Baby, It's Cold Outside by Heidi Rice, Kate Hardy, Aimee Carson, Amy Andrews Page B

on his face making her heart stutter.
    He found the bundle of nerves with his thumb, making her plead and beg as he caressed in agonizingly slow circles, then touched the slick nub at last. The orgasm crested, and she arched off the bed, already breaking apart in a glittering shower of sensation as he plunged.
    The heavy thrusts hurled her up again, demanding more, and the waves continued to break over her in shattering succession. She clasped broad shoulders, hooking her legs around his waist, their sweat-slicked bodies moving together as they raced toward oblivion. She cried out as the pleasure crashed through that final barrier and heard his hoarse shout of completion as he followed her over the edge.

Chapter Eight
    “Damn, that was…” Ryder’s voice trailed off as Kate cuddled against him, her body still basking in afterglow.
    “Amazing?” she supplied.
    His chest vibrated with a deep laugh. “Yeah, amazing.” His fingers drifted up her arm. “Merry Christmas, Katherine Braithwaite—you’ve certainly made mine merry.”
    Kate lifted up on her elbow. His eyes were closed, but she could see his smile of contentment. “Actually, everyone calls me Kate, not Katherine.”
    He opened his eyes, sent her a baleful look. “So why did you tell me your name was Katherine?”
    “To make myself feel superior.”
    “Hmm…” He huffed out another chuckle, gave her bottom a proprietary pat. “Well, then, I’m going to keep on calling you Katherine, to annoy you.”
    “Fair enough.” She settled back, deciding she didn’t mind a bit. She liked the way her given name sounded in his gruff American accent.
    He tightened his arm on her shoulder. “Damn, I thought I’d sleep for a week when I flew in this morning, and now I don’t feel tired anymore.”
    “No, neither do I,” she murmured, enjoying the weight of his arm, the enticing scent of sandalwood soap and sex and the chance to indulge in some idle pillow talk—with a man who had begun to fascinate her. She traced her finger over the demarcation line on his biceps. “You should have taken your T-shirt off,” she said, even though she found it endearing that he wasn’t that vain. “Then you wouldn’t have gotten a tan line.”
    “Maybe not, but I would have gotten burned nipples—not to mention the crap taken out of me forever by Delta Company. Those guys take no prisoners.”
    Kate’s finger stilled on his arm. “Where did you fly in from this morning?” she asked carefully, beginning to suspect her scathing assumptions about him sunning himself in a ritzy resort had been way off the mark—like all her other assumptions about him.
    He folded his arm under his head and said lazily, “Afghanistan. I’ve spent the last two months embedded with a marine company in Helmand.”
    “You’re a soldier?” she croaked.
    “Hell, no,” he said forcefully. “I’m no hero. I’m a photojournalist. I was on assignment.”
    “Oh.” She sat up abruptly, the shame grinding into her gut.
    His hand settled on her back. “Something the matter?”
    She looked over her shoulder at him, lying in the bed, his eyes dark with concern, and realized how much she’d misjudged him. She’d always believed she was a fair person—and it appeared she was anything but.
    “I owe you an apology, Ryder. I made all sorts of nasty, small-minded assumptions about you when I didn’t even know you. And you didn’t deserve any of them.”
    He sat up too, raised a knee under the bedclothes and draped his forearm across it, his hand still firm on her back. “You don’t owe me an apology. I did the same thing to you.”
    “No, you didn’t.”
    “Sure I did. You want to know why I went nuts downstairs after we’d spoken to Charles?”
    She knew why, and it only made her more ashamed. “Because I said something nasty and inappropriate to a man who…”
    He touched a finger to her lips. “No, you didn’t, Katherine. You were scared to death about the lights going out