‘Turn your head, Carly,’ he growled against her ear, his fingers circling ever closer to the tight tips of her breasts. ‘Kiss me.’
His voice was gruff and mindlessly Carly reached back, curling one of her arms behind her to cup his head and bring his mouth to hers. When their lips met she whimpered and he rewarded her by tweaking her nipples firmly through her clothing.
If Carly had ever felt anything so exquisite before she couldn’t remember it. His mouth, those masterful fingers, that hard body covering hers from behind... Time ceased to exist and everything along with it.
Dare whispered her name and turned her in his arms.
Drugged.
He felt drugged as her tongue stroked along his, her mouth wide in an invitation he didn’t need to receive twice. Self-control was a distant memory as Dare crushed her lush breasts against his chest. He felt a momentary relief at the contact but then it wasn’t enough and he powered her back against the trunk of the hundred-year-old oak.
Her fingers delved into his hair to hold him closer and his hands pushed beneath her T-shirt, shoving her bra higher so that she was completely exposed to him. He took his fill of those perfect orbs and pink-tipped nipples before lowering his head to take one into his mouth. Her taste, the texture of her skin was like ambrosia and he suckled her deeply, his mouth shifting between first one and then the other.
She gripped him tighter, her nails raking his shirt, her keening cries filling the air and he knew she would be wet for him. He knew that all he had to do was lower her to the ground, tug down her zipper and part her legs and she’d be his. All his.
And he nearly did exactly that before a modicum of sanity brought him back to where they were. On a public pathway in the middle of Rothmeyer Forest. Dare wrenched his mouth from her breasts, his eyes grim as they met glazed green ones. ‘I’m not going to take you on the forest floor.’
Take her on the forest floor? Carly blinked a couple of times as if she’d just come out of a movie theatre in the middle of the day. Good God, she’d gone crazy!
She couldn’t believe the way she’d opened her mouth wide and stroked her tongue along his, the way she’d wanted to strip the clothes from his body and touch him everywhere.
Realising that her bra was digging into her underarms, Carly yanked it back into place and straightened her T-shirt. ‘Believe me, I don’t want you to take me anywhere. I don’t want you to touch me again. Ever!’
His eyes fell to her aroused breasts, her nipples like hard little diamonds against her clothes. ‘I told you I don’t like liars.’
‘I’m not lying, I’m—’ She broke off as his hand reached out and covered her breast, his gaze defying her to resist him. And she wanted to, she wanted to be completely unaffected by his touch, but she could feel the tension in her shoulders as she battled to stop her body from arching into his.
‘If you’d been wearing a skirt you’d already be mine and you know it,’ he said, his voice hoarse with unmet need.
‘I would have stopped you before then,’ Carly said with more bravado than she felt, flicking his hand from her breast.
‘Would you?’
Dare looked at her mouth, swollen from where he’d ravished it, her cheeks still pink with a passion he’d invoked. She was beautiful. Perhaps the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
He rubbed at his chest. Even now the desire to take her in his arms was so strong he had to turn his back on her to prevent himself from doing it again.
How did he just switch it on and off? Carly wondered, still trembling from the force of the emotions he created in her. If he had a secret she wanted to know what it was because she’d use it to turn her reaction to him off permanently. It was almost as if her brain cells ceased to function when he reached for her.
‘You enjoyed that, didn’t you?’ she accused hotly. ‘Humiliating me like that.’
His heavy-lidded gaze met hers. ‘On the contrary, I thought I was pleasuring you.’
Smug, condescending...
‘I won’t deny that you know what to do with your hands.’ Her eyes dropped to his lips. ‘Your mouth.’ She raised her chin. ‘But you need to know that there is nothing that would induce me to sleep with a man like you.’