Free The Bridal Path: Sara by Sherryl Woods Page B

if you’d hold me.”
    Sweet heaven, she was going to drive him straight over the brink to insanity. There was no longer a doubt in his mind that she was doing it on purpose, too. Sara Wilde was definitely not the scaredy-cat she was pretending to be. She was one of the strongest, most self-reliant women he’d ever known. Somehow he had to remind her of that.
    “Not a good idea, darlin’. Besides, you’ve been out here at night often enough to know exactly what to do to protect yourself. You don’t need me.”
    “Oh.”
    That single word was infused with a whole range of emotions— from disappointment to resignation. She sighed heavily.
    Silence fell and Jake finally convinced himself that he’d had a narrow escape, but his honor was intact.
    “Jake? Are you sure?”
    He swallowed hard. “I’m sure.”
    “Oh.”
    Maybe it would have ended there. Maybe he would have clung to his fragile willpower for the rest of the night. But that damned wolf picked that precise moment to let out another plaintive howl that, indeed, sounded closer.
    Sara was in Jake’s arms before he could form a coherent protest. She was warm and trembling and dangerously provocative with her arms tight around his neck and her face buried against his chest. Her warm breath fanned over his bare throat and turned his blood to liquid fire.
    Jake sucked in a deep breath and framed her face in his hands. He leveled a look straight into her eyes. It was possible there was a touch of fear there, but what caught his attention was the blazing awareness, the hunger that surely matched his own.
    “Jake.”
    Her voice was whisper soft and filled with the same kind of longing that echoed what he was feeling. He tried one last time to steel himself against it.
    “Shhh, it’s okay,” he soothed and settled her in his embrace. Every inch of his body fought his attempt to pretend he was simply giving comfort.
    Sara shifted slightly until their bodies clung together so intimately that Jake moaned aloud. The last fragile bit of self-control snapped. He moved so quickly that Sara gasped with surprise when she found herself on the ground with Jake poised over her.
    “Last chance,” he murmured, his gaze fixed on hers.
    She responded by pulling his head down until their lips met. Jake couldn’t have ignored the invitation then, if Trent Wilde himself had been threatening him with a shotgun.
    The kiss quickly turned wicked and desperate. Even as he plundered her mouth with his tongue, even as he savored the sweetness, she was inartfully fumbling with the buttons of his shirt. Her touch on his bare chest made his pulse buck more wildly than any championship bull he’d ever ridden.
    Why?
echoed through his brain time and again, until he shut off thought and succumbed to pure sensation. The skim of her tentative fingers over bare skin. The moist heat of her mouth closing over a masculine nipple. The silken tangle of her hair brushing across his chest. His entire body throbbed with need. He couldn’t recall ever feeling so much urgent hunger.
    Counting backward from a hundred, he tried to disengage from the demanding sensations, at least long enough to be sure that Sara was with him, that her body was as ready as his.
    It took only seconds to reassure himself. Her skin burned beneath his touch. When he slipped his fingers beneath the hem of her sweater and tugged it off, he discovered bare breasts. The nipples were hard even before he drew first one and then the other into his mouth.
    As if from a great distance he heard the soft rasp of a zipper and realized that she was shucking jeans and panties. She bucked and moaned with pleasure when his fingers skimmed intimately over her, sliding deep into damp, welcoming heat.
    “Please,” she whispered. “Please, Jake. Now.”
    She was already fumbling with his belt buckle. Jake gently shoved aside her hands and finished the job, shedding his pants in one smooth motion. When he felt her touch on the hard shaft of his