My lips thinned. “Have you ever been in love?”
He just looked at me.
“Ever said it to another human being?”
His jaw worked. “Once.”
“Right.” I harrumphed. “Forgive me if I don’t believe you.”
I got up, but he tugged me back down, gently.
“Wait,” he said in a rough whisper.
His mouth fell silent, but his eyes didn’t. They said what his tongue couldn’t say. And when he dragged his thumb along my palm, everything went torpid and blurry.
The room shrank—so did the couch. The stillness between us was as taut as the tightrope I’d have to walk to get out of here. Yes, I had to leave—again—before I said something, did something. Before I could no longer deny what we both knew.
He brought my hand to his lips and kissed my knuckles one at a time, his smoldering eyes telegraphing a bold promise of something dark and forbidden. Oddly enough, in that instant I realized Darien had never looked at me this way.
“Know what I wish right now?” he said in a raw voice.
I stared back at him helplessly.
“That this hand was your mouth.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
No Quarter Given
SHANNON
____________________________
I shot to my feet and collected my things in a panic, but he uncoiled from the sofa right after me. And the awareness was swift.
I felt him at my back when I grabbed my scarf. I felt him in my blood when he sighed my name. I felt him in my bones when his breath kissed my neck.
Six feet and several inches of imposing heat flowed out of him, making me weak…dizzy. Except for the trembling, I couldn’t move. Nothing seemed to work—my arms, my brain…everything froze.
The scarf slipped from my useless hands to the floor, forgotten.
“Stay,” he whispered, looming behind me.
Fear squeezed my throat. “I-I can’t.”
“Stay.”
My eyes fluttered shut as he kneaded my shoulders. The weight of his hands, strong, yet gentle, made me melt.
His fingers slid down my arms to lace with mine. “Why’d you disappear on me?” he asked, his voice deep and raspy.
I couldn’t form a thought, much less a reply.
“Why?” he asked again.
My tongue finally unglued. “Something came up at the—”
“You’re lying,” he murmured into my hair.
“No, I….”
“Stop.” When he tied our hands beneath my ribcage, I went boneless, and the back of my head rested against his chest. “You ran because you feel what I feel. That’s why you’re trying to run now. Admit it.”
I hesitated, then gave a reluctant nod.
“See,” he breathed, “that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
I was trembling wholesale. “Why are you doing this?”
“I can’t help it.” He buried his face in my neck, his chest rising and falling like he’d run a mile. “My reaction to you is…. Damn. What’s that fancy word of yours?” He sucked my earlobe and whispered, “‘Visceral,’ right?”
He turned me around and I could feel him gazing down at the top of my head. Looking at him wasn’t an option. If I did, I’d be lost. So I studied the floor planks, noting the contrast between the pale wood and his golden skin. Brown hair dusted his toes, and his feet were twice as large as mine.
The beginning notes of Nat King Cole’s “Nature Boy” filled the silence. He nudged my chin up with a finger, and what I saw stole my breath. His eyes burned. Instinct made me back away until a wall appeared out of nowhere, and just as he’d done at the garage, he moved in on me. His muscles expanded when he rested his forearm above my head to box me in. Unlike the wall at my back, the wall of muscle in front of me didn’t hold me steady, and the more I stared at it, the weaker I became.
Trace touched my mouth with his fingertip, pressing past the barrier of my lips until my teeth parted. My breath rushed in on a gasp as he penetrated and explored. All the while, he stared down at me, his intent sure. Before I could stop myself, I’d sucked and drawn his finger in deeper. He swore softly and his nostrils flared. After I realized what I’d done, I shamefully jerked my head away, dislodging him, but the seductive taste and feel of him remained.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
I obeyed, giving in to the carnal awareness whittling my breath down to short, audible pants. My heart stopped once he lifted his glistening finger and sucked it into his mouth. He kept his eyes trained on me while he lowered his hand to my lips and reverently painted his wetness across them. His chest expanded when I sampled his gift: warmth, sweetness, and fire. That’s how he tasted. Like heaven and hell, darkness and light.
He hadn’t kissed me, yet I knew his touch. Hadn’t swept his tongue inside, yet I knew his taste. Hadn’t done anything except toy with my mouth, but in my imagination he’d done everything and then some. Heat scalded my loins, made me ache so badly I wanted to cry, and like clockwork, the rain came, salving the blaze with a weepy dampness familiar to every woman.
“Please, j-just let me leave,” I begged
He shook his head as if to say, No mercy.
I couldn’t breathe. “Trace…I’m scared.”
“I know.” He slowly cradled my jaw. “Me too.”
As a prelude and promise of what was to come, his breath caressed me even before his mouth did. The moment his lips whispered against mine, I froze, my body rigid with anticipation and fear. Yet, dazed surprise came when he made contact. For such a big man, he had a gentleness about him that made me tremble. I’d expected his kiss to be voracious and demanding, but it was soft, probing, and achingly tender.
Trace became the potter, and I was his clay. He sucked my lips, testing and tasting, until I’d unfolded like a rose beneath the sun’s command.
Even as my body welded with his, some distant part of me still waited for the defenses to come, waited for an inner alarm to steer me away from this all-consuming fire. Guilt should have reared up by now, but it was as absent from my mind as the man whose ring I wore.
Trace made love to my mouth. His passion bled into me in degrees, and soon our tender, exploratory kisses turned feverish and desperate. He kissed my cheeks and my eyes, only to plunder my lips again, and what he gave, I gave back, tongue for tongue, breath for breath.
His arms swept around to enfold me into his hard body. Was he lifting me? Oh, God, he was. He anchored me to the wall as I hooked my heels around his back, and raked my fingers through his hair. Blood boiled between my legs when he pressed himself there. Pipe-hard, he rocked against me with a slow, tortuous rhythm.
Desire overshadowed me in dark waves as he covered my breast with his hand and rasped my nipple to life. He tore his mouth from mine, dipping lower to capture the stiff peak he’d aroused. Sensation burned across my chest and bathed my loins as he nursed on me through my blouse. The damp heat bled into the fabric, and I cried out in a desperate whimper.
“It’s all right,” he soothed.
He brought his lips up to mine for a long, drugging kiss. Next thing I knew, he’d pulled back to peel off his shirt, just ripped the thing over his head. Dizzy with need, I trembled when he snaked his hand beneath my shirt, under my bra, and covered my naked breast. My nipple, still wet from his mouth, puckered against his palm. He trailed his thumb from the edge to the center, circling my areola until he’d worried it into a painful nub.
“These are all I think about anymore,” he rasped, his eyes welded to mine. “I imagine how they’ll taste. Then I torture myself with wondering what color they are.” He bit his bottom lip. “Which is it? Brown? Or pink?”