"I don't think you're stupid."

Her eyes flashed, fascinating him with the sudden and unexpected fire of gold. "Just naive, then. Probably a bit incompetent and certainly too…" Her mind went on a fumbling search for the word. "Too midwestern to take care of myself in the big, bad city."

His eyebrow arched in a way she found both charming and infuriating. "You are the one who walked into town with less than ten dollars, no purse and nothing but the clothes on her back, aren't you?"

"So what! It got me here, didn't it?"

"Point taken," he murmured.

"And last night wasn't the first time I've seen an evil-minded drunk, either. I'm from Kansas, not Dogpatch. We've got plenty of drunks in Kansas."

"I stand corrected." And struggling mightily not to grin.

"And you needn't feel obligated to look after me as if I were some stray puppy who might run out into traffic. There's absolutely no reason for you to worry about me."

"I didn't say I was worried about you. I said you worried me."

"It's the same thing."

"It's entirely different."

"How?"

He studied her. Color was warm in her face, her eyes were dark and shining. It wasn't just anger she was feeling, he realized, but bruised pride as well. And that was undeniably his fault. He sighed. "You're really leaving me no choice. You worry me," he repeated, and laid his hands on her shoulders. "Because…" Slid them down her arms, around her waist. Watched her lips part in surprise just before he covered them with his.

The world tilted. Every coherent thought in her mind tumbled out and scattered. Hopelessly lost. His mouth was just as she'd imagined it would be. Hot and firm and clever. But now it was on hers, luring her into some exciting airless space where everything shimmered and shook. Colors brightened, blurring around the edges before they melted together and turned as liquid as her bones.

His tongue swept over hers, teasing, inviting, mixing his dark, intimate taste with her own. Smooth, so smooth, that glide of tongue, that slide of lips, that she seemed to coast bonelessly down the long chute of sensation toward a spreading pool of liquid heat.

Her hands had come up to clutch at his arms for balance. He could feel the pressure of her short nails through his jacket, a contrasting signal of anxiety even as her lips opened and gave. Nerves and surrender, a dangerous mix, punctuated by the helpless little whimpers of pleasure that sounded in her throat, combined to take him deeper than he'd intended, to make him want more, much more than he'd expected.

What he'd begun churned through him and demanded he finish—his way. Then and there, and thoroughly. She was aroused. So was he. However innocent, she wasn't a child. And he wanted her. God, he wanted her.

Her eyes remained closed as he drew her away. He watched the tip of her tongue trace her curvy, unpainted lips before she pressed those lips together, like a woman lingering over a particularly lush taste. Even as her lashes fluttered, a hot fist of need balled in his gut.