Midnight Wolf (Shifters Unbound #11)(21)

He’d been completely absorbed in raising his son and keeping Shifter Bureau off his back from that day to this.

But maybe he should have sated himself with a few females, perhaps one of the human women groupies who tried to entice him at the club. Then he wouldn’t be inhaling Tamsin Calloway’s nutmeg scent and wanting to close the space between them.

He did close it, and she didn’t pull away. Her gaze flicked to his lips. Angus’s blood fired, his heart banging hard.

The moment hovered, with their faces close, breaths mingling. Tamsin’s lashes moved as she met his gaze, her whisky-colored eyes flecked with green.

Angus waited for his natural cynicism to return, for his common sense to clamp down over his impulses. But he felt need building deep inside him, the frenzy that all Shifters could fall into when they wanted to mate.

He knew Tamsin was not unwilling. A Shifter female made it very clear when she didn’t want a male, in the harshest words possible if necessary, with a follow-up of claws and teeth. Males, unless they were total dickheads, got the message and backed off. The total dickheads usually ended up bloody, or dropped on their heads, as the Shifter female had done at the club.

Tamsin only looked at Angus, as though waiting for him to make the first move. If Angus kissed her, it would lead to more, and more, and this situation would deteriorate from captor and captive very fast. Which was probably what she wanted.

So Angus should back away. Get up, walk out, demand that she follow him, and lock her in a room until they left. Any minute now . . .

As he debated with himself, Tamsin leaned forward and brushed his lips with hers.

Something electric flashed through Angus’s body, and for a second, he thought she’d tased him. But her hands were empty, her eyes closed, and only her mouth touched his.

Her lips were smooth, soft, perfect. The half kiss broke open something inside him, and heat came flooding out.

Angus attempted to pull back, but the ache that would have caused wouldn’t let him. His hand moved before he could stop it and cupped her cheek, pulling her closer so he could strengthen the kiss.

Tamsin stilled, then her hesitancy left her. She leaned into him and met his kiss with a sudden hunger.

Soft, sweet woman under his hands, yet she was strong. Tamsin’s lips moved on his, seeking, giving at the same time. She might have started off trying to distract him, but now she simply wanted to kiss him.

Angus responded in kind. He pulled her closer, slanting his mouth over hers, a groan leaving his lips. She was a fugitive he needed to bring in, but right now, she was a woman, Tamsin, beautiful and fragrant. Her hair was like living fire against his palm, heating, not burning.

If he could send the world away, he’d lift her against him and onto the desk, tearing away clothes to find her.

He parted her lips with his tongue, tasting the mint bite of toothpaste barely covering her own spice. She welcomed him, her small fists digging into his back as she pulled him down to her.

The kiss went on, their mouths connecting, erasing all urgency but this joining. The world spun away, the years of heartache and loneliness, of Angus blaming himself for losing his mate, dissolving to mist. Nothing mattered but this woman and her fiery kiss, her arms around him, their bodies fusing as though nothing else existed in time and space.

A breath of wind touched Angus, but he couldn’t be bothered to wonder where it had come from. Tamsin was real and warm in his arms, her kiss deepening. She made a faint noise in her throat, a sound of surrender.

They were spinning, falling, floating, but no, they hadn’t moved. The floor was still beneath Angus’s feet, his knee hard against the desk. But he felt nothing, no sensation except where he connected with Tamsin.

A voice boomed in the echoing main hall. “Did you find her?”

Tamsin gasped, the touch of it on his tongue. She pulled away, breaking the kiss, her face scarlet.

Reality returned with a slap. Angus was supposed to be her jailor, taking her in in exchange for his cub. He had no business kissing her, touching her, tasting her, and wanting to do it again. No business savoring her, drinking in every second of it.

“Yes!” he roared back. “We’re leaving.”

Tamsin couldn’t catch her breath. She struggled for it as Angus pulled her up, grabbed his wallet and money, and dragged her out through the secret passage to the main hall where Ben waited, a worried look on his face.

She still couldn’t breathe as he towed her to the front door, plucking a hooded jacket from a coat hook along the way, the keys to the awful station wagon in his hand. Tamsin hoped the house would imprison him as well, but no, the door flung itself open as soon as Angus touched it.

He wasn’t really going to take her to Shifter Bureau, was he? They’d had a moment. A kiss.

One hell of a kiss. The sensation of that was what kept Tamsin’s breath from her, not Angus’s rapid pace.

Plenty of men in Tamsin’s life had tried to kiss her or more, and she’d evaded most of them. She hadn’t wanted to evade Angus. She’d brushed her lips against his because she’d had the sudden urge to discover what it felt like to kiss him.

Now she couldn’t pump enough air into her lungs. His kiss had been strong but not brutal. He had Tamsin in his power, and he knew it, in spite of her refusal to cow to him. Yet he hadn’t thrown her to the floor and ravished her, taking what he could from his prisoner.

He’d kissed her as though he’d wanted to learn her as much as she wanted to learn him. She still did. Never mind that he was taking her to her execution and he was Gavan Murray’s brother.