Something Wild by Patti Berg Page A

with her back to him, she couldn’t forget the image of his body or his heated eyes, which she knew were watching her move about the living room, studying her just as she studied his not-so-humble abode.
    “Did you come here to see what I look like first thing in the morning?”
    She turned at his question. “No. I’d expected you to be dressed, ready to go after Satan.” She perched on the carved log arm of a rustic western sofa and crossed her legs, taking some weight off her ankle. Again she leisurely gazed at his toes, the long, lean length of his legs, his hard, flat belly, and his breathtaking chest. She smiled in spite of herself. “Is this your normal attire for chasing wild stallions?”
    His hands didn’t move toward the buttons. She’d thought for sure that he’d pull his shirt together, or make some excuse for his appearance, but he did neither.
    “This is what I wear when I’ve spent half the night chasing wayward women and the other half writing a sermon.”
    “Tough night, huh?”
    “I’ve had worse.”
    He pushed away from the door and went to the hearth to toss another log on the already blazing fire. Apparently he was in no rush to go after Satan.
    Against her better judgment, she was in no hurry to leave, either.
    Her gloved fingers moved toward her scarf, unwrapping it slowly. She dropped the wool muffler over the sofa back, feeling all at once like a stripper from the wrong side of Vegas, especially when Mike’s green eyes fastened on each and every one of her moves.
    Nervously she fumbled with the buttons on her coat and he moved toward her slowly, intently, like a tiger stalking prey. Her heart went on overdrive and her fingers trembled. He nudged her hands aside with his strong, nimble fingers, then took his merry sweet time unbuttoning her jacket, watching her eyes, and her lips as he methodically worked his way to the bottom.
    With that done, with her heart racing, he tugged off one of her leather gloves, followed by the wool one she wore under it for extra warmth. His body loomed gloriously, breathtakingly before her and she ached to touch him. All of him. One would think she’d never been near a man before the way her pulse quickened and her body throbbed! Usually she was indifferent. More often than not she looked at dancers, choreographers, and directors as androgynous human beings.
    But right now, her mouth, her nose, and her eyes were only inches from Mike’s stomach, from the column of short black hair that raced from his navel to some hidden, forbidden place beneath the waistband of his jeans, and she saw a sexy creature, not a sexless one.
    She looked up shyly, hoping he couldn’t feel the thoughts ripping through her. Sex. Minister. Sex. Minister. Sex. Those two things didn’t go together at all!
    Nor did the slow, sensual way he took off her second glove and smiled. “Your fingers are freezing.”
    And she was probably going to burn in hell.
    The good pastor captured her hands in the heat of his palms, rubbing them gently to bring back the circulation. “So,” he said, drawing her fingers close to his mouth, blowing his warm, moist breath on them. “What brings you here so early?”
    Suddenly all she could think of was the sensuousness of his actions. The way he’d comforted her and held her close last night, even though he was angry at her for helping Satan escape. His mesmerizing touch on the bottom of her foot. Tender fingers smoothing over her ankle and higher still, inching up under her jeans when all he would have had to do was take her boot off and hightail it out of her bedroom.
    And now—
pant, pant
—the way he was standing so close to her that she could feel the heat of his body as he held her fingers precariously close to his lips.
    These were the actions of a man on the make, a man who’d go to any lengths to get what he wanted from a woman. She’d been around a lot of sleazy men in Vegas, men who thought she was easy, that all they had to do was