A Little Holiday Temptation Read Online Free PDF

didn’t need any further provocation. Her lips were soft and her mouth so sweet that before he knew it he had lifted her body and her legs wrapped around him in a bid to get even closer. Their tongues danced gently at first and found the encounter so pleasing that the kiss deepened and soon they were both sounding as though they were consuming something extremely tasty as, no doubt, they were. Erik, as the one who had most of the physical strength between them, knew that he had to back off before things got out of hand. Ana wasn’t ready for things to go any further than a kiss but it was their first real kiss and, heaven help him, if her kisses were this good, what would sex be like with her?
    It was Ana who came up for air first and looked him in the eyes. She pressed her cheek to his. “Why haven’t you kissed me before now?”
    “I’ve been a fool,” Erik said, and kissed her again.
    Ana pulled his shirt out of his waistband so that she could run her hands over his hot skin. Another new experience since friends didn’t routinely touch one another’s naked bodies. Her feverish mind thought back. Yes, she’d seen Erik in a swimsuit on a couple occasions. Once when they had flown to Barbados for the weekend with his sister, Belana, and her husband, Nick, and another time when they’d taken a dip in the pool at his parents’ house in Connecticut. He was in great shape. Cut from all the running and weightlifting he did on a daily basis. Ana was not nearly as disciplined. She liked running with Erik on Saturday mornings, but walking was more her taste. All this was going through her mind while the man of her dreams was kissing her, and she thought she must be neurotic to be thinking of anything other than the taste of his mouth and the warm, solid feel of his body touching hers. It was fear of change that stood in the way of her truly enjoying Erik.
    What would she do if he made love to her and lost interest, just as that actor who would remain nameless had done? It would kill her—she realized at that instant in her kitchen, she adored this man. She loved him in a way she had never thought to love a man, completely. Until Erik she thought of men as enigmas whom women were doomed to never fully understand. However Erik had proved that theory a lie. She understood him. She knew, for example, that even though he denied it he had an abandonment issue with his mother. It’s true that his mother had come back into his life briefly last year, but by that time the damage had been done. And she wasn’t in his life long before she revealed she had a terminal illness. Only weeks later she had died with all her children holding her hands, the very children she had walked away from. No one came away from that without emotional scarring.
    Erik had never let himself get close to anyone before Ana. He jokingly said it was because he’d just never found the right woman. Ana believed it was because he was afraid of being abandoned yet again by a woman he loved. This, Ana, thought last night in her kitchen, put a great deal of pressure on her. She would never dream of hurting him, but what if she did hurt him in spite of every effort not to? She was only human.
    It was soon after this thought ran through her mind that Erik had tipped her chin toward him and said, “Let’s not waste any more time than we already have. I love you, Ana. I believe I’ve loved you since the first time we met.”
    Tears instantly sprang to Ana’s eyes. “I love you, too!” She hugged him tightly. “I love you so much that I’m afraid of my feelings for you.”
    He kissed her forehead. “Afraid? What do you mean?”
    “What we have is perfect in a sense. You’re my best friend, the person I confide in, aside from my own family. What if that changes? What if becoming lovers changes us?”
    Erik laughed. “If anything it’ll enhance how we already feel about each other.” He became somber. “It’s that actor, isn’t it? The one who broke