing taste of her, knew her alluring scent and he knew how amazingly good her curvaceous body felt in his arms.

      Frowning, Hud shook his head to clear the erotic sensations that fogged his senses. He glanced toward the waiting tub of bathwater behind the dressing screen and smiled wryly. If the kissing bandit had arrived two minutes later, Hud would have been stark naked. That would have been an interesting way to make her acquaintance. Of course, her way of introducing herself with a steamy, mind-blowing kiss and “shh-shh-shh” was peculiar enough.

      “Ah, well, I guess you have to expect such things in a boisterous town like The Flat,” he said to himself as he unfastened the placket of his breeches on his way to the tub.

      Hud smirked at the steam drifting from the water. Now he was going to need a cool bath instead of a warm one, because the kissing bandit had left him hot and bothered.

      Bri halted at the bottom of the steps to inhale several bolstering breaths. Lord have mercy! That unexpected encounter, coming so quickly on the heels of viewing Eaton’s tryst, left her head spinning like a windmill. At least she’d had the presence of mind to rush downstairs rather than scamper to her room. Otherwise, the raven-haired stranger would have known where to find her. He might have dropped by to ask the kind of embarrassing questions she didn’t want to answer, even to herself.

      After striding across the boardwalk in front of the hotel, Bri paused to grab hold of the supporting beam to steady herself. She glanced toward the opera house, watching the actors give one last pitch to attend their final performance. Bri was still staring in that direction, lost in thought, when the redhead exited the Brazos Hotel hastily and scuttled down the street to rejoin her troupe. Bri wondered if other thespians spent their spare time giving command performances behind closed doors. One did, apparently.

      After five minutes passed, Eaton swaggered from the lobby, dressed fit to kill—as usual. Unless he was tripping the light fantastic with a paramour. In which case he stripped naked.

      Discarding the unpleasant image of Eaton’s soft, pale flesh, Bri drew herself up, squared her shoulders and walked over to plant herself squarely in Eaton’s path.

      “Ah, there you are, sweetheart. I’ve missed you,” he had the nerve to say.

      Missed me? My eye, she thought sourly.

      “I’d like a word with you, Eaton,” she demanded.

      He glanced over the top of her drooping gray bonnet to stare at the opera house. “Can’t it wait? I’d like to catch the last theater performance before the troupe packs up and heads west.”

      “You already did,” she said, smirking. “Private showing, I believe you call it.”

      He tried to look blithely innocent and befuddled, but his demeanor became noticeably cautious. “Pardon? I don’t have the faintest notion what you mean.”

      “Of course you do. Remember that unexplained noise you heard while you and the redhead were naked together in bed?” she prompted. “That was me gasping in shock.”

      Bri took grand satisfaction in watching the arrogant dandy’s brown eyes pop from their sockets. His freshly shaved jaw sagged on its hinges. Then he recovered enough to shake his head vigorously in denial.

      “I have no idea what you’re babbling about.” He struck a haughty pose and looked down his nose at her drab garments. “Furthermore, you look hideous in that shapeless gray outfit. Really, Gabrielle, go change into something suitable and we’ll attend the theater performance.” He flicked his wrist to shoo her on her way. “I’ll wait for you here.”

      “In the first place, you know exactly what I’m referring to,” she said in a stern tone. “Secondly, you can stop lying to me. I know who and what I saw. Having said that, you shouldn’t be surprised that I am officially canceling our engagement. You can see yourself home on the next stagecoach.”

      “You are not canceling out on me,” he snapped, his polite facade fizzling out. “Your family and mine have made an arrangement and we are sticking with it.”

      “No, we aren’t. Your tryst made it null and void.”

      “Your mother and my aunt