
Mere inches separated them. She tilted her head, and his ragged breath cascaded over the edge of her jaw. A spark of ... exactly what, she couldn't guess, gleamed in his dark eyes. One side of his lips quirked into the little smirk she'd come to recognize. She knew he intended it to be ugly, but it still jolted her heart off-kilter.
"You bastard!"
"So, the wildcat shows her true face at last," he drawled.
She'd show him wildcat. She opened her mouth to scream.
He jerked her forward, crushing her breasts against his chest. Shock raced through her and sucked away her breath. She tried to pull back, only to have him swoop in and plant his mouth on hers.
Her intent--thoughts of screaming, escape, hurting him--all shattered into sparkling fragments and scattered on the wind. The entire universe suddenly narrowed to one focus: his lips grinding against hers.
At first, he just held her like that, in a bruising crush meant to smother her cries. Then it changed. His mouth opened over hers, hungry and commanding. She felt the knotted tension in his body, the rapid-fire bursts of his breath against her cheek.
She had wished for this.
Only a few times in her life had she been kissed, and never with such unrestrained, savage urgency.
Her fevered blood responded. She opened her mouth to him, and he swirled inside with a low moan trapped in his throat. Unable to resist, her tongue joined with his in a slow, sinuous dance. Tension gripped her body and sent her straining toward him, seeking his male hardness as though pulled by a magnet.