Honey and Smoke Read Online Free PDF

be that way. With you, it just comes naturally. Very appealing.”
    “I’d like to ask you a personal question.”
    “Hmmm. Go ahead.”
    “Why are you running loose in the real world? I understand that you retired from the marines with the rank of major. Sounds like an unwise time to leave a career, to me.”
    Her face was pink with annoyance. He wanted to touch it and feel the heat of her emotions under his fingertips. He wanted to take her to dinner, then take her to bed. Funny, she was a newcomer here, but suddenly he realized that she was the homecoming he needed.
    “I wanted to see if I could do something new with my life. See if I remembered how to be a civilian. Apparently, you had the same need to do something new. Why leave the bright lights of Atlanta and move to a little tourist town in the mountains?”
    “I wanted to find something more innocent, and kind, and traditional about life.”
    “A honey of a plan. I approve. But my whole career was built on tradition, and I think a person has to becareful not to let tradition give him a rigid, narrow perspective on life.”
    “I think you’re talking about tradition as in
rules
. I’m talking about
values
.”
    “Right at the moment I don’t care what we’re talking about. I’m just glad you came by to see me.” He gave in to the compelling desire to touch her, carefully resting one hand on one of her arms, letting his fingertips press just tight enough to feel her arm beneath the sweater. The contact burned him, made him want to draw her forward and whisper before he kissed her,
Let’s start some new traditions
.
    She looked down at her captured arm, but didn’t pull away. Her eyes revealed alarm, though she gave him a jaunty, patronizing smile. “You plan to add me to your harem?”
    After a moment of surprise he smiled wickedly. “The reports of my harem are greatly exaggerated. In fact, I think if you’ll check around—which you’ve obviously begun doing already—you’ll learn that in the last six months I’ve been rather tame.”
    “Breaking your father’s tradition, Mr. Templeton?”
    He pulled her into his arms quickly and looked down into her startled eyes. “My father had his faults, but he was a good man.”
    She locked her hands on his shoulders and tried to push herself away. “He must have been very good. He made a
lot
of women happy. Some of them were married to other men at the time.”
    “Chasing married women isn’t my style. There are plenty of the unattached kind. But, I admit, I did inherit my father’s ability to make women happy. Only I’ve been a little reluctant to take up the torch of the family legend. Pa left quite a reputation.”
    “I wouldn’t want to waste your time.”
    “You’d never be a waste. How about that free sample?”
    He kissed her before she could answer, his mouth skilled against her resistance, coaxing, careful. What he’d meant to be a provocative tease became a searingdiscovery. The taste, the feel, and the scent of her shattered his playfulness.
    She made a fierce sound in the back of her throat; she clutched his black coat with knotted hands and braced her arms against him. But at the same time her body began to sag toward his, her breasts flattening against his chest, her back arching. He heard her soft cry of dismay as her mouth softened under his and became mobile. When he flicked his tongue forward, she caught it between the edges of her lips, then groaned with defeat and opened her mouth for his quick thrust.
    Dazed and reckless, Max bent her backward. To his delight her arms went around his neck. She was grabbing at him instinctively, as her balance now depended on him, but when her hands splayed across his shoulders with an exploring touch, he knew she’d lost her footing in more ways than one.
    He slid his arms around her shoulders and waist while he continued to twist his mouth on hers. She shivered against him and returned his intimate exploration, her tongue quick and