Free Sea Kissed, A Crane Series Romance: Crane Series by Nancy Warren

breasts.
    He gave them his full attention for a minute or so and then abruptly reared up to gaze down at her with mild irritation. “Now what?”
    “Pardon?” He held her gaze with eyes that seemed to see right into her.
    “You’re thinking again.” Damn, this was getting spooky.
    “How do you know?”
    “I make my living working with my hands. When you start thinking, I dunno, your skin changes, and your muscles start to tense up.” He continued to gaze down at her and then smiled a little. “And you get a furrow right between your eyes,” he said and leaned forward to kiss a spot midway between her eyebrows that she didn’t think had ever been kissed before.
    “Sorry.”
    “What were you thinking about that made you turn into a plank?”
    She threw her arm across her eyes. Now she was a plank. Great. “I’m such an idiot. I wish I hadn’t said I don’t have to be anywhere until Monday. It makes me sound like I have no social life. And maybe you don’t want me hanging around until Monday.” There. He’d asked, and she’d told him the truth. So she was pathetic and had no social life. Now he knew.
    “That’s what you were thinking about?”
    “Yes.”
    “That’s all?”
    Pause. “Ye-es . . . mostly.”
    From behind her arm she couldn’t see anything, but she felt the shifting and then the lack of warmth and knew he’d moved away. She dropped her arm and found him getting right off the bed. She felt so miserable she wanted to curl into a ball and start wailing. While she watched, he grabbed one of the matching upholstered armchairs, dragged it to the bedside, and sat down.
    “All right,” he said.
    “Let’s have all of it. What else is going through that maddening head of yours?”
    “Nothing. I—I . . .”
    “You what?”
    “I forgot to ask if you’re married.”
    His brows flew up at that. “Do you think I’m the sort of bloke who’d be sitting here naked with you if I had a wife at home?”
    She shook her head. “But my judgment isn’t always the best.”
    “I’m not married.”
    She released the breath she’d been holding, and then wondered how he could possibly be single? A man who looked that incredible in nothing but a hotel armchair had no business being unattached. But then he hadn’t actually said he was single. He’d said he wasn’t married.
    “Girlfriend?” He shook his head.
    “Broke up three months ago when she started looking at wedding rings.”
    “Oh.”
    So he wasn’t a commitment kind of guy. Fair enough. She wasn’t looking to marry the man. So long as he wasn’t committing adultery in sleeping with her, did she really care that wedding rings freaked him out? No, she thought, giving him her best shot at a come-back-to-bed smile; wedding rings were the last thing on her mind. He seemed to get the message pretty loud and clear, tipping forward and out of the chair until he was a heartbeat away, his lips so near to kissing her that her own tingled.
    “No more thinking,” he ordered.
    “I’m all done.”
    As she wrapped her arms around him she accepted that he was absolutely, exactly what she needed. When he kissed her she opened her mouth to him, wanting to give him everything she had. But even with the heat of their fused mouths, she felt the soft touch of his skin against hers, and the sliding of their limbs as they eased against each other, testing and finding the best ways to fit. She was aware of his strength, of the muscles that had so much in common with the metal he worked with, and beneath that the solid core of integrity she’d sensed.
    He was a simple working man; nothing fancy or contrived about him. For a woman who made her living creating illusions, it was amazing to find a man who was exactly what he seemed. He was also frighteningly perceptive, and more sensitive to her body and its nuances than any man had ever been. He didn’t need to worry about her getting carried away with thinking; she was here and this was now and his body