Spontaneous - Brenda Jackson [34]
A team.
For some reason he liked the sound of that. While on the police force he’d had a female partner once. A very competent woman who was good at what she did, and he’d always felt secure that she was covering his back. But he and Kim were a different kind of team. He felt a bond with her that he couldn’t explain but knew existed.
She shifted position in bed and the ring she wore drew his attention. The ring he’d placed there earlier that day. He felt a sudden tightness in his chest. Seeing that ring—his ring—on her hand did something to him.
He never wanted to see it on anyone else’s hand. Sweet mercy. He rubbed his hands down his face, knowing what that admission meant. For all his bantering about how he never wanted to share his life with any woman, he knew if the circumstances were different, if she didn’t have dreams to pursue, he would make her a permanent part of his life. He could honestly say that he had never wanted a woman as badly as he wanted her. And that intense desire had originated the first time he’d set eyes on her.
He had been drawn to her because deep down, in spite of all the sexual chemistry they generated, there had been another pull just as strong.
They were alike in a number of ways. Both had parental issues they couldn’t let go of. Her father and his mother had turned them off ever having a fulfilling marriage of their own. But he could now say that the thought of settling down and committing his life to a woman didn’t scare the hell out of him like it once had, and he credited that to Kim. She was nothing like Susan Jeffries, and he believed she would never desert the man she loved or the children she’d given birth to. She was loyal and dedicated to a fault. Definitely the kind of woman any man would want to claim as his own.
And the thought of any man doing that was something he didn’t want to think about.
10
KIM TRIED TO FEIGN SLEEP at the feel of a hard erection poking her in the back, dead center where her butt cheeks came together, and a hot wet tongue gliding across the skin at her nape.
She closed her eyes and decided she wasn’t ready to let Duan know she was awake yet. She curled her hands into fists when he shifted and his tongue began moving down her spine.
“Since you’re awake, how about flipping on your back so we can play,” a deep husky voice said, his heated breath sending sensuous sensations uncoiling in her belly.
She smiled and glanced over her shoulder before turning onto her back. “How did you know I was awake?”
He looked up into her face. “By the way you were breathing. I didn’t touch you until I knew I had your attention. You didn’t fool me.”
And before she could make a comment to that, he shifted his body and leaned down to kiss her. The first thing that came to her mind was that his tongue was full of energy this morning, and the second was that she didn’t have one single complaint about it, especially after the way he’d pampered her last night.
She so loved the feel of his mouth on hers, the way he seemed to put everything into every kiss they shared. And how he seemed to greedily lap her up, feast hungrily on her as he drove his tongue deeper and deeper inside her mouth.
The ringing of her cell phone had them breaking apart, sucking in hard breaths. “That’s probably Mom making sure we don’t forget breakfast,” she said, shift ing to reach for the ringing phone.
Before she got too far away, Duan reached out, grabbed a thigh and leaned down to place a kiss right in the center of her stomach before sliding off the bed and grabbing his own cell phone off the nightstand. He had heard the humming sound as it vibrated before day break, but had decided to miss the call since he didn’t want to wake Kim.
He saw the missed call had come from Landon. While Kim chatted with her mother he moved toward the balcony to return Landon’s