Page 114 of Return of the Bad Girl (Rock Canyon, Idaho 4)

His gaze traveled her face and she felt it like a touch—a caress. “I shall have to pay closer attention to my mother when she says she’s found someone for me to wed.”

Violet’s gaze shot up from the mesmerizing movement of his lips to his eyes. “Your mother?”

He nodded. “Indeed. Lady Merlton.”

“Are you . . .” she choked on halting words. He couldn’t be. “You’re the—”

“The Earl of Merlton,” he finished, that smile back again, wrapping around the words as though he was supremely amused. As though she were the butt of some grand jest. He was the Earl of Merlton, and she was the heiress brought here to tempt him.

A jest indeed. It was laughable. Especially considering the way he looked. Temptation incarnate. She was not the sort of female to tempt a man like him. At least not without a dowry, and that’s what her mother was relying upon.

“And you’re the heiress I’ve been avoiding,” he finished.

If the earth opened up to swallow her in that moment, she would have g

ladly surrendered to its depths.

An Excerpt from

INTRUSION

An Under the Skin Novel

by Charlotte Stein

I believed I would never be able to trust any man again. I thought so with every fiber of my being—and then I met Noah Gideon Grant. Everyone says he’s dangerous. But the thing is . . . I think something happened to him too. I know the chemistry between us isn’t just in my head. I know he feels it, but he’s holding back. He’s made a labyrinth of himself. Now all I need to do is dare to find my way through.

An Avon Red Novel

He said no sexual contact, and a handshake apparently counts. I should respect that—I do respect that, I swear. I can respect it, no matter how much my heart sinks or my eyes sting at a rejection that isn’t a rejection at all.

I can do without. I’m sure I can do without, all the way up to the point where he says words that make my heart soar up, up toward the sun that shines right out of him.

“Kissing is perfectly okay with me,” he murmurs, and then, oh, God, then he takes my face in his two good hands, roughened by all the patient and careful fixing he does and so tender I could cry, and starts to lean down to me. Slowly at first, and in these hesitant bursts that nearly make my heart explode, before finally, Lord; finally, yes, finally.

He closes that gap between us.

His lips press to mine, so soft I can barely feel them. Yet somehow, I feel them everywhere. That closemouthed bit of pressure tingles outward from that one place, all the way down to the tips of my fingers and the ends of my toes. I think my hair stands on end, and when he pulls away it doesn’t go back down again.

No part of me will ever go back down again. I feel dazed in the aftermath, cast adrift on a sensation that shouldn’t have happened. For a long moment I can only stand there in stunned silence, sort of afraid to open my eyes in case the spell is broken.

But I needn’t have worried—he doesn’t break it. His expression is just like mine when I finally dare to look, full of shivering wonder at the idea that something so small could be so powerful. We barely touched and yet everything is suddenly different. My body is alight. I think his body is alight.

How else to explain the hand he suddenly pushes into my hair? Or the way he pulls me to him? He does it like someone lost at sea, finally seeing something he can grab on to. His hand nearly makes a fist in my insane curls, and when he kisses me this time there is absolutely nothing chaste about it. Nothing cautious.

His mouth slants over mine, hot and wet and so incredibly urgent. The pressure this time is almost bruising, and after a second I could swear I feel his tongue. Just a flicker of it, sliding over mine. Barely anything really, but enough to stun me with sensation. I thought my reaction in the movie theater was intense.

Apparently there’s another level altogether—one that makes me want to clutch at him. I need to clutch at him. My bones and muscles seem to have abandoned me, and if I don’t hold on to something I’m going to end up on the floor. Grabbing him is practically necessary, even though I have no idea where to grab.

He put his hand in my hair. Does that make it all right to put mine in his? I suspect not, but have no clue where that leaves me. Is an elbow any better? What about his upper arm? His upper arm is hardly suggestive at all, yet I can’t quite bring myself to do it. If I do he might break this kiss, and I’m just not ready for that.

I probably won’t be ready for that tomorrow. His stubble is burning me just a little and the excitement is making me so shaky I could pass for a cement mixer, but I still want it to carry on. Every new thing he does is just such a revelation—like when he turns a little and just sort of catches my lower lip between his, or caresses my jaw with the side of his thumb.

I didn’t think he had it in him.

It could be that he doesn’t. When he finally comes up for air he has to kind of rest his forehead against mine for a second. His breathing comes in erratic bursts, as though he just ran up a hill that isn’t really there. Those hands in my hair are trembling, unable to let go, and his first words to me blunder out in guttural rush.

“I wasn’t expecting that to be so intense,” he says, and I get it then. He didn’t mean for things to go that way. They just got out of control. All of that passion and urgency isn’t who he is, and now he wants to go back to being the real him. He even steps back, and straightens, and breathes long and slow until that man returns.

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