Harlequin Holiday Collection - Four Classic Seasonal Novellas

her share to speed up the process. Hands impatient, mouth greedy, she returned his hungry kisses while helping him peel off his tweed sport coat and yank up the turtleneck underneath. Her palms slid over the silky swirl of black chest hair, planed the bunched muscles of his shoulders, explored the contours of his back.
    In short order, she was down to her hipsters, Clint to his jockey shorts. Silhouetted against the flickering firelight, he raked her with hot, hungry eyes.
    “God, you’re beautiful.”
    The compliment made Sophie blush, but the kisses he trailed from her mouth to her throat to her breasts made her gasp with delight.
    Delight turned to pure, unadulterated lust when he used his tongue and his teeth to bring her nipple to a taut, aching peak. All the while his busy hands explored the rest of her. She was wet and eager, so eager, when he slid a knee between hers to ease them apart.
    She could feel him hard and jutting against her hip, feel the rigid restraint in his quivering muscles as he found her center. Sophie arched, liquid with delight, but clung to a last shred of sanity.
    “You’ve a johnny with you, right?”
    “Huh?”
    She had to chuckle at his startled look. “A johnny. A fifty-pence lifesaver. A condom,” she translated finally, taking pity on the man.
    His mouth tipped into a wicked grin. “Matter of fact, I do. Several, in fact. No undercover agent worth his or her salt ever leaves home without ’em.”

    The first time was wild and hard and fast. The second so exquisitely slow Sophie almost wept with pleasure.
    The third came the next morning, when Clint wedged into the flat’s minuscule shower with her.
    “It’s too small in here for both of us,” she protested, laughing.
    “Not for what I have in mind.”
    When they finally pried themselves out of the stall, the floor was drenched and Sophie’s cheeks bore the mark of his prickly whiskers.
    “Shave,” she ordered, pointing to the toiletries he’d picked up when they’d swung by his hotel yesterday. “While you do, I’ll cook you a true Irish breakfast.”
    When he emerged from the bathroom, she served up fried tomatoes, a rasher of bacon, sausage, cold-boiled potatoes, beans, black pudding and fried eggs topped with grated Dubliner cheese.
    “Do you eat like this every morning?” he asked with a look of delight.
    “Just about.”
    She saw no need to tell him breakfast was the only meal she ate at home. Lunch and dinner she took at the pub as part of her wages.
    “There’s coffee, too. Unless you prefer tea.”
    “Coffee,” he said with true Yank fervor. “Please.”
    She fell a little in love with him then. Maybe it was watching him tear into his breakfast. Maybe it was the snow drifting down outside the window. Maybe it was that incredibly erotic session in the shower.
    Whatever the reason, she vowed to make the most of their remaining time together.

Chapter Seven
    Making the most of their time together wasn’t hard to do. Every hour Sophie spent with Clint she learned a little more about this intriguing, fascinating agent.
    And every hour in his company brought back the magic of Christmas. For the first time since Gran’s death, Sophie delighted in the gaily colored Christmas lights strung across the streets, the holly wreaths on every door, the warm greetings from passersby.
    It crossed her mind more than once that her renewed joy in the season seduced her almost as much as the man himself. Each time she pushed the thought away. For these few days at least, she would let herself enjoy both Clint and the happiness he brought her.
    They spent their time wandering through Dublin’s narrow cobblestone streets, Sophie’s arm tucked in Clint’s while she shared the history of the city she’d come to love. In the evenings she had to work, so he became a fixture at the Bull and Crown. The regulars got to know him, even talked him into belting out a slightly bawdy Christmas carol that had the entire pub laughing and applauding wildly.
    But the nights… Dear Lord above, the nights!
    All it took was a single kiss and she got hot for him. One glide of her palms over the contours of his shoulders, one rasp of his thigh as it slid between hers, one nudge of his rock-hard erection against her belly and she went up in flames.
    He was such a fantastic lover—so tender at times she wanted to cry with it, other times, their romps were hard and fast and greedy. Sophie’d fallen a little in love with him after their