Candy Halliday - Driven To Distraction - Driven To Distraction / Winging It

A trace of moisture remained on the back of his hand from her kiss, skewing his thoughts. He’d never had trouble focusing before he met Stacy. “Have men kissed your hand before?”

“No. It’s not an everyday sort of thing.”

He kissed the back of her hand. She didn’t react the way she had when he’d kissed her palm. “You didn’t like it when I kissed your palm?”

“Well, actually…I did. No one’s ever kissed my palm before. It was…interesting.”

“Tater Tot casserole interesting?”

She laughed, and a warm, satisfied feeling flooded through him.

“Definitely more interesting than that.” She took a quick breath. “It was arousing. Like this.”

She took his hand, faced it palm up and kissed the center of it. Her mouth lingered there, hot and moist against his skin. She was right—it was arousing. And not just the legal definition of inciting to action, awakening…No, this was arousing in a different way. More than physical.

But very, very physical. His body was awakening, rising. If she asked if this charade was hard on him, he couldn’t honestly answer no this time. Heat flushed through him. Was it dopamine or norepinephrine? All he knew was that it was way more interesting than Tater Tot casserole interesting.

She abruptly stopped pressing her mouth against his palm and sat up. “We’d better stop.”

“But we’re doing so well. I’m aroused. Aren’t you?”

“Yes, but we’re only supposed to pretend to be…aroused.”

“Oh…right.” That pretending thing again.

“Geez, look. No, don’t look. There’s Nita and Jack. And Arlene. Look at them, they’re like vultures, moving in for the kill. No, don’t look!”

He was getting dizzy with the looking and not looking. “The people we’re supposed to be fooling,” he whispered.

“Exactly.”

“So, if I did this—” he kissed her palm again, very slowly, the way she’d kissed his “—it would help our defense position. Right?”

Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she whispered, “Exactly.”

He’d never had this effect on a woman before, at least not that he’d noticed. He was noticing now, cataloging every action versus reaction. When he flicked his tongue against her skin, she inhaled sharply. When he traced his tongue across the lines of her palm, her breathing increased threefold. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Elmo watching them with interest. When Barrett’s tongue dipped into the crevice between her fingers, he didn’t care what Elmo was doing anymore. She let out a long, low moan.

Her eyes snapped open, and she pulled her hand back. “Okay, that’s good. I think we’ve got them fooled now, yes, indeedy.” Her voice sounded shaky.

He was surprised to hear a quiver in his voice when he said, “Are you sure?” He leaned closer to her face. Her lips glistened after she licked them. He wanted to kiss her—just for show, of course. Mostly for show, anyway. All right, forget the show. “Maybe we should—”

“Go home. Yes, that’s what we should do,” she said in a breathless rush of words. “Our mission here is done.”

Done, Barrett thought. But not over. He was a research scientist, after all. And he had a lot more research to do on Stacy.

THIS ENTIRE SITUATION was unfair, Stacy thought as she readied herself for a jog at six-thirty in the morning—sixthirty! After which, she had to teach her workout class. If she’d slept well, that would have helped. She couldn’t even blame Weasel Boy. Barrett had kindly offered to keep him so she wouldn’t have to abide his whining all night.

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