Jill Shalvis - Instant Temptation

“I’m still a popsicle,” she whispered.

“I’m not.”

Oh boy.

“You could come over here and we could share body heat.”

Uh huh. And that wouldn’t be all they shared either. Not with the amount of crazy chemistry they had.

There was a rock under her hip.

And she couldn’t feel her toes.

She curled into a ball and told herself to ignore both the rock and the shivering of her limbs. She managed it, too, for at least half an hour after she’d heard TJ slip back into his sleeping bag. But then came a howl, long and eerie, and she jerked. Just a coyote. Probably one of hers. They don’t attack humans.

Mostly.

Another cry, sounding more like a mountain cat. She gasped, leapt out of her sleeping bag, and in nothing but her bra and panties, dove into TJ’s before she could take another breath.

Just as she’d known it would be, his sleeping bag was higher quality than hers, far cushier, bigger, and toasty warm.

TJ hissed out a breath when she pressed her icy feet to his, but otherwise didn’t say a word, just wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in against him.

He’d stripped out of his jeans, but wore boxers, and was deliciously warm. “Cold?” he asked quietly. “Or scared?”

She tilted her head up and met his gaze. His hair was still over his forehead, almost in his eyes, pretty much inviting a woman to push it back for him.

To resist, she tightened her fingers in a fist against his pecs, which didn’t really help since he was built like a kickboxer, all hard and lean and mind-bendingly perfect. She took a deep breath, which meant she inhaled his scent. Problem was, in spite of his being outside all day long, he smelled like rain and mountain and man, and so…yum it made her take a sniff, and then she couldn’t seem to stop herself. She was breathing him in like he was her private stash of crack.

He ran a hand up and down her back. “Harley? You hyper-ventilating?”

“No,” she said weakly, and dropped her forehead to his chest. Oh, God. Big mistake. Because her mouth was only a fraction of an inch away from his skin. If she so much as breathed, she’d have her lips on him-oh look at that, she breathed.

A lot.

TJ let out a long, shaky breath of his own. “You’re shivering.” He ran his large, warm hand down her arm until he reached her hand. “And your fingers are ice.” He held them in his, gently rubbing his thumbs over her skin.

Harley closed her eyes. Getting into TJ’s sleeping bag had been a bad idea. Such a bad, bad idea she moved to get out of the bag, but he tightened his grip. “Shh,” he said, and giving up the resistance, she pressed her face into his throat and let her eyes drift shut. Her teeth were chattering and she was shaking, though honestly, she was no longer certain it was just from cold.

In fact, she was pretty sure it wasn’t the cold at all, but him.

“Breathe,” he murmured into her hair, rubbing soothing light circles on her back. “Breathe deeper.”

She absorbed his calm, his strength, and best of all his heat, and after a few minutes, her jaw relaxed, and her teeth stopped chattering. Finally, the rest of her stopped shaking.

Harley woke up some time later, lying on top of TJ. If she pressed her knees into the ground on either side of his hips and pushed herself upright, she could ride him like a pony.

Yep, definitely out of her comfort zone. Her legs were entwined in his and her face was plastered to the crook of his neck. She didn’t have to wonder if he was awake because his hands were slowly caressing her back, holding her in all that wonderful body heat of his.

Or maybe that was her heat. She certainly felt…heated.

“I know you’re awake,” he said. “You stopped breathing.”

She still didn’t move, incredibly aware of her hands braced on his chest for leverage, the muscles hard beneath her palms, his heart beating steady and sure beneath her fingertips.

Unlike hers, which was racing.

When he spoke, she felt the rumble of his voice, even deeper and huskier than normal. “We’ve played this your way,” he said. “I didn’t like it. My turn now.”

Oh boy.

Cupping the nape of her neck, he urged her head up. His other hand slid down low, to the very small of her back, holding her in place for his kiss. At the first touch of his mouth on hers, her bones completely dissolved, and that was it, she was his for the taking.

Please take me…

She already knew that getting kissed by him was a full-body experience, but she hadn’t expected to be rendered a quivering mass of lust before his tongue even touched hers-a huge miscalculation on her part because she knew, dammit she knew he kissed like heaven on earth. She braced for the onslaught of erotic, sensual heat, but when he lightly ran his tongue over the seam of her lips, she opened to him, softening in his arms, letting out a low moan. A sound he apparently took for acquiescence because he tightened his hold on her and deepened the kiss. Giving herself up to it, she sank her fingers into his hair, holding his head to hers as they devoured each other.

