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“No.”
Allie could have backed away. Grabbed some sanity while she was still able. But that glint in his eyes—a glint that asked just what she was up to—wouldn’t let her.
“Well, then,” she finally said, leaning closer, until her body was pressed hard against his, no suggestive whisper about it. “For all they know, you’ve been hypnotizing me into doing…all sorts of things.”
Then, giving him no chance to evade her, she slid her arms around his neck, tangled her fingers in his thick, dark hair and tugged his face to hers. She saw his eyes widen the tiniest bit in surprise just before she pressed her mouth to his.
But she was soon too busy kissing him to care.
AS IF THE place were truly under some Roma spell, the audience slowly began to fade away. So did the lights…all other sound, all other sensation. Damon could see, hear, feel nothing except her.
When Allie wrapped her arms around his neck and made it clear she was coming in for a landing on his lips, he didn’t hesitate for one second. He merely opened his mouth on hers and took what she was offering. Gave what she was demanding. Indulged in both.
After all, kissing her—putting his hands on her—was what he’d wanted to do from the moment he’d seen those big blue eyes and that magnificently sultry mouth in the shadowy recesses of his tent.
With her tempting whispers and sexy playfulness, he would have expected nothing less than a mouth as addictive as sin. That’s what he got. Delicious, irresistible sin. Her pouty lips welcomed him, and her warm tongue invited him home. She tasted not like cotton candy but like something warmer, spicier. Much more delicious. Yes, she was a stranger, but her kiss seemed familiar all the same, the way anything really good always felt.
And it was really good. The kind of kiss that wasn’t particularly going anywhere but was a destination in and of itself. Deep. Hungry. But not desperate. They tasted and explored, gave and took, completely oblivious to everything except the ever deepening well in which they were drowning.
Damon groaned in the back of his throat at the feel of her soft thigh slipping between his legs. Her hands tightening in his hair, she arched against him, crushing her full breasts against his silky shirt until he burned. His hands rose, as if of their own volition, desperate with the need to cup her, to toy with the pouty nipples he could feel burrowing into his chest.
A shocked gasp pierced the cloud in his brain, stopping him. Everything quickly snapped back into place as the audience returned. Reality returned. And with it, some measure of sanity.
Slowly—gradually—he ended the kiss, drawing back from her with crushing regret.
She stared at him, her big blue eyes enormous, the pupils merely a pinpoint beneath the bright spotlights. Her lips remained parted, and he watched the pulse in her throat flutter, then finally slow.
They both began to breathe.
And the audience began to clap. Slowly at first. Then louder. Someone yelled, “Hypnotize me next!” That was followed by a male voice shouting, “Introduce me before you wake her up.”
At which point Damon realized that the entire audience truly believed the most impressive kiss he’d ever experienced had only occurred because he’d hypnotized his way into it. He stiffened, a little offended that anyone would believe him capable of preying on a woman that way. He was about to deny it, and would have, if not for the wide-eyed, nearly desperate look on the face of the woman whose mouth he wanted to dive into again.
Her lips trembling and her cheeks flushed, she whispered something under her breath.
“Clap your hands or something.”
“Wha…”
“Quick.”
Not thinking about it, he did as she asked. Then the sexy siren turned into an adorably disconcerted young woman. She lifted a hand to her face, shook her head once, and turned to look out at the audience, appearing entirely bemused. “Oh, my goodness. What happened?”
She was talking to them. Not to him. And the crowd ate it up. The woman was playing the innocent, hypnotized bystander at his expense. She was absolving herself of all responsibility for their wildly sexual, very public, kiss.
“You’ve just made your Oscar nomination tape, that’s what happened,” he muttered with a frown.
“Did I win?” she murmured back, her voice low but still loud enough to be heard over the clapping crowd.
Win? Oh, she had definitely won something with that kiss. Something that looked a whole hell of a lot like desire.
By all rights, he should out her right here and now. But he hesitated. “You have a lot of nerve; I’ll give you that.”
“You didn’t seem to mind,” she muttered back from behind a fake smile.
“You made me look like a sleazy guy who has to hypnotize his way into a woman’s bed.”
Sucking in an audible gasp, she swung her head to look at him. “Bed?!”
