Teacher, Teacher - Excerpt
Cate looked so porcelain pale in the weak porch light, Tom's insides wrenched with the same overpowering need to protect her that he felt earlier in the lobby of the restaurant. The impulse to reach out and fold her in his arms was impossible to resist.
So he didn't resist, and pulled her toward him. She felt so good inside the circle of his arms, softly feminine and a little trembly. The scent of her hair filled his head, and her eyes glimmered with golden-green innocence.
A second, more potent urge seized Tom, one he knew he should dismiss out-of-hand. He suddenly wanted to kiss Cate, just enough to sample her secrets and satisfy his curiosity about this prim music teacher. Ignoring the risk she might smack him a good one across the face, Tom brushed his mouth against hers.
The impact of that simple grazing of flesh to flesh sent Tom reeling. He hadn't felt such electric sizzle and sensual delight of a sweet, stolen kiss since happier days with Lara. Though he set out only to tweak Cate's overwrought sense of propriety by returning the condom packets, Tom stepped over the line of "appropriateness" by at least a country mile. He deserved whatever verbal or physical defenses she flung at him.
Cate
did whimper a faint protest and pressed her hand to his shoulder. His heart racing
as if he'd run a marathon, Tom braced for the sting of her palm on his cheek,
and began a preemptive retreat.
But, amazingly, she lifted on her toes and
followed him. He doubted she realized what she'd done, or that she let a little
gasp of disappointment slip out as she pressed into his body.
Tom's ego swelled with unmitigated satisfaction, and a deeper, more basic urge made him bolder. He gripped Cate's narrow waist with one arm, and threaded his cold-stiffened fingers through the silken strands of her hair. Then he kissed her the way a warm, beautiful woman deserves to be kissed.
She tasted like white wine and feminine promises. Tom inhaled her scent in ragged breaths as he moved his lips over hers. He wanted her to open her mouth to him, but didn't press. Cate clung to the sleeves of his coat as if she he were a life buoy that kept her from being swept away by a current. He didn't want to drown her in sensations for which she wasn't prepared.
Neither did he want to drown himself.
Reluctantly, Tom withdrew from the seal of Cate's lips, but not far enough that he couldn't still feel the warmth of her face. Cate swallowed another protest, and then blinked hard twice when he let her go and stepped back a pace.
Tom was sure his lopsided grin trembled from the aftershock of her kiss. "Well, well, Cate Munro," he murmured, "you're full of un-teacher-like surprises tonight. You kiss as good as you swear."
Teacher,
Teacher
A Contemporary Romance
By
Barbara Cary
