CHRISTMAS AT THUNDER HORSE RANCH by Elle James

down his torso and back up in soothing circles. “Think of something else,” she urged as her hand drifted lower.
    He captured her wrist before she bumped into the rising tent of his shorts. “Once again, don’t go there unless you mean it.”
    She tipped her chin and stared up at him. The little bit of light shining around the edges of the blinds gave her face a light blue glow and her eyes shone in the darkness. “I mean it.”
    He let go of her wrist and her hand slid lower until it skimmed across his shaft, which became instantly hard and pulsing.
    He drew in a slow steadying breath. “Why are you doing this?” A sudden thought reared its ugly head and he flipped her over on her back and pinned her wrists to the mattress.
    Her eyes rounded and shone white in the darkness.
    “Are you doing this out of some misguided sense of pity?”
    Emma shook her head. “No. Not at all.”
    “Then why?”
    “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been so forward.” Her eyelids swept low over her eyes. “I understand if you’re not interested in someone so...so...”
    “So what?” he asked.
    “Inexperienced,” she finished, a frown settling between delicate brows.
    He nudged her knees apart and settled lower between her legs, letting the hard ridge of his erection brush up against the juncture of her thighs. “Oh, I’m interested all right. But why are you? I don’t need anyone’s pity.”
    She glanced away from him and he’d bet her cheeks were flaming. “I was curious,” she whispered.
    “About what?”
    “If the second time would be as good as the first?” She stared up at him, the limited lighting making her face glow a dusky-blue.
    The tension leached out of him and he dropped low to steal a kiss. Though it wasn’t stealing when she gave it freely. Emma tasted of mint and smelled like roses, the scent light and fragrant but not overpowering. Samantha had reminded him of honeysuckle growing wild and untamed. The two women were as different as night and day.
    Where Sam had captured his interest with her unfettered ability to grasp life by the horns and ride, Emma was like an English rosebud, waiting for the sunlight to unfurl.
    He released her hands and bent to claim her lips in a crushing kiss. Partly because of the burning desire ignited inside him and partly out of anger for making him think about Sam again. He’d tried so hard to put that chapter of his life behind him, to forget what he’d lost in her and how life had stretched before him empty without her in it.
    Quiet, studious Emma had been the first woman he’d even considered dating since Samantha’s death. And after having coffee with her, he’d refused to see her again, afraid that being with her meant he was dishonoring the memory of Samantha. Or that he was finally starting to forget her.
    The truth was that Samantha was gone forever and Emma was lying beneath him, willing to slake the hunger in his body. If he made love to her, it would mean nothing but a physical release to him. His body recognized needs his mind had refused to let him satisfy.
    Once he started, he couldn’t seem to stop and Emma didn’t cry out or tell him no. Part of him wished she would.
    He trailed kisses from her mouth to the edge of her jaw and down the long line of her throat to the pulse beating wildly at the base.
    Her fingers curled around the back of his neck and urged him to continue his downward path to the swells of her breasts beneath the sheer fabric of her nightgown.
    He grabbed the hem and ripped it up over her head and tossed it aside.
    She lay beneath him, bathed in the soft, gray-blue light shining around the edges of the blinds, her breasts peaked, the nipples tight little buds.
    Dante swooped down to taste first one, then the other, rolling the taut buttons between his teeth and across his tongue. When he sucked it into his mouth, she arched her back off the bed, pressing it deeper into his mouth. He gladly accepted, flicking the tip with his