She’d wanted, expected, the words to sound dismissive, derisory; instead, confusion and her damning curiosity colored them.
The heavens answered her. A deep rumble growled through the night, followed by a sharp crack as lightning split the sky. The first flare was followed by others, flashing behind the screen of the roiling clouds, a display of elemental energy.
The light lit his face, every chiseled angle, each rock-hard plane. Gave her fair warning when he moved closer yet, when he raised his large hands and framed her face.
Tipped it to his.
“This.” The word feathered through her mind, dark and tempting.
He bent his head; she was so tall he didn’t have to bend very far before his lips hovered over hers.
She drew in a breath, held it, every muscle tensed and quivering.
His lids lifted; his eyes trapped hers. “Don’t fight.” It was a warning. “Don’t try to break away.”
His lashes lowered as he closed the last inch. “Don’t try to pretend you don’t want to know.”
The last word was a seduction, a whisper staining her lips, a promise—one he instantly fulfilled.
His lips closed over hers, no light caress but a proper kiss—one she’d been waiting for all her life.
Or so it seemed. One part of her seized, grabbed, gloried.
The rest felt stunned, shaken out of her world and into some other.
She was kissing him back before she’d thought. Moving into him in the same instant his hands fell from her face and he reached for her.
Then she was in his arms, locked to him. His lips were hard, demanding; she parted hers, not to appease but to know. To discover. To see.
What she hadn’t imagined might be.
There was heat and sensation, from him, of him—and within her. Not fire, not true flame, but a warmth that was every bit as elemental, as potentially powerful, as tangible as the heavy muscles of his chest beneath her hands.
She sank against him, not because she was boneless, helpless, but because she wanted to.
And the heat merged, his and hers, and flowed about them.
His tongue swept her lower lip, then slid into her mouth, touched hers, and she shivered. Sank closer still, her hands fisting in his coat as she welcomed him in and he drank.
Strength surrounded her, to her more potent than any drug, one so few could give her. She counted the world well lost as he wrapped her in his arms and kissed her as if she were not just a drug but the breath of life to him.
He angled his head, deepened the kiss—and hunger burst through. Elemental, powerful, pure. His, hers—one fed the other, quickly escalating, with every heartbeat spiraling higher, spreading, out of control.
Until it roared throu
gh them, ravenous, greedy—insatiable.
Gervase had stopped thinking. In the instant she’d moved into his embrace, when his arms had closed about her and she’d offered her mouth, he’d stepped over some edge—into a world ruled by desire.
But not any simple desire he recognized. The heat was familiar, but every touch was heightened, every glow brighter, every aspect keener, deeper, broader, tighter—infinitely more compelling.
Infinitely more addictive.
He had to have more—and whatever he asked for she gave. Surrendered.
Her lips were his, her mouth, her body supple and curvaceous filling his arms.
Craccccckk!