About That Kiss
(Heartbreaker Bay
#5)
by Jill Shalvis
When love drives you crazy . . .
When sexy Joe Malone never calls after their explosive kiss,
Kylie shoves him out of her mind. Until she needs a favor, and it’s a doozy.
Something precious to her has been stolen and there’s only one person with unique
finder-and-fixer skills that can help—Joe. It means swallowing her pride and
somehow trying to avoid the temptation to throttle him—or seduce him.
the best thing to do . . .
No, Joe didn’t call after the kiss. He’s the fun time guy, not
the forever guy. And Kylie, after all she’s been through, deserves a good man
who will stay. But everything about Kylie makes it damned hard to focus, and
though his brain knows what he has to do, his heart isn’t getting the memo.
… is enjoy the ride.
As Kylie and Joe go on the scavenger hunt of their lives, they
discover surprising things about each other. Now, the best way for them to get
over “that kiss” might just be to replace it with a hundred more.
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Joe
studied her. “I asked you once before, but now I’m going to ask you again. Is
there something going
on
between you two?”
She
tossed up her hands. “Why do you both keep asking me that about each other?”
His
eyes narrowed. “I thought nothing was going on.”
“And
before today, I could’ve passed a lie detector test on that,” she said.
“What
happened today?”
She
paused. Not because she had anything to be ashamed of, but because she wasn’t
quite sure what
had
happened.
“Kylie.”
She
sighed. “It’s nothing.”
“Try
again,” Joe said and gave her the very male universal go on gesture.
She
rolled her eyes. “Fine. He . . . finally made a move on me.”
Joe
didn’t budge. Not a blink, not a muscle twitch, nothing, but she could’ve
popped corn off the electric tension coming off him.
“Describe
‘made a move,’ ” he finally said.
She
crossed her arms. “And again, how is this relevant to my case?”
He
just gave her that careful stare again and she thought wow, those eyes of his should be registered as a lethal weapon, because she found herself opening her mouth and spilling her
guts. “He kissed me.”
“He
kissed you.”
“Yeah,”
she said. “Do you know that you often repeat what I say?”
“What
kind of a kiss?” he asked.
She
was momentarily bewildered. “I don’t know. It was a kiss. A normal kiss. A nice
kiss.” She cocked her head at him. “How many kinds of kisses are there?”
He
just looked at her for a long moment before coming toward her. He backed her to
the wall and pressed his big hands on either side of her head.
“There
are many kinds of kisses,” he said.
Her
breath had backed up in her throat, where her heart had lodged, pounding
wildly. “S-s-such as?”
“Such
as this one.” And then he leaned in and covered her mouth with his.
At the touch of Joe’s mouth, Kylie’s brain stopped being
capable of rational thought. His tongue gave a knee-weakening stroke against
hers and she let out a shockingly needy moan as she clutched at him, fisting
her hands in the material of his shirt at his chest. Only when he’d thoroughly
plundered and pillaged and left her boneless did he lift his head and
look
into her eyes.
“Wow,”
she whispered, fully aware she was still holding on to him like he was a
lifeline, but the bones in her legs had liquefied. “I mean . . .” She shook her
head. “Wow.”
He
nodded. “Yeah. So to be clear, that wasn’t ‘a normal kiss’ or even ‘a nice
kiss.’ It was a ‘wow’ kiss. Any questions?”
“Just
one,” she said softly. “Can I have another?”
Joe
didn’t have to be asked twice. His mouth immediately descended again, his
fingers sliding into her hair to change the angle of the kiss to suit him. It
was a controlled, alpha thing to do, but she had only one thought—nothing about
the usually carefully, purposely leashed Joe was in control at the moment.
And
she liked it.
She
had no idea how long they went at it because she was in absolute heaven. Who
knew that the man could use his preferred silent
mode to communicate in a way that she finally
approved of?
Only
when she was completely breathless and about to strip him down to his birthday
suit did she manage to pull back.
“Any
more questions?” he asked, also a little bit breathless, which was more than
slightly gratifying. Dumbly, she shook her head. His eyes softened and he
gently he stroked his thumb over her bottom lip. “And FYI? Gib’s an idiot.”
New York Times bestselling author Jill Shalvis
lives in a small town in the Sierras full of quirky characters. Any resemblance
to the quirky characters in her books is, um, mostly coincidental. Look for
Jill’s bestselling, award-winning books wherever romances are sold and visit
her website, www.jillshalvis.com, for a complete book list
and daily blog detailing her city-girl-living-in-the-mountains adventures.
