First Kiss Friday – Her Unbridled Cowboy by Donna Michaels

Today’s First Kiss Friday featured guest is Donna Michaels, author of contemporary romance Her Unbridled Cowboy.  Welcome Donna!  Here’s the first kiss between Kerri Masters and Connor McCall.

 (Set up: Kerri’s goaded by Connor into kissing him under the mistletoe at a party)

Ignoring everyone, Kerri sat right down on Connor’s lap causing him to unfold his arms and stare at her through startled eyes.

Good.

Unexpected move number one.

Aware that his arms were at his sides, and he appeared to deliberately refrain from touching her, Kerri decided her goal would be to make him touch her. Once he did, she could break the kiss.

Now, if only she knew how to make him touch her. She had no friggin’ clue. With the exception of Kevin, the last person she’d kissed didn’t even like women. How in the world to get a virile man like Connor to break his control was way out of her repertoire of experience, and exactly the challenge she needed.

Heart hammering in her chest, palms sweating, she told herself this kiss wasn’t about what Connor wanted her to do to him…it was about what she wanted to do to Connor.

Finding herself face to face with the potent man for the first time in her life, she felt less intimidated. He no longer towered over her. They were…equal.

She liked equal.

Clearly waiting for her next move, he sat still, spicy aftershave tickling her nose, and she was so close she could see every gold fleck dancing in his brown eyes as amusement sparked with heat. When the warmth of his exhale hit her face, a swarm of butterflies settled low in her belly. Massive ones. Huge. The size of mutants.

But she refused to lose her nerve. Raising her chin and ignoring the incessant beating of her heart, she removed his Stetson and handed it to Kevin.

“Here, hold this for Connor,” she said without looking at the dreamboat cowboy. “He doesn’t need it right now.”

Right now. Right. Because she was going to…what?

Lordy, what am I doing? She had no idea, but refused to panic. Go with your instincts.

Okay. Right. Instincts.

Her hands itched to touch him, so she palmed his chest and slowly ran her fingers upward to his shoulders, loving the feel of sinew and muscles rippling beneath. Darn man was walking testosterone wrapped in hard strength.

Even though he still hadn’t touched her, Connor’s eyes had darkened, so she took that as a sign she was doing something right. Please God, let me be doing this right. Using her need as a guide, Kerri ran a finger up the bare flesh of his neck, over his jaw then down to his chin.

Holy smokes, the man was hot. Heat emanated off the cowboy like an L.A. sidewalk in mid July. And she could feel him, all of him. She was very aware of the bulge poking her cradled butt.

The strangest urge to squirm and rock into him shook through Kerri. So she did.

He stiffened. “Kerri.” His sexy tone was too low for the others to hear, but she heard the warning.

Holy sugar, he made her want things…things she couldn’t name.

Completely unable to breathe, she ignored that minor annoyance and brushed her finger over his lower lip, watching, enthralled as his pupils grew large as she very slowly moved her face closer.

But he still made no move to touch her.

Didn’t matter. It was no longer about him. It was about her. She needed to taste him. Now.

Holding his chin in her hand, she lightly ran her tongue across the seal of his lips, and Alleluia, he growled.

Growled.

In an instant, she was crushed to him as one large hand spanned her shoulder blade and the other held the back of her head, breaking her clip like she’d broken his control.

If Kerri had been firing on all cylinders, she would’ve jumped to her feet and celebrated her victory. But her cylinders and brain cells, and even stark reality, shifted out of focus as he deepened the kiss.

Her whole body tingled and felt alive. She’d never been kissed like this before—like she was the most important thing in the universe. Worshipped. Needed. Desired. Connor’s mouth was hungry and firm, his tongue touching hers, and judging by the increase in the bulge she was now sitting on, the cowboy wasn’t as allergic to city girls as he claimed.