‘Did you get a good enough look?’ she demanded, but even he could hear the husky tone under the snark.
She wanted to be offended. But she wasn’t. She was turned on.
‘Not as good as the look you got this afternoon,’ he shot back, rising to the challenge, glad to take the opportunity to meet her on her own terms. ‘Seems to me, we’re not even close to being even,’ he added, unable to resist the provocative statement.
Her expression flashed with the same heat he could feel building in his groin. Hot blood flooded through his system, rich and fluid and familiar, burning everything in its path.
So what else was new?
‘Fine,’ she announced.
Then she reached down, gripped the hem of his housekeeper’s old T-shirt and dragged it up and over her head. She flung it over her shoulder. Her bare breasts bounced, and the sight of ripe reddened nipples, the scent of firm soft flesh, turned the heat in his abdomen to raw fire.
‘How’s that?’ she demanded. ‘Are we even yet?’
He swore as his erection thickened so fast it hurt.
Jesus, she was so damn perfect. So exquisite... Her sweet flesh was as soft and succulent as he remembered it. He looked his fill, then lifted his head and saw the same desperate passion that was turning his sex to iron reflected in her eyes.
‘Not even close,’ he gri
tted out, then reached to glide his thumb under one plump, puckered nipple.
She gave a shattered gasp and he gripped her hips, dragged her close to lift her. She wrapped her arms round his shoulders and plunged fingers as needy and desperate as his into his hair.
The pure, heady rush of adrenaline made his arms shake. She slanted her mouth across his and he devoured her moan of surrender.
To hell with it. What were they waiting for? They both wanted this... Both needed this...
He thrust his tongue past her open lips, feeding the heat, and explored the recesses of her mouth, starved for the taste of her after two never-ending days and sleepless nights.
He spied the best available horizontal surface—a couch—and headed towards it with her in his arms, determined to get the rest of her naked before he lost what was left of his mind.
He couldn’t wait one more minute to bury himself deep inside that tight, wet heat once more. And to forget about everything but making her scream with pleasure.
* * *
This is insane. This is madness.
The thoughts surged into Cassie’s head as she gripped Luke’s cheeks and sucked on his invading tongue. Then surged right back out again as she welcomed everything he had to give her and demanded more.
Ravenous, desperate, frantic.
Not weak. Not sad. Not alone.
Strong and in command of her own pleasure at last.
He tasted so good, so right. The staggering pain and humiliation of her fear was replaced with hot, unstoppable desire as she clamped her legs around his hips and felt the hard, thick ridge of his erection rubbing against the melting spot between her thighs.
She could have this—could have him. Anything to finally destroy the last of that pitiable, frightened child who had been so exposed, so vulnerable, only moments before.
She didn’t want him to think of her like that.
She wanted him to know her like this.
She needed to take the power back, to own it again. The way she had never been able to before him.
He dumped her on the sofa and she shivered—not from the cold, but from the staggering rush of sensations already battering her body, waking it up and making it crave. She resisted the urge to cover herself from his searing gaze as it raked over her.