Before he’d run. From Kyonos. From himself.
He couldn’t do that now.
And there was only one other way he could think of to lose himself completely.
He leaned down and took her mouth. And he wasn’t gentle. Because this wasn’t for her. Madonna or whore, it didn’t matter to him, all that mattered was the feel of her lips on his and what it did for him.
And oh, Theos, what it did.
It set him on fire. The flames so hot he could feel nothing else. Nothing but his desire. Nothing but this. He coaxed her lips open, sliding his tongue against hers as he delved in deep.
Yes. This was what he needed. He could drown in this. In her sweetness. She didn’t know how to kiss him back, her rhythm a step behind his, her fingers curled into the front of his shirt like little claws.
And it was the most wholly erotic kiss he’d ever experienced in his life.
“Where is the car?” he asked, feeling beyond himself. Unable to think straight.
“Over...over there,” she said.
He took her hand and led her over to the limo, which was parked near the front doors. He must have passed it on his way out of the building. He honestly couldn’t remember it, though.
He jerked open the back door and got in, pulling her in with him, reaching across and closing the door behind him, with her half on his chest, her leg draped over his lap.
She had no makeup on today. Her dark hair was loose around her face, and she was back in one of those unflattering dresses. He needed to take her shopping. But he had no time to concern himself with that. Not now. Not when her touch, her lips, were so perfect.
He made sure the divider between them and their driver was up, and then he pulled her to him, kissing her deeper, harder than he’d done outside. He poured everything into the kiss. All of his anger. All of his desire. Everything.
He breathed her in, and he found he wasn’t suffocating anymore.
He could forget himself like this. Because a woman like her would never kiss a man like him and that meant that it was easy to pretend he was different. A different man, in a different time and place.
But he knew it was Layna. He knew it when he cupped her cheek and brushed a thumb over her rough scars. When he lightened the pressure on her lips and felt the hardened tissue by one corner of her mouth with his tongue.
Layna, who the media called ugly. Layna, who he wanted more than anything. To possess, to protect. He wanted all of it. Everything.
He put his hands on her hips, bunched the thin fabric of her dress into his fists and pushed it upward. Her body was a treasure. Full, round hips, a slim waist and those breasts...the ones that had haunted his dreams since he’d seen them in that gown of hers.
He needed to see her again. All of her. Now.
He pushed her dress up farther and she pulled back, breathing heavily, her eyes wide. “What are you doing?”
“If you have to ask, clearly I’ve done something wrong.” He was so hard it hurt. And his lungs felt tight now. Being deprived of her lips was like being deprived of oxygen. He needed her. He couldn’t explain it, but he did.
But he would never let her know.
She shifted and moved away from him, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I mean, I know you were...that you were...”
“That I was about to make love to you?”
“Well, that. But we’re in a parking lot. Our driver is just behind that divider and I seriously doubt these windows are that tinted.”
He frowned and looked outside. “There’s no one around.”
Layna felt like she’d been underwater for too long. Her lungs were burning, her head was fuzzy and her body ached. Though it ached in very pointed and telling places. How was she supposed to think when he was kissing her like that?
He’d essentially devoured her. In a parking lot. She’d never been devoured by a man in her life, much less had it happen while she was in a parking lot.
It was scary, how he managed to steal her control, her common sense. How he made her lose sight of everything. That they were in public, that she was inexperienced. That she’d been about two minutes away from losing her virginity in the back of a limo.
Yes, he made her lose sight of a lot of things.
But when he’d run out of the medical building, his pain had been palpable. Coming off him in waves, a deep hurt that she knew he wouldn’t share. One she knew he’d had to exhaust by kissing her. For some reason.
“It doesn’t matter that there’s no one around. People don’t just...do that.”
“I do,” he said. His posture readjusted. To this sort of slouched position in the seat, a half smile on his face. Gone was the desperate man of a moment before, replaced by the Xander character that he was so very fond of playing.