" Their eyes met.
For a split second she caught a glimpse of heat in his eyes. Then Jake banked the flame and broke out of her embrace.
Marnie felt a hot blush rise from her toes to her nose.
It took a moment for her eyes to focus and her brain to function. Bewildered, she looked up to find him watching her. His heavy-lidded eyes held a strange desperation as he reached back and unhooked the vice of her ankles from around his wiast.
Her legs dropped. Her heels thumped against the cabinet.
Beneath his hawklike gaze she felt stripped bare and vulnerable. He studied her face, seeming to see more than her features. He seemed to delve into her mind, to touch things deep and frightening—parts of herself Marnie was still exploring.
The muscles in his jaw knotted and unknotted. After a moment he stepped back and casually, but with difficulty, adjusted his jeans
Heat flooded her cheeks. Legs splayed, nipples peaked to his clinical gaze, she’d never experienced such acute embarrassment in her life. Her breath hitched as she jumped off the counter, tugging her top down and her pants up.
At a loss for hers, she half laughed. “I have absolutely no idea what to say.” Which was a reasonable start, she guessed. It was rare for her to be speechless. But then, this was a day of firsts.
“I told you you weren’t my type.” The brass button on his jeans closed like the clasp of a miser’s purse. Other than a faint flush on the ridge of his cheekbones and what looked like a painful erection, he seemed totally unaffected by what had just happened.
She stared at him. “Not your t—What do you call what just happened?” Marnie was confused. It was out of character for her to be sexually aggressive. But now that she’d done it, she wasn’t sorry.
“What part of ‘I don’t want you’ didn’t you understand?”
He’d wanted her. He might lie about it, but his body had been honest. He was as hard as petrified wood.
“Then what”—she pointed—“is that?”
He ignored the bulge in his jeans. “Just because I have it doesn’t mean I intend to use it.”
Marnie stepped forward and touched his arm. He jerked away from her as if she’d used a cattle prod.
“Was it something I said?” she asked quietly, dropping her hand to her side. “Look, I have a tendency to sort of speak without running the words through my brain first. But I know I didn’t give out mixed signals just now. I wanted to make love with you. It was very good. No, darn it, it was excellent. So if you have some sort of medical condition, let’s talk about i—”
He moved backward, almost tripping over Duchess sprawled on the floor. The dog rose to hover anxiously between them. Jake’s eyes turned as he said, “I do not have a medical condition.”
Marnie backed up—mentally as well as physically. Her hip bumped the counter. “Good.”
He scowled and swore under his breath.
“That is good, isn’t it?” she asked tentatively. "
― Cherry Adair , Kiss and Tell (T-FLAC #2; Wright Family #1)