Free A Kiss Remembered by Sandra Brown Page A

with his strong, slender fingers.
    She closed her eyes. When first her lips touched him, they were hesitant. But the graphic reaction of his body encouraged her. She kissed him again, slowly, with measured kisses that charted a path across the expanse of his chest.
    When her lips encountered his nipple, she raised her head slightly. She could feel his eyes boring into the top of her head. Seconds stretched out into a small eternity. The hypnotic movement of his hands on her scalp stilled. He waited.
    “Should I?” she whispered. “Do you want me to?”
    “Do
you
want to?”
    She made the decision subconsciously. Before she realized the full implications of the action, her tongue had slipped past her lips to flick over his nipple. Then she teased it further with delicate licks.
    Grant gave a short cry before he took her in his arms. “Oh God, you’re sweet. So sweet.” She tilted her head up and he lowered his mouth to hers. Ravenous lips fused together. His tongue plunged into her mouth and de-flowered it, making it his. Careful of the needle she still held in her hand, she hooked her arm around his neck, drawing him downward, closer still. Her other hand splayed on the majestic chest, combed through the forest of hair, pressed the hard muscles.
    Her breasts seemed to swell with emotion. He moved away enough to lower his hand and touch them. His knuckles moved gently over the sensitive buds, making them firmer beneath the silk. He fondled her so exquisitely that she called his name against his lips.
    “Shelley, did you ever fantasize about this? About my touching you this way?”
    “Yes, yes.”
    “So did I. May God forgive me, but I did, and when you were much too young to figure in this kind of fantasy.” His lips moved back and forth across hers. “We can make all our fantasies come true,” he urged.
    She leaned against him weakly, wanting to give in yet knowing it wouldn’t be wise. She loved him. At some point in the last ten years she had come to that indisputable conclusion. He was no longer an idol, the subject of youthful imaginings. He was the man intended for her to love, and she wanted that love to be fulfilled.
    But to him, she might only be a novelty. While she had lived an unhappy life, pining for him, thinking of him constantly, dreaming impossible dreams, manufacturing romantic situations in her mind that would never happen, he had been living a hectic, whirlwind life in Washington. Had he really thought of her then, or were his methods of getting her into bed just more sophisticated than Daryl’s had been?
    She had constructed a new life for herself out of the rubble of her shattered marriage. Her plans for the future were carefully laid out and going according to schedule. Should she let Grant Chapman into her life, he might upset that schedule, if not destroy her plans for the future altogether.
    The pain of leaving his embrace was worse than having a dagger pierce her heart, but she gradually pushed against him until he relented and let her go. She turned and walked to the window, staring out at the twilit evening. She heard the rasp of his zipper as he lowered it to tuck his shirttail into his trousers before doing it up again. Her ears picked up the sound of his muted footsteps on the thick rug as he came to stand behind her.
    “I was never Missy Lancaster’s lover.” He hadn’t touched her, yet his words caused her to spin around, her eyes wide.
    “Grant,” she said dolefully, “that has nothing to do with us. I’m reluctant for us to … to … sleep together, but not because of what happened between you and that girl in Washington.”
    The relaxing of the lines on either side of his mouth testified to his relief. But his eyes lost none of their intensity. “I’m glad, because there was nothing between Missy and me. At least not what everyone thought. To have told the unmitigated truth would have been to divulge a confidence I couldn’t break.” His hand came up to grip her