Not Another New Year's (Holiday Duet Book 2)

by Christie Ridgway

  It seemed to her that Duncan had never cared as much about her feelings.

  But she wasn't going to think about Duncan. She couldn't hate him even if she wanted to. And anyway, to night was about Hannah. The Hannah who had come to Coronado for so many reasons—this New Year's Eve fling apparently being one of them.

  "It's antiseptic," her stranger said, but she didn't feel any sting, nor could she manage to make a word in response.

  His eyes flicked toward her face, and a half smile quirked the corners of his mouth. "Breathe, sweetheart."

  Hannah tried it once. Her throat was so tight that the air wheezed in, then caught in her chest. Her stranger looked up again. Maybe this gunslinging surfer had X-ray vision too, because his gaze focused on the place where all that oxygen was trapped. Hannah's breasts swelled and she squirmed in her seat at the idea that he could tell.

  His mouth compressing to a tight line, he tossed the cloth away and dropped to his knees at her feet.

  She squeaked. "Wh-What are you doing?"

  His gaze lifted to hers. The lights were dim in the room, but she knew they were a cool blue.

  Laugh lines etched the corners, fanning from his high cheekbones and lifting toward his sandy brows. Remembering his lonely seat at the bar, though, she wondered if he hadn't found much to laugh about recently.

  That would make two of them.

  His long fingers settled on her bare ankle, just beneath the bottom of her black jeans. Then his thumb stroked over the top of her foot. "On our short walk over here you said your knees were sore from your falls." He began to roll up her right hem. "I want to see."

  Oh. Okay. She swallowed. More first aid.

  He folded one pants leg above her kneecap and then went to work on the other. In moments her calves were bared, her skin looking very pale in contrast to the dark denim of her jeans and the black leather of her high heels.

  He scooted between her feet and she had to widen her legs to make room for him. Was she the only one who thought it looked a little...kinky with her thighs splayed and her feet still wearing those seduce-me shoes?

  His warm hand squeezed her ankle, and her gaze jolted to meet his. His cool eyes looked hot now, and his nostrils flared again as his palm slid up the back of her calf. "Pretty shoes. Pretty girl."

  His hand moved slowly back down to her ankle and then he cupped it to lift and straighten her leg.

  Looking away from her face to focus on her knee, he watched it move as he tested the joint in a clinical fashion.

  "We're going to be good together," he suddenly said.

  Hannah jumped. Could he mean...?

  He moved to check her other knee without looking up at her. "I'm talking about the sex. You know the sex is going to be explosive between us, right?"

  Explosive? Suddenly she worried that he was setting himself up for disappointment. Both of them.

  It had been almost four years for her, and she could barely remember what the act was like. Surely it had never been explosive. "Um...uh...how can you be so, um, sure?"

  He bent closer to inspect her bare knee, his thumb brushing against a bruise beginning to darken.

  The ends of his hair tickled her skin. "It's been a long time for me too."

  "Oh. Well." But really, how long could a "long time" be for a man who looked like this? And still...she didn't know if she had "explosive" in her. Just hours ago a cabbie had called her "wholesome."

  She reached for that nearby tumbler of wine and took a deep swallow, even though she was already dizzier than she'd ever been, thanks to the mojitos and the breathless effect this man had on her.

  "And I know," he added, "because I've never been compelled to do this." He ran his tongue in a wet line down the thin skin of her shinbone.

  Hannah gasped. Goose bumps raced up the back of her thighs and curled inward. Her hand reached toward the gleaming top of his head and then fell to her lap when his teeth grazed her ankle.

  Did legs have erogenous zones?

  But it was the old ankle-bone's-connected-to-the-shin-bone's-connected-to-the-knee-bone

  thing, she realized, her head taking a long woozy spin as he popped off her shoe and then moved to her other leg. No matter what spot he touched, she felt it somewhere else—as heat on the nape of her neck, as an aching pressure building in her breasts, as a plump swelling at the juncture of her thighs.