When he finally drew back and looked at her, there was warmth in his eyes and a smile on his face that promised all sorts of wicked things if she only said the word. And suddenly she became incredibly aware of how little she wore, how her nipples were boring holes in his chest, how his arm was low around her back, his palm sliding across her ass, skimming the thin silk of her panties.

Yeah, there was a word right on the tip of her tongue, and that word was yes! Her hands ran over his shoulders and down his sides-

That’s when she remembered. She’d wanted passion in her life, but she’d planned on finding it with Nolan. Sweet, gentle, kind Nolan, who would remember their lovemaking, once they had it. “Crap.”

TJ pulled back a fraction, all sleepy and sexy-eyed. “That’s not the reaction I usually get.”

“I’m thinking of Nolan.”

TJ’s hands went still. “My kiss made you think of another man?”

She winced at the warning in his tone. “No, your kiss melted my bones.”

“Like the sound of that,” he murmured, rocking his hips against hers. Hers responded in kind before she stopped herself. Dammit. She rolled off the glorious mountain of heat to her side, which was as far as she could get in the sleeping bag, roomy and cushy as it was. Outside, it was still very dark, which was a good thing. She wasn’t ready to see him.

“You’re not with him,” he said, tucking one arm beneath his head, resting his other hand on his belly. “Two dates-and one of them not counting-doesn’t make anything exclusive.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that? And how in the hell does everyone know we had two dates and that one of them didn’t count?”

“Wishful is Mayberry, remember? Everyone knows everything.” He rolled to face her, propping up his head with his hand, the other settling on her hip. “You had to save his ass when he should be saving yours.”

“And what does that mean?”

“Nothing.” He paused, then ran the tips of his fingers lightly up her spine. And damn if she didn’t melt all over again. “You really think of him as your boyfriend?”

She wanted to nod but she didn’t. Because the truth was, she liked the idea of Nolan being her boyfriend, but somehow it never seemed to materialize.

And she didn’t know why.

TJ brushed a soft kiss to her temple before trailing more of those soft kisses along her jaw, and without thinking, her body arched to give him better access, which she abruptly stopped when she felt his smile against her skin. Damn him! “TJ-”

“Uh huh…” he murmured, making his way back to her mouth while his fingers slid across her belly. Goose bumps erupted on her skin. Then those fingers headed north, just grazing over her silk-covered breasts as his thigh slipped between hers.

He caught her gasp with his mouth, and the kiss went hard and demanding again, until finally they ripped apart, breathless. TJ looked down at her, his eyes dark and filled with hunger. “Tell me you’re happy with him and we stop this right now.”

“I’m…” She struggled for the words that would make her a big, fat, turned-on liar.

With shocking patience, TJ waited her out.

“I want to say yes so bad,” she finally whispered. “But it’s the ‘with him’ part that’s holding me up.”

“Because…?”

“Because I’m not with him, am I? Plus, I just had my tongue down your throat.” She shook her head. “Oh, God, this is bad. Very, very bad.”

She saw his white teeth flash in the dark as he leaned in close. “Can I kiss you now,” he asked huskily, “or is there any other guy in your head we need to discuss?”

At the thought of another mind-blowing kiss, her brain voluntarily shut down, giving her body tacit permission to take over. “Well, there’s Brad Pitt,” she murmured. “And-”

“Shut up, Harley.” He nipped her lower lip.

“Shutting up,” she murmured just as his tongue touched hers, and she began a slow and delicious repeat of the insta-melt thing. His hands slid up her body, and she crawled all over him again, but then he froze.

“TJ?”

He tightened his grip on her hips for a beat, indicating that she should stay as still as he. “Did you hear that?”

She hadn’t heard anything but the blood rushing in her ears. “No, I-” Suddenly he slid soundlessly out of the sleeping bag.

Breathless, she ate up the sight of him by starlight, his hair tousled, jaw rough and in need of a shave, his chest bare, his boxers disturbingly low on his hips, his-“Oh my God. You can’t go anywhere like that!”

Unconcerned, he moved to his backpack and pulled out…

His knife.

Then he slid into his jeans, pointed at her to stay, and vanished.

Harley clutched TJ’s sleeping bag to her body and strained her ears, but she could hear nothing. Well, nothing except the light wind, the occasional cry of a bird, and…crunching pine needles beneath someone’s feet. “TJ?” she whispered, thinking oh please let it be TJ.