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“Was that your mom on the phone just now?” The question had all the earmarks of an idle one, but there was an interested lilt to her voice that seeenuinely seek verification of the assumption

“It was,” he confir why it mattered to Dallas

“I thought so”

“I noticed you out here on the porch You looked a little blue”

“Really?” She turned at right angles to the railing and leaned her back against a wooden post, a s her lips “Is that why you came out? To cheer me up?”

The move Quint wanted Unhurried, he swung toward her, si up to brace a hand against the post a few inches above her head

“Does that rin

“I suppose it would depend on how you went about it” Again there was a trace of uncertainty, a kind of drawing back that seely to his mouth and that pushed him closer

“I was always taught that a kissbetter” He followed his words with a doard dip of his head and claimed her lips

The night air had chilled their surface,his first taste of the heat that soon coaxed the responsive pressure he sought The quickening ardor of her lips burned through the restraint he had placed on hier war contact with her body

But the ainst him, Dallas ripped herself away fro motion

“Is that how you usually go about cheering someone up?” The disturbed breathiness in her voice took much of its stiff demand away from it, and offered its own kind of reassurance to Quint

“I saved it for you” Standing behind her, he wound his ar his head to nuzzle the side of her neck “I adainst her skin “It’s been a little too long since I held you in my arms, and the desire just builds up”

“I could tell”

“Obvious, wasn’t it?” He smiled, but he could feel the tension in her body that kept her froainst him