Sunday Smooch

Welcome to another LoveCats DownUnder Sunday Smooch!

Today we have a 'classic' smooch from Nikki Logan's Their Newborn Gift (2010), but first ...

the winner of last week's Sunday Smooch Giveaway is -- Kaelee!

Congratulations, Kaelee! Can you please contact Jules at

authorjules (at) gmail (dot) com

and she'll send you a copy of Her Innocence, His Conquest.

And now for today's Sunday Smooch from Their Newborn Gift by Nikki Logan ...

One big secret… 

When Lea became accidentally pregnant she decided that she would go it alone. Rodeo star Reilly wasn't the sort of man who'd want to be tied down. But five years later she needs to tell him her secret...

One tiny blessing… 

Learning he's a daddy is bittersweet for Reilly, because his little girl is fighting to survive. Her only hope is a new brother or sister. Can he and Lea create a newborn miracle--and a future together?

The setup:

Lea Curran had a hot, unforgettable one-night stand six years ago when she was weak and vulnerable, and she came away pregnant. She made the decision never to tell the father, Reilly Martin, the King of the Suicide Ride rodeo champion of north-west Australia. But her daughter is five years old now and wracked with Aplastic Anaemia and all treatments have failed--the only thing that can help her now is a stem-cell transfer from the umbilical cord of a sibling. A full sibling.

So Reilly's back in her life, not at all happy about being blackmailed into fathering a second child but just as determined to do what he can to save the little girl he never knew he had.  Lea and Molly are staying with him out on his enormous, lush property so that she has more immediate emergency care in case anything happens to her on her remote one.

They find themselves in the kitchen...talking....and then somehow the conversation turns to the subject of whether a good kiss is about sex or romance.  Poor Reilly isn't taking the pressure well...

Their entire conversation since she’d unwittingly stumbled on him in the kitchen was leading to this moment. And they both knew it.

‘If a kiss was just about sex,’ Lea breathed the words against his lips, tipping her face so that her forehead almost rested against his, a sweet, trusting little move that roused every primal instinct lurking deep in his body, ‘then we’d be kissing now.’

Reilly snatched forward with his lips to prove his point. She avoided him with a quick twist that put her mouth perilously close to his throat. His ear. Awareness shivered down his neck as her hot breath danced around him. Her hair brushed against his hypersensitive flesh.

‘But what makes a kiss romantic, about so much more than sex,’ she drew his face like a magnet, curling towards those pink, ripe lips, ‘is the question mark. How will it taste?’ She rubbed his stubbled cheek with her own soft one, dragging the corner of that delicious mouth closer to his. ‘How will it feel?’

His eyes fluttered shut as she traced their lids lightly with her lips.

God above, she was going to kill him. Five year old memories surged around the room practically crashing into the furniture. His mouth was at once dry with anticipation and wet with desire as her lips returned to hover just millimetres from his.

‘And most importantly…’ she raised smoky eyes, a tiny smile shaping her mouth. Her hands were braced either side of his hips on the kitchen table and he closed his eyes as she leaned that final inch forward. Thank God. ‘…how will I possibly survive never knowing?’

She pushed herself to her feet and away from him and crossed back to the hob to see to the bubbling kettle. His eyes opened in disbelief, his body screaming with the denial. Never knowing was no longer an option.

And it had nothing to do with romance.

Lea gasped as strong, masculine hands spun her back just as the simmering kettle started to sing. Its mounting pitch matched her fever exactly. Reilly folded her into strong arms and tipped her half off her feet before she could even suck in a breath to protest. Her hard, pregnant midsection pressed against his hard un-pregnant one.

His blazing mouth—soft and powerful, familiar and new—slid over hers, demanding a response she was gasping to give. Hot and wet and urgent. Exactly as she’d remembered in her dreams. Her little lesson in romance had sapped her of resistance, and she literally panted for a kissing lesson from someone she was fast considering the sexiest man alive.

Never mind that he held such a low opinion of her, he kissed like a God. Her breath ached in her tight, trembling chest.

He consumed her; feasting on her lips and pressing her body perfectly into his hard one, his tongue burning the inner reaches of the mouth she helplessly opened to him. The heady lip-work seemed to strengthen him everywhere she was weakening and he held her up as her legs gave out.

The oxygen that should have been surging through her body pooled into her core, prioritising her vital organs as though her life was in danger.

Of being kissed out of her perhaps.

The kettle was piping now, spewing steam out of its angry top, and forming a layer of sweat on the overhead cabinets that rivalled the rapidly forming dampness on her own skin. Some desperate, distant part of her consciousness ordered her hands to remain clenched, not to join the fray. But the roaring thunder of her blood drowned out the request, and her hands did what she suddenly realised she’d been wanting to do since that first day at Yurraji. They fought their way under the layers of his clothing and spread out against the furnace of his muscular back.

She knew those muscles like Braille. Every dip. Every rise. Every sinew.

God, how she’d missed them.

Her mind screamed a protest at her body but it came out as a choked mix of fury, frustration and desire. Reilly must have felt it more than heard it over the protesting kettle, but he righted her up onto her feet and let his hands slip up into her hair. Her shirt rode up against him as she swayed to her feet, and she realised she was stretching up to prevent their lips from breaking apart.

She was kissing him.

He closed his fists in her hair and gentled his mouth. Slower, wetter, more rubbing, more heavy breathing. Lea rubbed her body against his as the kettle kept up its piercing aria.

Undeniable, 100-proof sex. The man had made his point.

She pushed away, gasping and dragging her wrist across her throbbing mouth. With trembling hands she turned and put the kettle out of its misery and the ear-splitting crescendo died instantly away.

In the new silence, her chest heaved. His chest heaved. Tortured breathing filled the air. It was a tiny comfort that Reilly looked as stunned as she felt. His molten eyes assessed her warily as she backed toward the door. But he didn’t stop her leaving.

‘I’m just… I think I’ll… bed.’ Words just would not form on her swollen lips. ‘Alone.’ she added hastily as a dangerous gleam sparked in his eyes.

Again, silence.

She turned and wobbled to the doorway on jelly legs. But as she disappeared through it she heard Reilly’s voice as he cursed, thick and low.

Their Newborn Gift is available right now as a free e-book from Mills & Boon's www.everyonesreading.com and so EVERYONE GETS A FREE PRIZE!!! Woo hoo.  Look for the baby on the cover.

Come back next Sunday, when we'll feature a smooch from The Bought-And-Paid-For Wife by Bronwyn Jameson!