“Is that how you win arguments?” he demanded. “A fist to the face?”
“I was done arguing. That was punctuation. You’re going to want to get off me, Larkin, and fast. I’ve got a slippery hold right now.”
“Bugger that.”
“Bugger you.” She flipped him off, then sprang to a crouch to block anything he might throw at her. “I won’t be played like this. It’s all so easy when it’s walks in the sunshine, and talking about picnics, but when things get hard, when I have to be hard, then you’re revolted. I’m a fucking monster.”
“I never called you that, and I’m not revolted. I’m sodding mad is what I am.” He dived at her, and they hit the floor again, rolled. Their bodies rammed into a table, tipping it over so the blown glass bowl on it shattered.
“If you’d stop trying to bruise and bloody me for five bloody seconds we could finish this.”
“If I wanted you bloody, you’d be pumping from an artery. I don’t need you passing judgment on me, or giving me the big chill because I’ve shocked your sensibilities. I don’t need this bullshit from you or—”
“What you need is to shut the hell up.”
He crushed his mouth to hers in an angry, frustrated kiss even as her elbow found its way into his gut. He had to lift his head to wheeze back in the air she stole.
“Don’t tell me to shut up.” She grabbed his hair with both hands, yanked his mouth back down to hers.
Just as angry, just as frustrated. Just as needy. The hell with it, she thought. The hell with right and wrong, with sense, with safety. Screw control.
There were times you just took, and let yourself be taken.
Didn’t mean anything, she told herself as she dragged at his shirt. It was only flesh, it was only heat. She wanted to weep and rage as much as she wanted to consume.
She shoved him over, straddled him as she pulled her shirt over her head. But he reared up, clamping his arms around her as his mouth found her breast. So she held on, letting her head fall back, letting him plunder.
Now he was riding the dragon, he thought, flying on the power of it. She was like trying to hold flame, so the sheer burn of her made him delirious. He used teeth and tongue, gorging himself as her fingers dug into his shoulders, his back, his sides. Then she was under him again, her hips grinding up while their mouths clashed.
He pulled the loose pants she wore down her hips, and there was nothing beneath them but woman, hot and wet. Hotter and wetter when his hand found her. Her harsh, throaty moan seared across his lips.
When the orgasm ripped through her, she could only think, God, thank God. But the greed whipped back, spun through like a cyclone that had her biting, scratching, tearing. She would give no quarter here, and ask none, but only clamped strong legs around him. Held on to that exquisite shock when he plunged into her.
And drove her like a mad thing, thrust upon urgent thrust, until they were both burned out.
What had she done? She’d just had crazed, kick-your-ass sex without a single thought of self-preservation, of consequences, of…anything. No thought, none at all, just brutal, primal need.
He was still inside her, and if felt as though their bodies had melted together in the heat. How would she separate herself again? How could she come out of this whole?
She wasn’t supposed to feel like this. She wasn’t supposed to want something—someone—so much she forgot herself. Let herself be taken even as she took, and in blind, feral passion.
She hadn’t stopped it. She hadn’t been able to stop it. And now she would pay.
He murmured something; she couldn’t make it out. Then he nuzzled—a kind of nose in the neck like a puppy—before he rolled aside.
The simple sweetness of the gesture after the ferocity all but broke her into pieces.
“Crushing you.” He grabbed a couple of ragged breaths. “Well, that was fairly amazing, and not at all the way I’d had it all planned out. Are you all right then?”
Careful, she warned herself. Careful and cool. “No problem.”
She sat up, reached for her pants.
“Hang on a minute.” He patted her arm. “My head’s still spinning here. And I barely took the time to look at you seeing as we were both in a rush.”
“Got the job done.” She hitched on her pants. “That’s what counts.”
He pushed himself up, reached her shirt before she did. “Look here at me, would you?”