LITMIR.BIZ

      Hud’s mind went blank and his body hummed with unbridled desire while the mysterious woman, who had darted into his room unexpectedly, kissed him deaf, blind and stupid. His initial reaction upon seeing the woman in gray, whose face was concealed by the droopy brim of her bonnet, had been to lunge for the pistol that he’d tossed on the bed. But she’d caught him off guard when she latched onto him as if he were the missing half of her soul reunited after an eternity.

      When she delivered that first lip-sizzling wallop of a kiss, Hud forgot everything he ever knew. It was the most bizarre moment of his life. He couldn’t see the color of her hair or the color of her eyes. He couldn’t tell much of anything about her appearance because she was no more than a gray shadow within the inky shadows of his dimly lit room. Yet, he kissed her for all he was worth and she clung to him with the same reckless abandonment.

      Damn, in all his thirty-three years he’d never been so bewildered or out of control. Even his years of soldiering and rangering hadn’t prepared him for a surprise attack that assaulted all his senses at once. The unidentified female left him aching with lust and shaking with need in nothing flat. He responded instinctively to the taste of her kiss and the enticing feel of her shapely body molded to his.

      After a long, hungry moment of pressing her hips against his hard arousal and kissing her as if there were no tomorrow—or the day after—he heard the door to the next room snap shut and the lock click into place. Then suddenly the kissing bandit lurched backward. Hud impulsively tried to pull her back into his arms but she bent his wrist at a painful angle and darted from his reach.

      “Ouch,” he said to the back of her bonnet-covered head. “Mind telling me what the hell’s going on here—?”

      “Shh-shh-shh!” she said without glancing back at him.

      Then poof! She slipped out the door and scampered down the hall.

      Hud craned his neck around the partially open door, noting the mysterious female in the dowdy gray gown and shawl was careful to cling to the shadows of the hall. When she reached the staircase, she turned her head away from him to conceal her facial features. Then she flew down the steps and disappeared from sight. He hadn’t had a clear view of her from her dramatic arrival to her abrupt departure.

      He couldn’t describe the elusive night visitor or identify her voice. Yet, he knew the appealing taste of her, knew her alluring scent and he knew how amazingly good her curvaceous body felt in his arms.

      Frowning, Hud shook his head to clear the erotic sensations that fogged his senses. He glanced toward the waiting tub of bathwater behind the dressing screen and smiled wryly. If the kissing bandit had arrived two minutes later, Hud would have been stark naked. That would have been an interesting way to make her acquaintance. Of course, her way of introducing herself with a steamy, mind-blowing kiss and “shh-shh-shh” was peculiar enough.

      “Ah, well, I guess you have to expect such things in a boisterous town like The Flat,” he said to himself as he unfastened the placket of his breeches on his way to the tub.

      Hud smirked at the steam drifting from the water. Now he was going to need a cool bath instead of a warm one, because the kissing bandit had left him hot and bothered.