Free Her Charming Heartbreaker by Sonia Parin Page A

to draw away and make up some sort of excuse for doing
something entirely unexpected. She wondered if she had time to put
her hands on his shoulders, to maybe rake her fingers through his
hair and mess it up at bit.
    Yes, yes. Do
it.
    Her hands settled on
his shoulders, feeling their way up to his neck, taking little
tactile snapshots of the way he felt under her fingertips, adding
it all to the layers of sensations swimming around her head.
Sensations she recognized because they reminded her of how much fun
it was to be cocooned in a pair of strong arms. But then the kiss
deepened, triggering a wave of new sensations that felt as if
they’d been waiting a long time to come alive. Eddie focused on
those. They rushed at her, firing up sparks inside her body,
spreading a burning sexual need that rose from the tips of her
toes—
    Her breath hitched and
a part of her hesitated. The part that felt overwhelmed by the
swell of wanting and needing rising inside her. Then she heard a
voice in her head, hollering from a distant place and telling her
this was wrong. But before she could claw her way back to reason,
she took one of those little leaps of faith and threw herself right
into kissing Theo Kendrick, settling into a rhythm that stirred a
deep wanting inside her—
    Much too soon, he drew
away, his lips pressing against the edge of her mouth, then moving
to the hollow of her throat and finally coming to a rest stop
against her neck. Eddie thought she heard a low rumble coming from
him, the sound a mixture of relief and frustration.
    As he held her, she
opened her eyes, only then realizing she’d closed them.
    “I got a bit carried
away. That was... a lot more than I expected. Give me a
minute.”
    He needed time to
think... or to recover?
    He looked at her then,
his eyes missing the usual spark of amusement. Had he just come to
his senses? She couldn’t tell. Then again, she was looking through
a haze of sexual awareness so she wasn’t sure if she could trust
her own eyes.
    He sighed heavily and
drew her against him again.
    “Theo?”
    “Hang on, I’m trying to
engage my sluggish male brain.”
    She’d done that to him?
“Do you want to stand on your head for a bit?”
    He chuckled. Then his
hands eased away from the small of her back and reached for her
hands. “You feel so good.”
    Eddie thought now would
be a good time to think about what came next. They’d managed to get
a bit of a bonfire happening—
    He drew away again.
    His eyes were now in
sharp focus. His expression serious enough for her to realize he
wasn’t about to deliver happy news.
    Eddie sighed. What had
she been thinking? Kissing Theo?
    Theo frowned.
    “Eddie, how old is
Ben?”
    “W-what?”
    “Ben... Claire’s son.
How old is he?”
     
     
     

Chapter Seven
     
     
    “And then what
happened?” Joyce asked.
    After Theo had given
her a taste of heaven, he’d asked her how old Ben was...
    Eddie pressed her lips
together. Mentioning that part would mean stripping off the last
layer of her pride. While her world had tilted and shifted, Theo’s
had gone on as usual.
    “Then he left. He
squeezed my shoulder, got in his car, and took off.” Driving at
breakneck speed and heading back to Claire Muldoon’s house. But not
before he’d ruined her life. With one kiss? What did that say about
her? That she’d never had a man take her into his arms and wrap her
up in a thorough kiss. Even thinking about it made her legs
quiver.
    “I haven’t seen him
since.” His bed hadn’t been slept in and she knew that because Dani
had gone to Melbourne for a gig so Eddie was back on cleaning
duties. “Also, he settled his account paying for one more night.”
At some point, he’d returned to the pub, but she’d been out and her
brother Matthew hadn’t asked any questions. Here today, gone
tomorrow.
    Eddie brushed the tip
of her finger along her lip. He’d called her a genius and had
thanked her with an innocent brush of his lips against hers.