A Firefighter in Her Stocking

Zip her lips?

She was reverting to preschool.

Or maybe the way Jude was looking at her, touching her, had her intelligence on hold.

He quirked a brow. “You know my job is to put out fires, right?”

“My guess is that you’ve started more than a few, too.” She swallowed, half expecting him to sweep her off her feet and carry her to his bedroom all Rhett Butler style.

Would she stop him?

Or would she give in to the curiosity of how good Jude Davenport could make her feel? Because she knew being the focus of this man’s attention in bed would be unlike anything she’d ever imagined possible.

Before that moment, that was, because right now her imagination was endless.

Jude stared into her eyes for long moments. “What are you doing tomorrow evening, Sarah Grayson?”

CHAPTER SIX

CONFUSED, SARAH BLINKED. Tomorrow evening? Shouldn’t he be worried about what she was doing right then? At that moment? In the next fifteen minutes? No, Jude wouldn’t be a fifteen-minute man. He’d be hours and hours.

There went her imagination again. Endless.

“Working,” she answered, thinking he couldn’t really have just asked if she was busy, because she didn’t expect him to want more than just a rumble between his sheets.

Or was that his normal routine? Make the woman think he was interested in more than just one night before luring her into his bed?

Hadn’t he already figured out that she needed no further luring? She was curious and purring for more.

“How about Friday evening?” he asked, his thumb sliding across her cheek. “Are you working then?”

Her forehead scrunched. “No, but—”

“Plans?”

“No, but—” She was going to tell him she didn’t want idle promises of seeing him again. If she agreed. And she would. Why not let a man like Jude introduce her to what all the sex hype was about? Sexual Orgasm for Beginners?

Ha! She’d bet anything he’d move straight into an advanced course. Maybe Advanced Multiple Wows, or something along those lines.

“Would you give me the privilege of taking you to your first Broadway show on Friday evening?”

Their minds clearly on two different subjects, Sarah’s head spun and she frowned at him in bewilderment. “Why would you want to do that?”

Why was he talking about Friday evening when they were in the here and now and his bedroom was only a few feet away?

“I’d like to take you to watch Phantom of the Opera.”

“What? Why?”

“I’d like to fulfill that desire of yours.”

Which was where her brain had been, not on watching a play. But he meant...he was saying...asking...

“As a...” she’d been going to say “friend”, but, whatever they were, they weren’t friends “...neighbor?”

He chuckled. “As someone who’d like to kiss you goodnight again. Soon.”

“Oh.” She bit her lower lip. Part of her wanted to throw caution to the wind and say yes, and to please just go ahead and kiss her again right now, like she’d thought he was going to do. Would that be soon enough? But she wasn’t a throw-caution-to-the-wind kind of girl. She was a logical girl who avoided men like him because they used women. She knew he used women. She saw the parade of usees leaving his apartment the morning after.