Page 49 of Sergeant's Christmas Siege

First she went stiff. Then she went blazingly hot.

Then she started to lift her hips to meet each slide of his tongue, each scrape of his jaw.

Templeton was a man who indulged his appetites. And Kate was a feast.

He made her shiver, then he made her fall apart.

She shook and she shook, clamping her thighs around his head and making it that much better. That much hotter.

So he kept right on going.

And by the time he was finished with her, tasting her with his mouth and using his fingers to make it even more fun, she was limp. Shaking as if she’d never stop.

And best of all, making tiny, delectable little sounds in the back of her throat.

Templeton pulled back and stood, running a hand over his jaw as he stared down at the picture she made. Kate Holiday, his uptight trooper, splayed out on the bed before him. Every inch of her pink, rosy, and replete.

It wasn’t that he was hard. Heached. He wanted her in ways he didn’t have words to describe. He felt her everywhere, like some kind of vicious flu that could take him down to his knees if he let her.

He didn’t.

Her eyelashes looked like soot against her cheeks, and her mouth was gently parted as she panted into the arm she’d thrown up over her head.

God, she was beautiful. That ache seemed to double, and Templeton would never know how he stayed where he was, standing there, not touching her. Not taking her.

“Go on,” she ordered him as if she could read his mind, though her voice was wispy at best. “It’s your turn.”

“I don’t believe in taking turns,” Templeton told her, and he didn’t sound like himself anymore. Too raspy. Too edgy with need and longing and that ache besides. “It’s all fun for everyone or it’s no fun at all.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

He watched as she struggled to open her eyes, and when she did, she looked dazed.

And Templeton was glad for every last second of the intense training he’d undergone over the course of his life, because he was certain that was the only thing that kept him in check. When everything in him roared for more. To sink himself deep inside her, and never come up for air again.

But he’d practiced control. He knew how to exercise it.

And somehow, he did.

“If we were doing this my way,” Templeton gritted out, “that would only be the beginning. A little warm-up before things got serious. I don’t like to rush, Kate. I like to take my time. Every time.”

“Is that supposed to be a threat?”

“I don’t make threats.”

Kate pushed herself up on one elbow, and everything about her was sultry, beautiful. He had no idea why he was standing at the side of the bed, fully clothed. What was he doing to himself? Why?

But then she smirked at him, and he remembered.

“I should have known,” she said, looking far too sure of herself. “You like it when it’s more of a game. You want me to play pretend. Beg. Act like I don’t want it when I do, is that it?”

“Not at all,” Templeton said quietly. “I want you to wantme, Kate. Notit.”

Her eyes opened wider as the smirk disappeared from her mouth, but he couldn’t take that as a victory lap. Not when he was beginning to think that she was the cardiac event, and he was just going to have to get used to it.

“Let me guess how this usually goes for you,” he said in the same quietly serious way, and she would never know what it cost him when he had the taste of her in his mouth. She was still naked before him, so beautiful he thought she might actually leave scars all over him. That she already had. “Everybody thinks you’re uptight, untouchable. So you toss back a couple of drinks to prove them wrong. Someone makes a move and you think, why not? Because you know how to do this part. You know how to get naked, and fast. You know how to get exactly what you want, and how to avoid the things you don’t want to deal with.”

“Are you really going to pretend there’s something wrong with that?” she demanded. “Since when is knowing my own mind a problem? I’m sorry if that intimidates you, Templeton.”

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