Free Something Different/Pepper's Way by Kay Hooper

rhythm, and she felt suddenly adrift in a dangerous and unpredictable sea.
    “May I kiss you good night?” he asked softly, his hands coming to rest on her shoulders.
    Gypsy wanted to say no, sharply and without mincing words. But she wasn’t very surprised to find herself nodding silently.
    His hands lifted to cup her face, his head bending untiltheir lips touched with the lightness of a sigh. There was no pressure, no demand. Just warmth and sweetness, and a gentleness that was incredibly moving.
    Gypsy felt herself relaxing, felt her body mold itself bone-lessly to his. Her arms moved of their own volition to slide around his waist even as she became aware of his hands moving slowly down her back.
    If this was seduction, she thought dimly, then why on earth was she fighting it? It was a drugging, insidious thing, sapping her willpower and causing her to forget why she should have been protesting.
    A tremor like the soft flutter of a butterfly’s wings began somewhere deep inside her body. It spread outward slowly, growing in strength, until she felt that her whole body was shaking with it.
    When Chase finally drew away, Gypsy had the disturbing impression that she had lost something. She didn’t know what it was. But the tremor was still there, and she was having trouble breathing.
    The man was a warlock, she thought.
    “Good night, Gypsy mine,” he murmured huskily, reaching over to open the door for her.
    Gypsy forced her arms to release him. “Good night,” she managed weakly, sliding past him to enter the house. She hesitated for a moment, glancing back over her shoulder at him, then softly closed the door.
    She went into the den and sat down on the couch, curling up in one corner and staring at the blank television screen. For a long time she sat without moving. Corsair came to sit beside her, his rough purr like the rumble of a small engine. Gypsy stroked him absently. Bucephalus came and lay down on the carpet by the couch.
    Gypsy smiled wryly. “What are you two trying to do—comfort me?” she asked. A canine tail thumped the floor, and feline eyes blinked at her. “Thanks, guys, but I think it’s beyond your power.”
    She sat for a while longer, listening to silence and the whispering voices of reason. But it was the gentle murmurs of desire that tormented her. She finally got up and went to take a long hot bath, hoping that the steam would carry away her problems.
    It didn’t.
    She let Corsair and Bucephalus outside for a few minutes, then called them back in and latched the pet door. She wandered around downstairs for a while, until disgust with her own restlessness drove her to bed. It was midnight by the time she crawled between the sheets, and Gypsy lay there for a while and stared at the ceiling. She finally reached and turned out the lamp on her nightstand, absently moving Corsair off her foot and patting Bucephalus where he lay beside the bed.
    Ten minutes later the phone rang. She picked up the receiver without bothering to turn the lamp back on, wondering who could be calling her at that hour. “Hello?”
    “Will you dream about me tonight?” a deep, muffled masculine voice asked softly.
    Gypsy’s first impulse was to hang up. The last thing she needed tonight was a semi-obscene phone caller. But something about that voice nagged at her. It
could
be Chase, she decided finally. Besides, who
else
could it possibly be? So why not play along?
    “Of course, I will,” she murmured seductively.
    “Sweet dreams?”
    “As sweet as honey.”
    “I could make them even sweeter,” he drawled.
    “Promises, promises.”
    “Just give me the chance.”
    “A man should always … make his own opportunities.”
    “And what should a woman do?”
    “She waits.”
    “An old-fashioned lady, I see.”
    “In…some ways.” Gypsy was thoroughly enjoying the suggestive conversation.
    He chuckled softly. “Sweet dreams …”
    Gypsy listened bemusedly to the dial tone for a moment, then cradled the