Sunday Smooch

Welcome to another LoveCats DownUnder Sunday Smooch!


Today we have a smooch from Shipwrecked With Mr Wrong by Nikki Logan, but first ...


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


Congratulations, Danielle! Can you please contact Natalie Anderson at

natalie (at) natalie-anderson (dot) com

and she'll send you a copy of The End of Faking It.

And now for today's Sunday Smooch from Shipwrecked With Mr Wrong by Nikki Logan...


Being marooned in paradise with a stunning woman should be the perfect way for a playboy to get shipwrecked. However, Rob Dalton would have chosen a slightly friendlier companion!

Prickly marine conservationist Honor Brier clearly just wants to be left alone with her birds and turtles. Physically and emotionally scarred, Honor has no time for infuriatingly attractive accidental tourists. yet, tought she won't admit it, Rob's passion for life--and for her--is reawakening her: body, mind and soul....


The Setup ... Biologist Honor Brier has been living in isolation on remote Pulu Keeling National Park since a tragedy ripped her family away from her and left her permanently scarred down her left side. One day the gods deliver her a gorgeous, bright, vital man in the form of shipwreck hunter Rob Dalton who damages his work-boat on the coral atol surrounding the island and has to come ashore to await a shepherd back to safe harbour. Alone on the island it takes a few days before hostilties between them ease. Rob charms her in a hundred ways--even when he's not trying to.

In this scene he's just witnessed the first midnight turtle-hatching of the season where one hundred leathery little turtles swarm out of an under-sand nest and scramble for the waterline.

Honor is bound by her scientific ethics not to intervene, even when giant frigate birds line the shore plucking the innocent little turtles off one-by-one. But Rob decides he's in no way bound and he rescues six little turtles that were running into the path of danger and sees them safely to the waters edge. Honor's final resistance to him melts under the tropical moonlight.

He offers her a deal - one kiss for every turtle saved.




 
‘You don’t want to kiss me.’ Honor knew the impact her scars had on people. She wasn’t hung-up about it but she was also a realist.

‘Correction, I’ve wanted to kiss you from the moment I saw you.’ Sincerity was live in his eyes but still she doubted. Maybe a kiss wasn’t such a big deal where he came from, just a bit of fun? He couldn’t know that she’d only been kissed by two men in her whole life; her first kiss when she was fourteen and then her husband. Rob would make three.

If she was entertaining the suggestion.

She swallowed. Her heart thumped an SOS in her chest but her body wasn’t listening. How good would it be to give in to her yearning, to taste him just for a moment? She imagined how his lips would feel against hers but, more than anything, she wanted to nibble her way along that spectacular jaw line. She could almost reach it from here…

In her dreams. This was just a bit of fun for Rob, gentle flirting. He was probably bored. And the best way to handle a flirt? Call them on it.

‘Fine, one kiss.’

His pupils flared and he bent his head toward her.

‘One small kiss.’

‘One small kiss,’ he nodded ‘for each turtle?’

A crazy part of her was enjoying the verbal foreplay. He was waking nerve endings she hadn’t used in a long, long time. ‘Turtles hatched, or turtles saved?’

He smiled, caught out. ‘Okay, saved.’

Six small kisses. Just kisses. Every part of her wanted to say yes and that alone rang alarm bells. He was perfection in deck shoes, funny and gentle, and all of this probably meant nothing to him. Just a bit of casual sport. It was what he did, after all.

He played.

‘Deal.’

If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. ‘Where would you like the first one?’

A wild streak she’d virtually forgotten she had surged forward. She stood straighter and looked at him fearlessly. ‘Cheek.’

He smiled, leaned in excruciatingly slowly and brushed gentle lips across one flushed cheek. They were cool and soft against her flaming skin. He smelled of sea-salt and moonlight. She could survive this…

‘Next?’

‘Other cheek. That’s two.’

‘Thank you, I can count.’ He leaned to her other side and moved his mouth slightly against her other cheek. Lingering. The scent of warm man eddied around her. It was like a natural stimulant.

‘Three and four?’

Honor took a deep breath. Only two chaste kisses and her heart was ready to beat right out of its cavity. She closed her eyes and every other sense kicked into overdrive. She felt him lean in, the air around her humming at his approach. His lips touched one eyelid and then the other. Soft, slow and delightful.

She’d felt his smile against her first eyelid but when they fluttered open, he wasn’t smiling any more. And he’d shifted closer, almost touching her chest with his.

Mustn’t lean forward… She’d never felt such a burning desire to close a gap in her life. She raised her hands up to his chest to stop herself from doing precisely that but feeling the hard heat of his chest through his shirt only reminded her how long it had been since she’d felt a man’s heartbeat under her fingers. Her lips.

Five.

He didn’t need to say it. Wordless, she tipped her head sideways, exposing the long length of her neck. The good side. She pointed to a spot just next to where her pulse beat its fevered tattoo.

He leaned in closer and held her steady with one large hand on each arm. Then he slowly moved toward the place she’d identified. Honor let her heavy eyelids close again, breathless with anticipation, then felt him pull away. Disappointment ached in her throat. When she opened her eyes, his were glittering with desire and something else.

Speculation.

Before she could react, he twisted and narrowed the space between them and then pressed his mouth against the other side of her neck. Right on the leathery patchwork of her scars.

Shock stiffened her body and sensation assaulted her. She pushed away instinctively, but he held fast. Surgery had done nothing to reduce sensation where the grafts had been applied. If anything, the still-healing skin was hyper-sensitive. Electric currents shot out from the warmth of his mouth as he lazily kissed his way over her damaged skin. A lifetime of emotions surged through her—panic, desire, confusion, sorrow—but when his tongue got in on the act, her legs gave completely away.




Shipwrecked With Mr Wrong is an April 2011 release for the RIVA line (UK), and a June 2011 release for Sweet (Aust/NZ). Have you ever been to an island (secluded or otherwise)? Nikki has a copy of Shipwrecked With Mr Wrong to give away to a lucky commenter.


Come back next Sunday, when the winner of today's giveaway will be announced -- and a smooch from Her Innocence, His Conquest by international guest Jules Bennett will be posted!