And then he thought a lot about the way she stopped laughing, her green eyes going wide, and that sensual mouth of hers dropping open. Especially when she made the sweetest little sound.
Ranieri lifted her up, letting the throw fall aside and the book she’d been reading crash to the floor.
He hauled her up and then, as if he’d been longing to do nothing else for the whole of his existence, Ranieri—who had never been carried away by passion in his life—slammed his mouth to Annika’s at last.
And drank her in, deep.
CHAPTER FIVE
SHEWASN’TPREPARED.
It was the only thought that scrolled through her head, because everything else was him.
Ranieri.The press of his lips, the rough heat of his tongue.
She felt shivery and strange. And swollen with a new heat, because he tasted forbidden, somehow beautiful, and she could feel him everywhere.
Every time his tongue touched hers, she could feel an answering wildfire ignite between her legs. She felt slippery, outside herself, and yet moreinherself than ever before, because she could feel...everything.
Annika was suddenly, unbearablyawareof her breasts. They felt too large, too tender, and her nipples ached. He shifted so that she was pressed against him and there was something about the pressure that made her want to squirm wildly. But not to get away.
He kissed her the way he did everything. Fully. Masterfully.
She did not have to be an expert in kissing to know that he had perfected the form. It was something about his ferocity. It translated all too well to this. All that grimness, all that starkness, all the maddening things about this man were distilled into the way his tongue slid against hers. The way he angled his head so he could go deeper, so he could take more of her, so that the blistering heat of this could wash over her, changing her.
As if wanting him, tasting him, made her new.
Her hands dug into his shoulders, and she could hardly sift through all the new information she was taking on board. All the immediate, tactile knowledge of too many things she had previously not allowed herself to consider.
How those muscles of his felt to the touch, for example. What it was like to have her breasts flattened against the wall of his chest. How it felt to let her hands discover how hot his skin was, there in that complicated dance of smooth muscle between his neck, his shoulders, and his arms.
She wanted to kiss him forever.
It was as if he heard that thought, because he made a low noise—she could taste it, and more, she could feel itinside her—and set her aside.
Annika staggered back, catching herself before she collapsed back down on the sofa. And not because he let go of her harshly. Or pushed her. But because her legs no longer seemed to function the way they had only moments before.
Or maybe it hadn’t been moments. Maybe he’d been kissing her for a lifetime.
She could hear her own breath between them, harsh and loud.
Yet what astonished her was that she could hear his breath, too.
And maybe on some level she imagined his kiss was a punishment. For her version of the unicorn invasion. It was a punishment she couldn’t quite decide if she’d loved or not, because she was fairly certain it had broken something in her—
But he was breathing heavily, too.
As if he was just as affected as she was here.
And for a moment there was only the sound of their breath, and all that jangly, wild, too-hot sensation spinning around between them.
Everything is different now.
The words echoed in Annika’s head, but she shoved them aside because she didn’t want that to be true. Yet what she wanted didn’t seem to matter when the way his gaze raked over her was new. She could see the heat in it. And more, she could see some kind of echo of that kiss they’d shared. The passion between them. She could feel all that gold as if it was inside her.
As if it swirled around and around, centering itself in all the places she ached the most.
“I will expect to find every last one of those unicorns removed,” he gritted out at her.