A Kiss of Fire (A Kiss of Magic #2)(23)

However she wasn’t going to admit that. She wasn't going to admit that all of this, everything he had done, had put a lot of excitement in what had become a very predictable world. She wasn't going to admit it because he had robbed her of the choice of whether or not she actually wanted that excitement. Perhaps if he had gone about it differently. If he had wooed her as a Saren man would have.

But no. He had kidnapped her in some barbarous attempt at a seduction.

“I would rather kiss a goat,” she bit out at him.

“I shall fetch a goat and we’ll see whose tongue you’d rather have in your mouth,” he said silkily.

“You’re a pig.”

“From goats to pigs. A whole plethora of barnyard animals. What’s next? A goose?”

She yelped and jumped away from him when he reached out for her fanny, as if to goose her.

“Don’t you dare touch me!”

“Oh I’ll dare that and more,” he promised her, chasing her across the room, his steps slow and methodical. “I’ll touch you, kiss you…lick you…”

His words made heat broil under her skin and she couldn’t catch her breath. The thought of him licking his tongue against her skin sent rivers of desire right to her core. No! She couldn’t feel things like this! She wouldn’t!

“Stop!” she cried, holding out a hand to fend him off.

He grabbed hold of that hand and with a jerk sent her crashing into his body. She struggled as he wrapped one powerful arm around her, his hand in her lower back holding her up against him. They met chest-to-chest, belly-to-belly, and hip-to-hip. She tried to lean back away from him, but he was having none of it.

He bent his head to her neck and he drew in an audible breath through his nose. Was he sniffing her? Sniffing to smell his lotion on her skin and his soap in her hair. Everything just the way he wanted.

She turned her head and bit him on his ear.

He jerked back with a curse, but didn’t let her go. He touched his ear with his free hand and came away with a light streak of blood. Damn it, she hadn’t bit him hard enough. She should have ripped the thing off and spit it into his face.

“Let’s try that again,” he said with a wolfish grin. “Only this time let’s give you something else to bite on.”

He crashed his mouth down onto hers.

Damn it, what was he doing, Sin asked himself fiercely. This wasn’t what he had planned at all. He had meant to put her at ease somehow. To let her know he wasn't there to paw and manhandle or rape her. But it was going all wrong. He had seen her there, so proud and so painfully beautiful and he hadn’t been able to remain across the room. Then he had gotten close enough to smell her and he’d gotten instantly hard. Even her biting him had no effect on his raging libido. All he knew was if he didn’t taste her he would go mad. Just as he had been going mad every day since the day he had first laid eyes on her.

He kissed her deeply. As deeply as he dared without putting his tongue in her mouth. He had no desire to be bitten again. He would not give her his tongue until she begged for it.

Her body bowed back as she tried to lean away from him at first, but then she felt the heat of his mouth and was moaning softly against his lips. She had no idea that he felt the same thing she did every time their lips met. She had no idea that she was a fever in his blood that he could not make himself impervious to. She had no idea what it took for him to hold himself in check. That this was holding himself in check. If she knew the things he wanted to do to her right then, she would have pummeled him and screamed in fear. As it was he was shocked she was letting him kiss her with no savage reprisals on her part.

As he kissed her he felt her tense body soften…felt it go lax in his arms. The response of her mouth against his aroused him to blinding proportions. His hands went to the back of her waist, dragged up her back, pulled her in even tighter to his body. She could make no mistake about how much she aroused him. There was no mystery to the rampant response of his body.

Ariana pulled back from his mouth with a gasp. What was she doing? She couldn’t allow this! If she let him get away with this, then he would push for more and more! She had no desire to become his plaything. He tempted her with the title of wife as though it was somehow better and different than concubine, but the fact was for this man they would always be the same thing. They would both be a woman he controlled in all things.

She struggled in his grasp and she wrenched free of him, but a part of her mind realized that if he hadn’t wanted her to, there was no way she could have gotten free. He had let her go.

“Don’t touch me!” she gasped, her chest heaving for breath, her mouth burning from his kiss.

“I’m just reminding you of what you felt two months ago. What you will feel again. And again. And again.”

“I’ll feel nothing but being violated, for that is what it will be! A violation! A slow, methodical rape. Oh, you will couch it in terms like seduction, but it will still be rape!”

“I will not rape you!” he burst out, the first sign that she was getting to him. She didn’t realize that she’d been getting to him every moment of every day since he’d first met her. “Damn you, Ariana, it will not be rape. You will be warm and wet and willing. I’ll have you no other way! Think you I want to take you against your will? There is nothing in it for me if I can’t have you wanting me as much as I—goddamn it!”