"How can I persuade you to change your mind?"
"You can't." His mouth pulled into a wicked grin. "But I'm
tempted to let you try."
She narrowed her eyes. "I don't use sexual favors to get
what I want," she informed him. "If I kiss a man, it's
because I want to." There. It was a dropped glove, but it
was true. If she thought a man boorish, she told him so.
If she found a man enthralling… Well, he was the first to
fascinate her like this. She wondered if he might become her
first in other ways. This power struggle was inordinately
exciting.
"Is that so," he murmured. All the humor bled out of his
expression, leaving it full of grave angles. He seemed to
consider her words while the backs of his fingers continued
to caress her throat where her pulse thrummed like a
hummingbird's wings.
What was she doing? This was madness. He was a stranger.
Voices were conversing in a nearby room.
But she wanted him to kiss her. It wasn't about the earring.
He was unlike any man she had ever met. If he walked away
and she didn't at least know what it felt like to have his
mouth on hers, she would always wonder.
She stared into eyes that had become the incendiary gleam of
liquid gold and dared him to make her day.
His hand came back to her jaw, his touch firm as he bent his
head.
He claimed her mouth without ceremony, as if they'd been
kissing like this every night for years. And, oh, did he
know how to kiss.
This was what she had sought all her life. A man who met her
strong personality with an even stronger one. One who took
her out of herself with a twist of his mouth against hers,
parting her lips and sinking into a hungry, passionate
ravaging that dismantled her even as he promised she would
be safe in his strong arms.
She became a molten substance as he gathered her hair and
squeezed an arm across her back. She pooled like quicksilver
against him, curves fitting into the dips and contours of
his chest, arms curling around his tense waist to settle her
fingers against the warm hollow of his spine.
She had never been kissed like this. Carnal and possessive,
urgent and lazy at once. Her scalp stung under the clench of
his hand in her hair. Heat consumed her, burning up any
memory she had of other men. A moan of pleasure escaped her,
but it contained loss. She understood that every kiss that
had come before this one had been a manufactured fraud. This
was the real thing. She could never settle for less again.
And he was already pulling away.
