Free Loves Me, Loves Me Knot by Heidi Betts Page A

for sure—a band of South American guerrillas armed to the teeth and threatening unspeakable torture couldn’t get him to call a halt to the delectable pleasures Jenna’s body was offering right this second.
    She shifted slightly and his balls tightened. He locked his jaw and dug his heels into the mattress to keep from coming off the bed.
    Later, he’d spank her ass—and not in the way he’d like to at the moment, which would heighten the sexual anticipation already bouncing off the walls.
    But for now, he had every intention of taking her up on her erotic invitation.
    “Touch yourself,” he rasped.
    Her eyes sparkled and her mouth turned up in a self-satisfied grin, making her look for all the world like a devilish little pixie up to no good.
    “But I am touching myself,” she replied, tugging at her nipples as she continued to bounce lightly on his lap, just enough to make him sweat through his teeth.
    Air puffed from his lungs in short, heavy bursts and every muscle in his body strained toward her. The ties at his wrists and ankles chafed his skin where he’d struggled against them, because he couldn’t
not
move. He couldn’t
not
pull at the restraints that kept him from being able to touch his ex-wife the way he wanted to.
Needed
to, dammit.
    His throat went desert dry as he studied her, took her in from the top of her head to her knees braced on the bed and straddling him.
    Shit, she was beautiful. She always had been.
    From the first moment he saw her, he’d been half in love and all in lust with her. He’d been a beat cop then, out on a routine patrol. Her car had been pulled to the side of the road with a flat.
    She’d been in the process of calling Triple A, but that wouldn’t have given him an excuse to spend a little time with her, so he’d offered to change the tire himself. He’d ruined his uniform and hadn’t been as smooth in the process as he might have liked, but it did the trick.
    Jenna chatted with him the entire time, and he’d quickly learned that she was a grade-school teacher on the way to pick up supplies for an end-of-the-year pizza party she’d promised her students as a reward for a district-wide recycling campaign she’d instituted and they’d helped to spearhead. It had also given him theperfect opportunity to show his interest in the youth of America . . . an interest she’d jumped on, soon asking if he might be willing to talk to her class the following school year.
    Oh, yeah, he’d been willing. He wasn’t a big fan of public speaking, especially to a room full of kids who were either picking their noses in boredom or making faces in an attempt to distract him. But for the chance to impress her and to see her again, he’d have eaten live African cockroaches.
    By the time he’d finished replacing her tire, he had her phone number and a date for lunch the next week so they could “discuss topics for his talk with her classroom.”
    They’d ended up seeing each other a lot more than just that once throughout the summer. He’d discovered that she liked to knit and had mentioned the knitting group he knew Grace and Ronnie attended, which was how the three women had become such close friends.
    And when the school year started, he almost spent more time talking to her class than he did on duty. By the time Jenna took the lid off the cookie jar and let him into her pants, he’d lectured her group of third-graders on everything from playground safety to saying no to drugs.
    They’d also heard her call him by his given name so often that he became “Officer Gage” and started to get recognized by the eight-year-olds on the street and introduced to their parents. Many times as “the police officer who kisses Miss Langan when he doesn’t think we’re watching.”
    It had all been worth it, though. More than worth it. Before the end of the following school year, Gage hadknown he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Jenna and had popped the question.
    And from