Free Far Too Tempting by Lauren Blakely

a moment, I shut my eyes, too, and I feel like a wild racehorse, with a little bit of heat and a little bit of aching mixed together in the belly of the beast. I open my eyes quickly and start turning him around. Once, twice, three times. Four times. Five times.
    “Are you ever gonna say ‘stop’?”
    “No, I really enjoy being spun with my eyes closed. It’s a fetish of mine. I’ve been to rehab, but apparently I’ve just relapsed.”
    I laugh and he says, “Stop.”
    He opens his eyes, feigns wobbling, and grabs hold of my shoulders as if he’s about to fall. I smirk at him. “You’re just playing around.”
    Then he parts his lips, and he has the slyest smile on his face. “Playing around, you think?”
    He’s returned to that tone of voice I can’t read. It’s neither his toying one nor his serious one. But the look in his eyes is full of hunger, and then I feel the softest touch on my hair. He’s fingering a strand of my curly hair and I am so far out of my element that I’m not sure what to do next. All I know is I’m leaning closer to him, because this kind of touch, so clearly the way a man who likes women touches, is both foreign and extraordinary to me.
    “Yes, I would,” he says in a soft voice that borders on a whisper.
    My body is racing, and the moment is full of so much anticipation, so much possibility that I could bottle it. But still, I feel like the sidewalk under my feet is swaying, and I need to know which way is up.
    “You would what?”
    “I would want to take you out. Much like how I want to kiss you.”
    I can barely process his words. They’re so heady, so woozy, so utterly foreign to me. No one has wanted to kiss me in the last seven years.
    “May I?” he asks, and I am in a blissful bubble of his accent, his blue eyes, and his total classiness in asking me, like a proper gentleman, which turns me on even more. I want this sliver of time to be suspended so it lasts, but I desperately want to be kissed. I want to be kissed by someone who wants me, by someone who knows what he’s doing, and by someone I am immeasurably attracted to.
    By Matthew.
    Who’s holding me tight with those dark blue eyes, the color of a lake in my perfect Maine, and I can’t let go. I can’t look away. I can barely speak. This feels so unreal, but yet here he is—wanting to kiss me. I would go into shock if I weren’t completely tingling all over.
    “Yes,” I say, grinning, but then my smile is erased by his lips as he presses gently against mine with such softness, such sexiness that my knees go weak, and I loop my arms around his neck so I don’t fall.
    He wraps a hand around my waist, tugging me closer as he kisses me, and I’ve lost all awareness of my surroundings, of the city, of the last several days of my life because the second Matthew’s lips touch mine, I know it is one of those kisses.
    The kind you could write a song about.
    I hear the word amazing press into my brain. Amazing lips, amazing kiss, feels amazing, you’re amazing. At one point, I actually murmur the word in his mouth. Kissing him is like a Chris Isaak song. It’s not frenzied or frantic or a mad dash to the end. It’s slow and unhurried, dreamily unfolding over and over. It’s desire stretching out.
    His lips exploring mine, his tongue tangling with mine, his hands lacing through my hair. His sexy sighs that tell me he’s savoring this kiss as much as I am. He brings me closer, his long, lean frame terribly close to mine. For a brief second, I can feel him pressed hard against my thigh, and it’s thrilling to elicit this kind of reaction from a man.
    Arousal.
    Then he breaks the kiss, and I stumble. He catches me. “You okay?” he asks, and he’s back to that playful voice I know from the Grammys.
    “Yeah,” I answer, and it feels like I’m waking up, because everything feels hazy and warm, as if morning light is streaking in through the windows at dawn. As that image flicks past me, it occurs to me that