QUOTE : Instead, she said, “Well, then. Go ahead, I don’t mind.”<br /><br /> “You don’t mind?” This was totally outside Hal’s admittedly limited wooing experience.<br /><br /> “No. I don’t mind,” she said with a shrug.<br /><br /> “Oh. Well, do you want to?”<br /><br /> “Forget it,” she growled, spots of pink coloring her cheeks. “Let’s walk back. I’ve spent less time dickering over a horse.”<br /><br /> Hal’s father always said that a good soldier adapts to a changing battlefield.<br /><br /> “Wait.”<br /><br /> When she turned back, he cradled her chin with his gloved hands and kissed her. Her lips were warm and rough and perfect. Encouraged, he slid his arms around her and pulled her close, extending the kiss. They were of nearly equal height, and they fit together like the two halves of—of something fine. She smelled like fresh air and sweat, metal and horse—perfect.<br /><br /> When they finally broke apart, she studied him a moment, then took his face between her warm hands and kissed him again, long and deep, their hearts thumping between them.<br /><br /> With a kind of growl, Hal pinned her to the wall and answered her with a longer, deeper kiss of his own. And then it was like a kind of madness took them, a frenzy of kissing