LoveCats DownUnder

Welcome to another LoveCats DownUnder Sunday Smooch!

Today we have a smooch from Their Miracle Twins by Nikki Logan, but first ...

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

Congratulations, Claire! Please contact Sue MacKay at slmackay @ ts . co . nz (minus the spaces) and she'll send you a copy of Surgeon in a Wedding Dress.

And now for today's Sunday Smooch from Their Miracle Twins by Nikki Logan ...



Love...
Work has always been a refuge for Dr Sarah Livingstone - no more so than now! As a bride on the run from her hastily cancelled wedding, a new challenge as temporary surgeon in the coastal town of Port Weston should be the perfect cure for heartache... Except the hunky town doctor, brooding Daniel Riley, wants to get up close and personal! But living with Dan and his adorable four-year-old daughter has workaholic Sarah dreaming dreams that, for her, are impossible fantasies…
Marriage…?
This baby offers Flynn his only hope of redemption, and he'll do anything towin custody…even propose marriage! It's an extreme solution, and yet Belinda must admit her convenienthusband-to-be is inconveniently gorgeous. But then comes not one but…two babies in the baby carriage!

[Setup: Rochester and Flynn Bradley are on opposite sides of a ground-breaking court-case in London regarding the custody of the babies she is carrying. But half-a-world away in the Australian highlands, and after spending weeks with Flynn and his family, it’s easy to forget exactly why she’s standing in a spectacular cave putting his ring on her finger. And why she cannot let herself fall for younger brother of the man whose babies she’s carrying…]

And so, in the presence of your family and of each other, it is done. You are husband and wife.

For a moment, the celebrant looked at a loss. Denise and Alice burst into excited applause and, under the screen of their excitement, he quietly hinted to them, ‘You may kiss.’

Kiss? Bel flicked her focus urgently between the celebrant and Flynn. ‘Uh... Is it still...’ She whispered. ‘Can it be legal without...?’

A deep frown cut the celebrant-guide’s moderate face. ‘It’s legal, yes...but—’

‘She’s kidding,’ Flynn cut in, glaring at her meaningfully the moment the celebrant looked down at his folder. ‘And shy.’

‘Of course,’ the man said. ‘How about I just prepare the certificate...’

And then he was off, leaving just the two of them perched high in the opening of the earth, with his family and all her lies on one side and a two hundred foot drop to an ancient, frigid crater on the other. And a belly-ful of babies which meant there was really only one way she could go.

‘It’s just a kiss, Bel.’

Panic surged through her on painful pulses. ‘I don’t... We don’t... Your family’s watching...’

‘Exactly. How will that look? We’re supposed to have made children together and you won’t even kiss me?’

I don’t care how it will look. Icare about how it will feel. How I will feel... Her heart hammered furiously. ‘You said you don’t kiss in public.’

‘This is going to have to be an exception.’ He slipped his hands from hers and slid them up to frame her face. ‘They’re all waiting.’

Oh God...

Flynn inched closer, towering over her and the excited chatter from his family warped into a high pitched drone in her ears. She could feel his pulse beating as powerfully as hers into her lower lip as he dragged his thumb gently over it, learning its shape.

The tingles she usually felt on contact with him had dressed up for the occasion, too. They zinged, live and sharp as electric current down into her body and caused what little air remained in her lungs to escape on a shocked breath.

His eyes flicked down briefly as her mouth fell open, but then here turned them to hers, studying her for the slightest reaction, his own lips parting as he lowered his head. And then their lips touched: his, warm and soft and encouraging; hers cool and startled and non-participatory.

She physically jerked at the first touch, but the fingers curled aroundthe base of her skull meant she couldn’t go far. He lingered for a heartbeat before shuffling half a step closer and tilting her face for a better angle.They pressed more firmly against her and his breath warmed the deathly cool of her flesh while her head swam with the earthy scent of him. It felt like he was stealing her soul through her frigid lips and he slid one hand down around her middle to keep her upright. That brought her hard up against his torso and triggered an uprising in her already struggling heartbeat. It surged so forcefully through her veins...he’d have to feel it pulsing in her lips.

She broke the contact long enough to suck in a breath and that would have been the time to step back, to end the kiss and this farce of a wedding. But those full, sweet lips were only millimetres from hers and still so warm and inviting, and the body held against hers was so intriguingly masculine, and all the rogue thoughts from Alice’s bedroom came flooding back. Wondering what it would be like to touch Flynn for real, imagining him pressed down on top ofher, buried in her kiss, buried in her...

Even though that was a bad, bad, bad idea.

Her fingers closed around his jacket. Escape was just a gentle push away.

But escape was in the other direction, and Bel’s body stretched back up to close the distance between them. Flynn’s eyes flared briefly as she pressed her mouth back against his but the shock didn’t slow him for long. He forked his free hand around beneath the complicated twists of braids in her hair and realigned his mouth to fully seal them together.

A proper kiss. A killer kiss.

His lips nudged hers into movement, opening them wider and dragging back and forth across them. And then his tongue joined the party and Bel was lost in the hot, wet, hormonal haze. Her chest squeezed for lack of air and when she finally breathed in it was mostly Flynn’s exhaled breath.

He pulled her up harder against him. Hips to hips. Hard to soft. She clung to him, hopelessly, as the bowels of the earth spun madly around them.

Behind them, someone cleared their throat tactfully and Bel came screaming back to reality. She tore her lips from Flynn’s and fought to focus her cloudy gaze on the politely averted eyes of his family.

Drew’s family. He should have been here, too.

Flynn stiffened up immediately.

He didn’t release her far, but he tucked his lips down to her ear and whispered thickly, darkly. ‘Wrong brother, Princess.’

Their Miracle Twins is out in January in the UK, February in the US and March in Australia/NewZealand.


To win yourself an advance copy, just leave a comment about Bel and Flynn’s sizzling, subterranean smooch!


For more information on Nikki Logan and her books, visit here!


Come back next Sunday for a special LoveCats Christmas message.