Ask Me Read Free

something we haven’t tried before, but nobody’s forcing it.”
    He focused on her, blinking as the fog on his specs cleared. “I want to try you,” he said.
    To Gerri’s surprise, her pulse leaped. She took a step closer, and they continued to gaze into one another’s eyes while heat flared through her. “I want to try you, too.”
    He leaned forward and kissed her, a gentle contact of lips on lips, tentative and sampling. He was so tall she had to strain on her tiptoes for him.
    “Umm,” she murmured involuntarily. If the rest of him tasted this good, she was in for her best Valentine’s ever.
    And would he be so gentle all night long? Gerri, used to men who took what they wanted and thought mostly of their own pleasure, hoped so.
    “Interesting apartment,” he murmured when the kiss ended. “Not what I expected.”
    Gerri, unable to look away from his eyes, confessed, “This is my haven.” And yet she’d asked him back here. “I like to sew and created most of the décor.”
    “You’re very talented.” He kissed her again, with more intensity this time, his lips persuading hers apart and his tongue seeking admittance. Gerri dropped the book on the floor, let her bag slide from her shoulder, and wrapped both arms around his neck.
    It felt like an electrical charge flowed through her from the place his lips touched hers, sizzled when his tongue touched hers, and pierced her. She heated from the sheer pleasure of it and promptly began to melt.
    He concluded the kiss in a wet trail across her cheek to her ear, where he whispered, “So, Miss Webb, how do we begin this?”
    “I think we just did. And you’d better call me ‘Gerri,’ right? If we’re going to get intimate.”
    “Oh, we’re going to get very intimate.”
    She drew away from him, not far. “Let me take your coat. Get comfortable; I’ll light some candles. And I have a bottle of wine.”
    “Okay.”
    He stripped off his long wool coat, juggling the little sack of candy hearts and the bag from the pharmacy while he did so. Gerri removed the latter from his hand and withdrew the packet. Her eyebrows soared.
    “You bought the big pack. And, bubble-gum flavor. My goodness, Leo—what do you have in mind?”
    “To tell you the truth, I was so rattled I chose those at random.”
    Charming, that he would be forthcoming enough to admit it. But she saw nothing tentative, now, in his eyes.
    She leaned up and kissed him again. “That’s okay. Lucky for you I like bubble gum.”

Chapter Three
    Gerri divided the last of the wine between her glass and Leo’s, and realized with some surprise they’d finished a second bottle. How long had they been cozied up on her sofa, sharing bad-luck stories?
    She knew she’d regaled him at length with tales of losers she’d known and left—possibly not optimum conversation for a first date, only this wasn’t a date but something else, something exciting and unprecedented. And he’d shared his own horror stories—the woman who’d bought not just one but five wedding dresses and hung them in her closet after their first date, another who’d started out perfectly nice only to turn unaccountably insane.
    “She stalked me for three months,” he’d concluded with his charming modesty, “and I’m hardly stalking material.”
    Now he peered at her through the specs. “You’re not crazy, are you?”
    Gerri set her wine glass down very carefully, reached out, and removed his glasses. “Maybe just a bit. Do you mind?”
    “I think we’re probably both crazy, to be sitting here talking when we could be—” He kissed her once more, a long, luxurious, and wine-flavored kiss. She moved toward him eagerly, and he gathered her into his lap.
    She’d removed her boots when they sat down; now he ran a hand down her leg and captured her arch.
    “Nice feet.”
    “You don’t have a hidden foot fetish, do you?” she asked.
    “No. Well, maybe for your feet: pretty, and small enough to fit into my hand.”