Page 47 of Sergeant's Christmas Siege

Kate eyed him balefully from where she knelt beside him on the couch. “Are you critiquing my performance?”

Not for the first time tonight, Templeton found himself very nearly speechless. “It’s not a critique. But why do we need to rush?”

“My bad,” Kate said, but there was something dangerous in the way she tilted her head to one side. “That’s how I like it. Fast. Hard. I thought you could keep up. But if not, no problem.”

Templeton did not roar out his frustration, the way he wanted to do. Still, it was a close call. He laughed instead, loud and long, because it was almost the same thing.

“Now who’s the tease?” he asked her.

Kate was still kneeling, her cheeks particularly red and deliciously rosy everywhere else. She was wearing the kind of long-sleeved shirt runners wore, tightly fitted to her high, compact breasts, her trim waist, and the slight swell of her belly. And she kept her eyes on him in a way that didn’t require military training to know was dangerous.

Pure mayhem, in fact.

Kate didn’t say a word. Instead, she reached down to grab the hem of her shirt and peeled it off her body. Templeton’s mouth went dry. His head pounded, and there was that whole cardiac thing again. Definitely pure excitement. His tongue felt like someone else’s, and he couldn’t seem to use it the way he wanted.

And he was fairly certain Kate knew it, though she didn’t smile. Not quite.

Her eyes gleamed brighter, and there was a certain satisfaction to the set of her lips, but she only reached up and tugged the elastic out of her hair. She ran her other hand through the dark strands, sending the mess of it tumbling down over her shoulders. Then, still staring him straight in the face, she reached down and unclasped the front of the bra she was wearing, which looked like a sports bra but held her like lingerie. She peeled it off and tossed it aside with her shirt.

And it was always possible that Templeton really was asleep and happily dreaming all this. Because he couldn’t think of another reason Trooper Holiday would be kneeling before him in a log cabin in Fool’s Cove stripped to the waist.

Offering herself to him as only she could. Daring him to touch her.

Andhalf-nakedclearly wasn’t enough for her. Kate obviously had a much more significant level of torture in mind, because she flowed up to her feet and unzipped her pants.

Templeton, master of war zones, sat there frozen solid, staring at her while his heart performed mad gymnastics in his chest. And his blood pumped hot and wild.

And his sex did its level best to take matters into its own hands.

She stripped off her pants in a swift, easy movement, taking her socks with her.

Leaving her standing there before him wearing nothing but a bright pink pair of stretchy bikini panties, that satisfied curve to her mouth, and her dark hair flowing everywhere. Begging for him to get his hands in it. On her.

“What do you think?” Kate asked, her voice threaded through with amusement. Challenge. And more of that heat. “You still want to take it slow?”

And Templeton might have felt frozen solid for a moment there, but he wasn’t dead. Not yet. He reached up and hooked an arm around her hips, hauling her to him. She came willingly, even eagerly, flowing into his lap and settling herself astride him there, too.

Templeton wasn’t actually any kind of saint, so he indulged himself. He gripped her hair, holding her mouth right where he wanted it, and this time, he was the one who took charge.

Because it was about time.

He kissed her deep and long, dark and greedy. Helicked his way into her mouth, and then toyed with her until she was panting against his lips. He wasn’t any kind of gentlemen, and he didn’t kiss like one.

He kissed her dirty. Over and over again.

Templeton had been dreaming of the taste of her, and he drowned himself in it now, liking that she tasted a little bit extra tonight. Like wine. Like need.

Like his.

She rocked herself against him, getting the softest part of her flush against his sex, and then rubbing herself against him with abandon. Reminding him that she was tough and strong, sleek and fit and fast.

He thought he might die, then and there.

But he didn’t.

Templeton pulled his mouth from hers, still gripping her thick, soft hair with one hard fist. He let the other hand roam, moving between them to test the weight of one perfect breast. And the proud nipple that stood between them, that he wanted very badly to pull into his mouth. But didn’t, somehow. He moved around to her back, stroking his way down the line of her spine, then cupping that sweet, muscular ass.

He liked her sleekness. He loved her strength.

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