Nighthawk & The Return of Luke McGuire by Justine Davis, Rachel Lee Page B

but…”
    “But you’re afraid,” he completed. “You certainly have reason to be. And until we scope this out and have a better idea of what your father intends to do, I’m willing to do anything I can to help out.” Taking a chance, he covered her hand with his as it lay on his arm. She didn’t pull away.
    “If I could trust him—” She broke off again and sighed, lifting her head to look out over the moon-washed landscape. “If I could trust him, I could believe his letter. But he always lied. He was always promising Mom that he wouldn’t hit her any more, or that he wouldn’t hit me any more, or that he’d never take another drink—the list was endless. He broke every promise he ever made.”
    “Not a good guy to trust.”
    She looked at him, wondering if he was being sarcastic, then laughed as she realized he was trying to lighten the mood. “No, he never was a good guy to trust.”
    Then, with no more warning than a strange light in his dark eyes, he slipped an arm around her shoulders and drew her gently against his chest. For an instant she thought she would lose her balance as her full weight came to rest unexpectedly on her weak leg, but then she was steadied against his chest.
    “Relax,” he said huskily. “I won’t hurt you.”
    Funny, but that had never occurred to her. Any other thought she might have had was swept away by astonishing sensations. He was so…hard. She had never imagined that the feeling of her breasts being pressed to the hard wall of a man’s chest would feel so…good. Or that she would be so aware of his hardness. As if she were leaning against a wall of steel. A warm wall.
    Impossibly, he was still smiling, looking down at her with that strange fire in his eyes as he said, “If you want to squawk, do it right now, Esther. Otherwise I think I’m going to have to kiss you.”
    “Why?” Her entire vocabulary seemed to have shrunk to that one word. She couldn’t gather her thoughts to say another thing. Besides, there was only one thing in the world that she wanted to know, and that was why, for the first time at this late stage of her life, a man wanted to kiss her.
    His smile broadened. “Count on you to ask. Because you laughed.”
    She blinked, her astonishment growing. “Because I laughed? ”
    “You have an irresistible laugh. Because you were scared and you laughed anyway. That’s special.”
    And suddenly she felt special standing there in the circle of his arms, pressed to his chest, while his exotic face lowered toward hers. Special, and warm, and…tingly in a way she had seldom felt in her life.
    And then his mouth settled over hers, warm and surprisingly gentle. It wasn’t the kind of kiss she’d seen in movies, the openmouthed gulping kisses that had always looked repulsive to her. It was a soft touching of lips that somehow coaxed her to tip her head back and welcome him.
    His lips moved against hers and she responded, trying to give him the same feeling he was giving her. The softest, lightest of caresses, like a butterfly’s wings, or the brush of flower petals. So soft she leaned closer, needing something more….
    He gave it to her, a gentle, teasing touch of his tongue over her lower lip. It tickled and she pressed her mouth harder against his, wanting the tickle to go away, to never end…and as she pressed harder her mouth opened, inviting him inside.
    His tongue slipped past her teeth, finding hers and frolicking. She had never before thought of her tongue as an erotic organ, but then she had never thought she would actually want an openmouthed kiss. A French kiss, the girls in high school had called it. But whatever it was called, she found herself thrilling to the wondrous sensations his caresses evoked.
    Oh, my! The brush of his tongue against the inside of her cheek danced along her nerve endings, spreading to the farthest points of her body. Another touch against the inside of her lip and she quivered, sensing that there was something