  "I want to eat you all up," he said, proving it with his tongue to her left shin. The wetness on her legs made her wet between them.

  Her hands shaking, her whole body shaking, she downed the rest of the wine, then plopped the glass back on the table. "I think...I think..."

  Her head against the cushions behind her, she realized she couldn't think at all.

  He straightened, still on his knees, and moved forward so his hips widened her legs even farther.

  His palms flattened on the couch on either side of her head. His long hair swung forward as his mouth descended.

  He slanted his lips against hers, immediately pressing them open. He'd said he wanted to eat her up, but instead the first thing he did was feed her a long, hot kiss. Her hands found his hair again, tangling in its cool weight as he slid his tongue inside her.

  He flicked it against the tip of hers, and tingles shot from the tender skin beneath her arms to the tips of her breasts. She arched, trying to lift them to his chest. Needing more contact. Wanting more of him.

  His tongue flickered again, and she felt the moan at the back of her throat, trying to escape. When he changed the slant of his mouth, it did find its way out, and he froze.

  "I told you," he whispered against her mouth. "I told you it would be like this."

  She didn't know what "this" was. There had never been anything like this. Ever. Her skin felt too tight on her bones and her nipples were hurting, hurting, with the need for friction, touch, this man.

  He slid his tongue once again between her lips and she trembled. When he tried to draw it away, she caught at it with her teeth. He groaned, his chest dropping as she held his mouth to hers with her palms at the back of his head.

  She felt his hand come between them, and she moaned at even that brief loss of torso-to-torso contact, but then she realized he was unfastening the buttons of his shirt.

  With a soothing sound, he pulled his mouth away, and she panted, dizzy again, as she watched him straighten. In a wholly male move, he reached behind him one-handed to grab the back of his half-unbuttoned shirt and draw it over his head.

  Her gaze followed the rising material as it revealed a golden wealth of skin. Belly button, rippled abdomen, a broad chest dusted with more golden hair. Between his two copper nipples lay a medal on a chain, and she reached for it, as if that was what she wanted to touch.

  He jerked at the contact, his skin hot beneath her fingertips. "Yeah, sweetheart," he whispered.

  "Do that."

  She wanted to do everything, Hannah thought with a sudden flash of raw desire. Good God, Hannah Davis wanted to do everything. Everything she'd seen in R-rated movies, everything she'd read about in the raciest books, everything an audacious friend had ever whispered to her behind her hand.

  Half of that stuff she had written off as urban legend or at the very least awkward and uncomfortable...but now she wanted to give them all a try.

  "Don't look at me like that," he whispered, his nostrils flaring as if scenting her shameless thoughts.

  "I'm not going to last this first time if you keep looking at me like that."

  "I...I don't know how not to," Hannah whispered back. She hooked her fingers around the chain on his neck and drew him back down to her mouth. "I don't know how to do a lot of the things I want either."

  One corner of his mouth kicked up, and then the other. For the first time, he smiled at her, he really smiled, and she felt another liquid rush between her legs.

  Oh, God, this was bad. Just his smile made her want him more.

  But the thought fled as his mouth settled once again agains
t hers. Kissing. More kissing. A dozen kisses that were everything from the swipe of his tongue against her bottom lip to its dominating penetration of her mouth. She was trembling all over, as if she was cold, but she was hot, hot, hot.

  He moved away from her again and she chased him, biting down on his bottom lip to keep him close. He grunted in surprise, then nipped her back, and she jerked her head away.

  Scared by the excitement she felt at the tiny sting.

  They stared at each other, both breathing hard. Her tongue reached out to test the throbbing place, and his eyes focused on it as his hand reached for the top of her jeans. She jolted as his knuckles brushed her bare belly, and it was only then she realized he'd unbuttoned her shirt and that her camisole had ridden up to half reveal her abdomen.

