A Kiss of Fire (A Kiss of Magic #2)(7)

“Your movements only excite me,” he told her in a whisper against her ear. “Do continue.”

She froze. She was panting for breath. She felt her nipples tightening for some unexplainable reason, her belly going taut and quivering anxiously. She felt his breath coasting over her ear and down her neck.

“I’ll scream,” she said breathily.

“That will excite me too,” he said. “Everything you do excites me. May the One God damn me straight to both hells, I have tried to resist you, but you make me…you make me…” He growled and took her hand in his, bringing it to the front of his breeches. She gasped when he pressed her hand to the hard, hot bulge there. “I’m like hot forged iron around you. Hard and unyielding and it makes me want to cry out to the heavens.”

His free hand dove into her hair, ruining the pinned up masses of curls as he pulled her up to just an inch away from his lips. Their rapid breaths mingled as her hand, of its own volition, molded to the hardness he held her to.

“God!” he gasped.

He crushed his mouth down on hers and she released a little cry. He caught it in his mouth as he slanted his lips over hers. His mouth was firm and damp, open and strong. There was no introduction, just ferocious need and hunger. His tongue sought hers, tangled with it, and before she could comprehend what she was doing she was responding to him. She moaned as his hand left the one holding him to her and slid into the small of her back. He pulled her in tighter to his body, the hard heat of him burning onto her every nerve. She felt him in her hand, the size and shape and hardness of him incredible. He was not a small man by any stretch of the imagination. He was exactly what she would have expected him to be given his body type and size.

However, to consider was one thing, to feel it was quite another.

He kissed her violently, ravaging her mouth, almost punishing her. And she felt every moment of it. It was like swallowing pure fire. He scorched her. Left her raw and hungry and needing.

When he broke away from her mouth he was gasping for breath almost as much as she was.

“I knew it. I knew it would be like this,” he said before he swept her up into another torrid kiss.

Ariana’s head was spinning, her body burning. He was turning her inside out. She couldn’t think. All she could do was react. At first she melted against him, let him have her, followed the burn where it wanted to lead her. But then, in the next instant she was remembering who she was. Where she was. What she was. She ripped away from him with a cry.

“No! Don’t!”

He caught her before she could gain more than a couple of inches in distance and jerked her back into his body.

“This isn’t over. Don’t you think for even a second that it is.”

Then he kissed her again, brutalizing her mouth until she thought she would burn away like a wisp of moth wings set afire. She was too delicate for this. Too elegant and refined. She did not get savagely kissed in the bushes by barbaric strangers!

She had no sooner had the thought then he was putting her away from himself, turning on his heel and stalking away. She stood there swaying in shock, unable to think. Unable to do anything but replay the fire of his kisses over and over again in her mind.

It was quite a few minutes before she was composed enough to head back to the ballroom. She reached up and touched her hair. It was a mess. Half of the curls had been set free by his marauding hands. She couldn’t go back in there looking like this. Everyone would know.

She felt that even if she’d been perfectly coifed she still would have felt as though he had branded her. As though everyone would know.

She changed direction and took a path that led to the other side of the capitol building. She could sneak back to her rooms from there.





Sin stormed down the garden path, his heart pumping hard, his body raging with need. His mouth burned with the memory of the feel of her. He had kissed her and she had kissed him back. No matter what she might convince herself of later, she had kissed him back. She had touched him, her hand molding to him. He throbbed in memory of her touch. He was hard and he was going to stay hard for quite a while he knew, so going back into that ballroom was not an immediate possibility.

That left him with time to walk and to think.

He had to have her. At any and all costs. But he knew he couldn’t court her in the way of her people. She would never have allowed it. One of the triumvir consorting with a Kiltian barbarian? Never. It would never be encouraged or accepted.

Not her way.

But his way—the way of his people—that was something different. That was the way he knew. The way he wanted to have her. But that was not going to be an easy task. He would need help. A lot of help. Had it been in his lands with one of his women, he would have done it alone…by himself. But as it was…

After about fifteen minutes alone in the gardens he composed himself enough to return to the ballroom. The first thing he did was seek out his aides. With a short nod of his head he called them to him.

“We leave now,” he told them brusquely.

“Is something wrong?” Lindo asked.

Lindo was Jadoc. He could read the minds and emotions of others. But in spite of that it would have been very obvious that something was disturbing him. He ran a hand through his hair in a rare gesture of frustration.

“We need to go. I have to think and plan.”