The Right Twin For Him (O'Rourke Family 2) by Julianna Morris

doubly vulnerable to all the pitfalls and dangers in the world. He’d managed his emotions for so long it was unsettling to be around someone who felt both joy and sorrow with such abandon.
    She wriggled, doing devastating things to his self-control. “I said to let me go.”
    Patrick raised one eyebrow. “I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. You’re probably itching to slap my face, and this way you can’t get much English into your swing, even if you do try.”
    “That’s ridiculous.”
    “Not really. I bet you were too stunned to slap Ted, so you probably have a lot of pent-up anger to take out on someone. If I show up at dinner tonight witha bruise on my jaw, they’ll all wonder who I’ve been fighting.”
    “Like I could ever bruise you,” Maddie snapped. “I’d break my hand trying.”
    “You never know. So talk to me.”
    “All right,” she said. “Let’s talk about a guy who kisses a woman as some kind of stupid ‘demonstration.’ How would you feel if I’d kissed you to demonstrate something?”
    “Guys aren’t like women. We like kissing for any reason,” Patrick said without thinking.
    “That isn’t…you aren’t…you…” She let out an inarticulate shriek.
    Jeez.
    What was that cliché about the difference between men and women and their views on sex? Men don’t need a reason, they just need a place. Right. To a certain extent it was true, but he could see Maddie’s point. If he’d wanted to bolster her self-confidence, he should never have claimed he had a rational reason to kiss her. Especially when it was just an excuse—nothing about kissing Maddie was rational, he’d just wanted to make it sound that way after the fact.
    “I guess we’ll have to do it over again,” Patrick said, his voice rumbling through the tightness in his chest. He didn’t want to hurt Maddie; she’d been hurt enough.
    “Do what?”
    “Kiss. And I could try some other forms of persuasion.”
    Ignoring all the reasons he shouldn’t take things further, Patrick slid his finger down Maddie’s jaw, then her throat, settling on the first button of her dress. He hadn’t been a wild teenage boy for nothing, andfirst thing he’d noticed about her dress that morning was that the buttons were not the decorative variety.
    With the skill he’d developed by the time he was sixteen, he unfastened the first button one-handed. Beneath his fingers Maddie drew a sharp breath but remained silent. Three more buttons slid from their holes, and a satisfied smile curved Patrick’s mouth when he eased his hand inside the opening. He liked front-clasp bras.
    The pupils in her eyes dilated as the hooks were dispatched with equal dexterity.
    “Anything to say?” he muttered.
    “Like what?”
    Like stop.
    Patrick couldn’t quite bring himself to suggest it—not when he didn’t want to stop—so he lifted one shoulder. “I told you I wasn’t the least bit nice, and this should prove it. What would your father say if he knew what I was doing?”
    “He wouldn’t say anything, he’d just shoot you. Daddy believes in the direct approach.”
    A grin pulled at Patrick’s mouth. “And how would you feel about me getting shot?”
    “That…he should have waited. At least for a minute.” A peculiar mix of anticipation and dread filled Maddie’s golden-brown eyes. She wanted to know what he thought of her body, and at the same time was afraid of finding out.
    The chance that Maddie was a virgin was rapidly becoming a certainty in his mind, but he pushed the thought away. There were some things it was safer not to know.
    Patrick leaned closer and pressed a kiss to her mouth as he eased his fingers around the feminineterritory he’d uncovered. Freed of the silk bra, her breast plumped into his hand, her nipple hardening as he rubbed his palm across the sensitive tip. The sensation nearly drove him to his knees. It wasn’t as if he’d never touched a woman before, but Maddie’s scent and taste and essential