Page 75 of Sergeant's Christmas Siege

Because he felt good.

“Go on,” he told her when her breath was ragged and she was shivering against him. “Go over.”

That time, when she came apart at the seams, she shouted out his name. Or sobbed it, maybe.

And when she could think again, barely, Templeton was turning them over, coming up over her and takingboth her hands in one of his. He stretched her arms up over her head, then grinned down at her, but it was a hard sort of grin, his face carved into a kind of heady sensuality that made Kate shudder all over again.

“My turn,” he growled at her.

And then he surged into her.

Once, then again, with a tightly reined ferocity that stormed through Kate. She arched up against him, her hips rising of their own accord to meet his.

And the rhythm he set was blistering. Beautiful.

She thought she was done, but he taught her otherwise. He taught her exactly how much she’d been holding back. And Kate felt moisture form in the corners of her eyes, because she’d never imagined anything could feel like this. So deep. So full. So perfect.

He dropped his head to the crook of her neck, and still he pounded into her. And she held on tight, meeting every thrust.

Connected. The word glimmered in her head, not quite making sense and yet making too much sense at the same time.

All her life she’d wanted this. This close. This intertwined. This incapable of telling one body from another.

She already knew that she never wanted this to end.

And she shattered so hard this time, so intensely, she wasn’t entirely sure she would survive it.

But she didn’t care, because he was right there with her.

It could have been days, then. Years.

Slowly, dizzily, Kate opened her eyes. Templeton was beside her, sprawled out and breathing hard at last.

He jackknifed up, going all the way to his feet. And she had the distinct pleasure of watching him walk away, gloriously naked. He went into the bathroom, and she heard the water running. She knew she should move. Get up, do something. But she didn’t. And when he came back into the room, he stood there for a moment, gazing down at her as if she were a gift.

“I’m gearing up to say something depressingly practical,” she told him, but her arms were still thrown up over her head, and the way his smile deepened, she could only imagine what she looked like. Thoroughly debauched, she was sure. “Appropriateness. Working relationship. Blah blah blah.”

“Gear up all you want, my little trooper,” Templeton said, his voice the deepest and darkest she’d ever heard it. And something almost fierce on his face, as if this wasn’t as easy for him as it seemed. “The weather outside is legitimately frightful. And I have plans for you. A lot of plans.”

Kate meant to object to that. She really did.

Templeton dropped down to the floor, then prowled toward her on his hands and knees, and she definitely wanted no part of his plans.

She needed to tell him that. She meant to.

But instead, when he wrapped her up in his arms and lifted her up against his shockingly beautiful body again, all Kate could seem to do was melt against him.

Eighteen

“Merry Christmas to you, too, jackhole,” Isaac growled into the phone at four thirty in the morning. “Who died?”

The obvious half-asleep crankiness in his best friend’s voice made Templeton that much happier that he’d decided to give the boss a call at his typical wake-up time.

“Are you sleeping in?” he asked, laughing. “I’m sorry, who is this? Isaac Gentry? Or some soft-bellied civilian?”

Isaac made a disgruntled sound. “Whether I sleep in or don’t is my business and definitely not something I plan to discuss on the phone. At this hour. While crashing on the pullout couch in my grandmother’s house.”

Isaac sounded... almost like a normal human, really. A regular guy—and not because he was putting on a show, for a change.

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