Page 22 of The Professor's Wife

And it was.

This man was a stranger, but his touch felt too familiar to shake. When I looked at his lips, I felt like I already knew how incredible they would feel against mine.

Are we dancing?

He rocked me from side to side, though no music played. There was only silence and the barely breathing air conditioner as it rumbled back to life.

My head came just beneath his chin. He brought me closer so that I fit there. I felt even smaller against him.

He was like a tree, his arms like branches wrapped around me. I pressed my forehead to his hard chest and inhaled his scent. It made me think of the wild.

This man is wild.

I could feel the life pulsing out of him. The recklessness merged with gentleness. He would have been from a different world one week ago. Our paths would never have crossed. We would have walked past one another on the street.

That thought, stark and honest, only urged me to live in the moment.

Seconds fell away.

His heat traveled through me. Something told me I would shiver if we broke apart. Whatever warmth I possessed had beenbrought on by him, and without it, I would regress into that cold shell I had lived inside for so long.

We stopped moving.

Both of us at the same time, as though we had accepted what was to happen next.

He let me pull away enough to look at him.

I met his gaze and couldn’t look away. There was so much heat in him. Raw desire as he stared into my eyes, lost and breathless.

I looked over his face. At the light flush across his cheeks and his parted pink lips.

I wanted to kiss him.

Badly.

I stilled, my breath quieting in my chest as I met his eyes again.

And in them, he understood.

He felt my ache mirror his, and the heat between us magnified.

His head slowly dipped.

Then his mouth captured mine.

It wasn’t gentle.

Oh, God, it was searing.

A kiss that burned through the quiet. That shattered whatever hesitation still lingered inside me. That made me forget every reason I’d ever had to hold back.

His tongue swept into my mouth, and I moaned against him, startled by the urgency.

NowI felt it.

That delicious yearning. The desire to be devoured and to take in return. I felt the greediness in him. He kissed me like he’d been starved of me. Like he had been waiting to do this longer than he had known me.

So much tongue and heat and yearning.