  She watched his long fingers make quick work of the snap and zipper, then he was drawing the dark material down and off her feet. His jean-clad hips refused to let her bare thighs come back together, and he stared down at her pale blue satiny pan ties. His forefinger traced the triangle of fabric, running first along her quivering stomach and then down the crease of each leg. By instinct, her thighs tried clamping closed, but instead of each other they found soft denim—just more wonderful friction against her sensitive skin.

  He put his hot palms on the top of her legs, his thumbs wrapping inside so he could open her wider. He smiled, then looked up, satisfaction gleaming in his eyes. "You're already wet. Nice."

  Oh, God. He could tell? He could see? Modesty made her want to curl up like a shell, but then he slid his right thumb up the inside of her thigh so he could stroke the heated furrow of her sex.

  Hannah's head fell back at the firm, knowing touch. She went woozy again, desire doing its job and allowing her to think of nothing else.

  She'd worry about modesty tomorrow.

  He didn't appear as if he would worry about it at any time, not the way he played with her there, investigating all the contours, all the bumps and curves, yet still over the pan ties that were getting damper by the second.

  "Finn," she moaned. "Finn."

  She knew she was drunk now for certain, because she thought she heard him mutter under his breath, "What was I thinking? Do I want her calling his name when she comes?" even as he dragged her up from the couch.

  She stumbled as he tugged her toward what she assumed was the bedroom. He slid his hard arm around her waist, and even that small contact made her buttocks contract and the skin over her spine shiver in anticipation.

  He was moving fast, and her head was making those woozy spins again, so many of them that she was happy when he guided her to a stop beside the bed. It was unmade, and he yanked the rumpled covers back before she dropped to the mattress.

  Sitting next to her, he kissed her again as he brushed her shirt off her shoulders. The action unbalanced her, and she reached out a hand to steady herself.

  He froze. Groaned.

  She'd steadied herself on his...his... She squeezed it beneath the soft denim, just to be sure she'd made the correct identification.

  He groaned again. "That's it," he said, pushing against her shoulders so she fell to her back on the sheets. For a moment she stared at the ceiling fan that appeared to be moving in weirdly elliptical circles.

  So was the bed, for that matter.

  In the distance she heard him curse.

  Then his hard body was on top of hers and he cradled her head in his hands.

  "You're so gorgeous," she said, blurting out the foremost thought in her head. "This must be my lucky day."

  He grimaced. "Hold onto that, sweetheart. We've got a small problem. I need condoms. Unless you...?"

  She shook her head, trying to clear it. Condoms. Oh, of course. Condoms.

  He sighed, obviously taking her silence as a negative. "Don't worry. I'll just be a second, okay?

  There's a place around the corner." His mouth turned up in another smile. "I'll run."

  His face seemed to be wiggling, but maybe that was because the mattress was wobbling as he sprang to his feet. His last kiss was fierce. "Don't forget about me while I'm gone."

  "Can't," she assured his back as he left the lazily spinning room. "Explosive."

  Chapter Five

  Hannah awakened, and information sank slowly into her muddled brain, like marbles into half-chilled Jell-O (part of an extra credit science experiment performed by one of her students the previous year). Just like those weedies had descended into the thick, lime-colored quasi-liquid, she gradually took in these facts:

  It was morning.

  It was morning and she'd slept in her underwear.

  It was morning and she'd slept in her underwear and she was inside some kind of tent.

  It was morning and she'd slept in her underwear and she was inside some kind of tent and she had a raging headache.

  It was morning and she'd slept in her underwear and she was inside some kind of tent and she had a raging headache and when she turned her cheek on the pillow it was to see that...

  She was inside the tent with a man.

  A man. It took another second for that last fact to hit bottom. A man.

  Oh. My. God. She'd really gone through with the one-night stand.

  That's when it all came back to her. Not all of it, not everything that had happened the night before, because, unfortunately, there seemed to be some gaps in her recollection. But enough memories presented themselves to explain how she happened to have a sheet pulled over her head (the mistaken tent) that still allowed enough light through for her to detect the golden-skinned, muscled arm and side of an almost-stranger.

