Darkness(63)

He held her fast, his big body pressing her back against the wall, and she felt a shaft of desire so intense that she shivered.

Everywhere his body touched hers she burned.

She only realized that she’d quit struggling and was standing perfectly still, staring up at him with God knew what expression, when his face, which had been taut with anger, changed. His eyes narrowed and the tension that had thinned his mouth into a straight line eased and—

He bent his head and kissed her.

Taken by surprise, she had no time to formulate a defense. Her lips fluttered beneath the first soft brush of his, and then they parted to let him in. It wasn’t a gentle kiss. What started out as a testing, a tasting, a question on his part, changed the moment she answered, the moment he felt her response. That was when his mouth turned hard and hungry and demanding, and he started kissing her like he could never get enough of her mouth. The blast of heat he ignited inside her blew her away. Her heart pounded. Her pulse raced.

She closed her eyes and kissed him back as if she’d been dying to have him kiss her like that. Her lips molded themselves to his and her tongue answered his as he learned everything there was to know about her mouth. He kissed her with a carnality that was like nothing she had ever experienced, and fireworks went off against the screen of her closed lids. Bones melting, senses reeling, she kissed him back the same way. When he let go of her wrists to wrap his arms around her and pull her even closer against him, she slid her hands up over his broad shoulders and curled them around his neck, and clung to him like her life depended on it.

Which, she thought with some irony, it actually did.

He took her mouth again and again, in a series of long, slow, drugging kisses that stripped away every last ounce of her reserve, that made her head spin, that made her body pulse and burn, that had her kissing him back just as fervently. He kissed her like he was starving for the taste of her, like he never meant to stop.

She didn’t want him to stop. Arching up against him, she told him so in every way she possibly could that didn’t involve words.

Words were beyond her. Thoughts were beyond her. All she could do was feel. She was on fire for him. Wild for him. Molding herself to the sturdy contours of his body, she moved her hips suggestively against the granite-like hardness of him. He made a low, guttural sound under his breath and pushed her back against the wall, rocking into her, letting her feel the unmistakable proof of how aroused he was, making her gasp for breath, turning the hot, sweet throbbing that was building inside her into a raging conflagration.

Her coat was open: his hand found and covered her breast through the thin layers of her shirt and bra. Her nipple hardened instantly against his palm. Lightning bolts of desire shot through her, and her kisses turned feverish with need. He caressed her breasts, ran his thumb over her nipples, back and forth, slow and sure. Her knees threatened to buckle and she moaned into his mouth.

Until then she’d never thought that she was capable of something as primitive as pure, unadulterated lust. Now she knew that she was.

When his hand slipped beneath her shirt to slide up over her rib cage, she went all soft and gooey inside with anticipation. His hand was big and warm and faintly abrasive and unmistakably male, and the feel of it moving against her soft skin made her quake. It slid over the silkiness of her bra to cover her breast and she quivered and pressed closer, loving the size of it, the hardness of it, the heat.

He pushed her bra up out of his way.

When he fondled her bare breast, his touch set off a firestorm inside her. When his hand flattened on her softness and her nipple jutted into the hot plane of his palm, her body clenched and her heart raced and her blood turned to steam.

“I want you.” He growled it into her ear.

Oh, God, she wanted him, too. So badly that she was ready to tear off her clothes and lie down right there on the floor of the cave and—

The cave.

Oh, no. Oh, wait.

She’d forgotten where they were. Who they were.

His mouth crawled down the smooth column of her neck. The warm, firm pressure of his lips and the wet slide of his tongue felt incredible. He caressed her breasts like he owned them, like they were his to do with as he pleased. The heat and hardness of his hand made her arch up against him, made her clutch his shoulders and breathe like she’d been running for miles, made her go all light-headed and melty inside.

She knew where he was headed: he’d shoved her shirt and bra up so that her breasts were bared to him. His hand shifted to cup her breast, to hold it ready for his mouth. Her nipple was tight and eager as it waited to feel his lips, his tongue. The mere thought of it turned her insides to jelly.

He would kiss her breasts and then he would—

No. No. No.

“Cal. Cal, no. Stop.” She could barely force the words out.

His open mouth burned against the base of her throat where it curved into her shoulder, right above the modest crew neckline of her shirt. It stayed where it was, all moist heat and urgent demand, while his hand tightened on her breast. His thumb swept with slow deliberation across her nipple.

A jolt of longing made her shiver. She made a tiny, helpless sound of pleasure. Her hands were on his shoulders, her fingers digging into the smooth shell of his coat, but she couldn’t summon the strength to even try to push him away. She ached and burned for him.

With every cell in her body, she wanted him to—

“Cal. I can’t.” Her protest was breathless. Unconvincing. Weak.