SEALed With a Kiss: Even a Hero Needs Help Sometimes... by Mary Margret Daughtridge Page A

with even stronger gusts that shook the house. Suddenly the old house creaked and shuddered as if it had been slapped by a giant hand.
    Pickett let her breath out slowly.
    Jax covered her slender foot with one brown hand. "How's the dread?"
    "Not as bad. Thanks."
    She was lying—he'd seen her holding her breath. But she was determined to be brave. "I told you something, now you tell me something." Her foot was so soft, the skin, even on the sole, smooth and moist. He massaged it, stroked it as if taming some woodland creature.
    Pickett didn't know whether to pull her foot away or to put the other one where he could reach it. Well, she did know what she wanted. She wanted to touch him and let her fantasies come to life. She just didn't know which action she should 'take.
    Pickett wasn't so naive that she didn't know what was happening. The intimacy of the hour, the intimacy of the soft pool of light cast by the candle on the coffee table, the rest of the room lost in shadow—all were eroding her boundaries. Even the knowledge that, until the storm passed, firefighters, police, etc., would not move from their stations contributed to the intimacy. Until the storm passed she and Jax were as alone together as anyone in the modern world could be.
    Intimacy could be a seduction in itself.
    He'd kissed her this afternoon. Afterward, they'd both pretended it was nothing—not a liberty, which it wasn't, and not an intimacy, which it was.
    The house had grown warmer in the few minutes since the air-conditioning had gone off with the power. She could smell his sweat, a whiff of motor oil he'd gotten on his shorts.
    Pickett wasn't naive. She knew where all this intimacy would lead.
    His hand, warm, companionable, utterly male, stroked her foot, while he let his head loll against the cushions of the sofa back. In the candlelight the color of his eyes was lost. She could only see their glitter under lazy, half-lowered lids.
    All she had to do was put the other foot where he could reach it. Stretch her leg just a little to stroke his thigh with her toes. Everything was in place to live out her fantasy, including the fact that she really liked the man. Except, well, now that it was coming true, she couldn't be sure she'd enjoy it when she got it, because—
    Jax jiggled her foot, indicating he'd waited long enough for her answer, "Say something."
    "I don't like sex," Pickett said.
    The hand covering her toes stilled. Jax did a slow sideways take.
    Pickett felt her face heat up, and her eyes widened in horror as she realized she'd spoken her thoughts aloud. "Oh God!" she clapped her hands over her mouth as if she could stuff the words back in. "I don't know why I said that! Blame it on—on—hurricane insanity." Hurricane insanity—now that sounded insane. "Just—just forget I said it, would you?"
    Jax hooted, loud, masculine, confident, throwing back his head so the candlelight revealed the strong column of his neck. "No way!" He turned to her, eyes still gleaming with mirth. "Is it true?"
    "Yes." She was frozen. Too shocked, too mortified to lie. How could she have let slip what she had never told anyone—not even her therapist?
    "So, you can't get off, or what?"
    Somehow the very crudeness of the question punctured some of Pickett's ballooning embarrassment.
    "That's not it. If you must know, I don't like it because it's embarrassing, and messy, but mostly I don't like it because it is so borring!"
    "Let me make sure I'm tracking this. You think sex is embarrassing and messy and boring, and you get off?" Jax threw back his head and roared. "Jesus! Imagine what you could do if you liked it!" Images of what she could do, what he could do, flooded her face with heat.
    Pickett snatched her foot away. She pulled both knees under the baggy T-shirt and smoothed the cotton over them.
    "You could try for a little sensitivity, here, you know. And the correct term is 'orgasm,'" she added primly
    "I know what the fucking correct term is." Jax