  She'd seen that body last night.

  Hannah swallowed, remembered feeling it too, his hot chest beneath her fingertips, the hard press of it against her own as he cradled her face and said he'd be right back. He'd gone out for condoms, and then...

  Well, obviously he'd returned.

  Through the sheet came the sound of knocking—from the distant sound of it, likely against the front door. Hannah grimaced, unsure what she should do, only knowing most certainly that she didn't want the man beside her to awaken.

  The knocks sounded again, and she froze as he turned to his side. His limbs relaxed and she watched his chest—now facing her—rise up and down on a drowsy sigh. Still asleep.

  Apparently the person at the front door gave up, because minutes went by without another disturbance.

  Which left Hannah free to dash away without confronting the man in the bed or the person at the door. A good idea, that. A no muss, no fuss, no regrets ending to an anonymous one-night stand.

  Not to mention all the other reasons she had to get going. There were things she had to do today.

  She had to make her meeting with Tanner Hart, and then begin what ever necessary procedures to get new ID, credit cards, money, and clothes.

  Yes, it was time to get moving.

  She sent the toes of her feet crawling toward the edge of the mattress and stared at her bedmate's chest, alert for any signs of awakening. Her gaze followed the naked curve of one pectoral and then focused on the long silver chain he wore around his neck. Slung across the ridge of muscle, it tangled in dark golden hair. A couple of links had caught on his light brown nipple.

  Hannah's scalp prickled and her pulse started to skitter as she was struck by the sudden desire to release that metal chain. To brush it aside and touch that copper nub with the tip of her tongue. Her belly quivered and her reconnoitering toes halted their original mission to instead curl toward the soles of her feet.

  Had she done that last night? Had she licked that wedge of muscle and then tongued the satiny-looking circle of skin?

  Explosive, he'd said. It was going to be explosive between them.

  Her neck and face flushed with heat as she remembered how certain he'd been. Had it really been explosive and she'd forgotten all about it?

  She hated mojitos.

  Except without them she wouldn't have dared get this close to the gorgeous m
an to begin with.

  She loved mojitos.

  The internal debate was still going strong when she heard another noise from outside the bedroom.

  Her stomach clenched. It was the squeak of a door opening. The click of it closing shut.

  Swallowing hard, Hannah stared at the slow rise and fall of Finn's chest. He still wasn't awake and someone was coming through his house toward them. She could make out the quick footsteps.

  And then, since she was holding her own, she could hear the intruder take a long indrawn breath from his or her place at the threshold of the bedroom.

  "I'm sorry to wake you up," a female voice said. "But we have to talk."

  A female voice. Hannah's muscles tensed, even as she wished she could melt into the mattress like Hershey squares on a summer sidewalk. She hoped to God it wasn't an ex. Wouldn't that just cap off her first foray into Sexventureland? Hannah Davis, unwilling witness to a confrontation between parted lovers.

  "Are you awake?" the voice demanded.

  The man across the sheets from Hannah twitched. As his head wasn't under the covers like hers, she couldn't see anything above his collarbone, but there was an alertness about his body that hinted he was no longer sleeping.

  "Go away," he mumbled, guaranteeing he was no longer sleeping. And making it pretty clear that whoever had interrupted his beauty rest wasn't welcome.

  Whew. Maybe it was his sister or something.

  "I won't," the female replied, sounding stubborn. "Wake up and talk to me."

  "Make an appointment with my secretary." Her bedmate didn't sound the least willing to cooperate. "Maybe I have an opening sometime in the next century."

  Hannah tried to be as still and small as possible. Maybe if she was really quiet, the intruder would take the hint and then the man she was in bed with would go back to sleep without recalling her presence.

  It could happen, right? There was still hope to get out of here without muss, fuss, or regrets. Well, maybe not without regrets, she admitted, as the man rolled onto his back again. He must have scooted up on the headboard at the same time, because now she was looking at his navel and the elastic line of silky boxers instead of his chest.