Page 9 of Things Good Girls Don't Do (Rock Canyon, Idaho 1)

Still, the part of her that hadn’t been held by a man in a long time wanted him to kiss her until her brain shut up.

He didn’t kiss her like she wanted him to, though.

Chase ran one hand through her hair and cupped her cheek with the other. “Sweet Katie, the last thing on this earth I’d want to do is upset you, but I have to say, it is really hot to see you all riled up.” He slipped his thumb over her bottom lip and continued, “Your mouth purses when someone irritates you and you’re trying not to say anything. I’ve noticed you do that a lot. But your eyes heat up when you’re ticked off, and that’s hard to miss. Like now.”

Katie was holding her breath as she swayed toward him, and he whispered, “Do you know what you want?”

Did she? “Yes.” She drifted a little closer, like she couldn’t resist him. It was his eyes. No, the way he smiled. Maybe . . .

“Do you know where you want it?”

His words were penetrating the fog of desire and she blinked at him. “What?”

Sliding his hand from her lip to over her shoulder, he asked, “Do you want it here?”

It finally registered what he was asking and she said, “I don’t want a tattoo.”

“Are you sure?” he said teasingly. “’Cause I have a binder full of things you might like. Of course, there are some things we could check off the list that don’t involve binders, needles, or tattoos. Let me think . . .”

She needed to move away from him so she could think. She took a breath, but that was a mistake. He smelled amazing, and she was so tired of being good all the time. She was thirty years old and the man she was supposed to spend the rest of her life with had picked someone else. Maybe if she had been more daring and less rigid, Jimmy wouldn’t have dumped her. She would never know now. She couldn’t change the past, but she could let go now, just this once.

Slipping her arms up around his neck and ignoring his wide-eyed expression, she said, “Chase, if you want to kiss me, will you just do it already?”

OF ALL THE things she could have said to him, that wasn’t what he’d been expecting.

Despite his initial surprise, Chase, never one to disappoint a lady, dropped his mouth to hers and took her lips in a soft, searching kiss.

Damn.

She tasted like peppermint and heat. Using his arm to bring her against him, his other hand slipped to the back of her neck. He liked that she didn’t just let him kiss her, but she kissed back with enthusiasm. Katie’s hands ran over his neck, reminding him of her scalp massage, and he imagined those hands on other parts of his body. The intimate image and the feel of her pressed so closely to him made his cock harden with need.

Her hands traveled over his back, down his sides, and up under his T-shirt. Her nails skimmed his bare skin, sliding around to his stomach and between their bodies. Anyone walking by could look in and see them.

“Maybe I should lock the door,” he said between kisses, “pull the blinds.”

He knew it was a mistake to break the spell the minute he spoke the words. Her eyes popped open and she stared up at him in horror. She tried to move away from him, but he didn’t want her to leave, not yet. “I just didn’t want someone to walk by and see you. This town is like a festering pool of gossip, and I’m not exactly Mr. Popularity.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me . . .” she said, fiddling with her cute, lopsided bun, which was starting to come down.

“Hey, no complaints here. You don’t have to apologize for anything,” he said, wondering what exactly she was apologizing for. Asking him to kiss her? Kissing him back?

He would have asked, but he figured it might just tick her off, and right now she looked like she was thinking hard about something. Like whether or not she wanted him to do as he’d suggested and get back to making her soft and willing . . .

Her voice was so quiet, he almost didn’t hear her ask, “Does it hurt?”

Kissing? No, wait, not kissing. Oh.

“Getting a tattoo?” She nodded and he laughed. She just kept surprising him. “A little, sometimes a lot, depending where you get it, but then the pain goes away after a bit and it’s just uncomfortable.”

“Hmmm.” She pulled away from him, much to his disappointment, and turned. Katie walked over to the wall of photographs, pictures of women and men showing off his work. He was proud of his art, not just the tattoos, but his graphic novels too. She stopped in front of his framed copy of Destructo Boy, his first graphic novel, and he said, “I did that one years ago, when I was barely eighteen.”

She turned to him with surprised eyes and asked, “You did? Did you do anymore?”

“Yeah, I do artwork for several series, but this one is all me. I do the illustrations and dialogue.”

“That is so amazing. I’ve never met anyone famous before,” she said, adding, “except for Travis Bowers. He’s a country music singer I went to high school with.”

“I don’t know if I’d call myself famous. I just write comics, not like I do cartoons for Pixar or something.” Her inspection was actually making him nervous. He picked up a binder of tattoo samples and held it out to her. “Here. Why don’t you look and see if there’s something you might like while I close the blinds and lock the door?” She gave him a startled look and he teased, “We wouldn’t want everyone in town to know that Katie Connors was doing something so out of character like get a tattoo, would we?”

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