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Is this what it feels like to be a moth circling a flame?
“So, it’s not just me.” Her lips curled into a wickedly sensual smile.
“Careful, Never.” I was a dangerous man, and she knew it. Instinctively, she knew. It was obvious from the very first moment, and with her touching me like that, looking at me like that, my self-control was hanging by a thread.
Challenge darkened her gaze, but she didn’t move. “Do you want to hurt me?”
Good gods.
I leaned into her touch and growled the truth. “Yes.”
Her hand twitched at the response. Finally, a sane reaction. So, I took it a step farther.
“I want to rip those clothes off of you, throw you back on my bed, and fuck you so hard the memory of how it feels to have me slamming into you will be permanently seared into your mind.”
Her chest hitched.
I had just enough time to think I’d gone too far before her hand clenched around the fabric of my shirt and she yanked me toward her, crushing her lips to mine. She tasted like fresh gingerbread and warm milk on a cold night, luscious and rich. Her kiss was a drug I only had to try once to know just how mindlessly addictive it was.
With my chest heaving, I broke the kiss and leaned back, searching her gaze. All I needed was a hint of doubt, just one sliver of hesitation, and I would back off. What I saw was a flame that matched my own.
I slipped my hand around the back of her head and kissed her again, forcing myself to be gentle. She melted into me, meeting my every cautious move with her own barely contained energy.
When I slid my hand to her shoulder and tried to pull back, she took over, pressing me back into the plush mattress, straddling me and grinding down like she was as desperate to claim me as I was to claim her.
Gentle.I replayed the silent warning in my head over and over until I had to close my eyes, throwing all my focus into not digging my fingers into her hips and grinding back up against her. I wanted to flip her over, pin her down, and have my way with her so badly my hands were trembling.
The woman was clearly no novice, but I didn’t know what she was used to in a lover, or what kind of experience she had. And I didn’t do sweet and tender.
Part of me wanted to try to give her gentle and sweet, but I could barely hold myself back as it was. Everything about her unraveled my resolve by the second, and it didn’t help at all that her kiss was the mirror image of mine. Hungry. Like she was afraid she’d never feel that way again, and she was dying to hold onto it.
Her fingers tangled in my hair and she tugged at the ends, sending a delicious sting through my scalp that had me groaning into the kiss.
“Never,” I warned, but she pulled again, harder, and when I looked up, she was right there with me, not giving in.
“I can see it in your eyes.” The huskiness in her voice sent another surge of lust through me. “You want this as much as I do.”
She was challenging me, intentionally riling me up. Only she didn’t know the kind of fire she was playing with. I hadn’t been with anyone in ages, and I’d never felt a need like I felt with her. It was all-consuming, and absolutely, without a doubt, dangerous.
I would tear her apart.
As if she could read my thoughts, she ground her hips down, pressing her softness against the hard length of me with a throaty moan. The fabric of the silk pants was so thin I felt her heat beckoning. She leaned in and pressed her lips to my neck, and when her teeth nipped at the sensitive skin there, I nearly lost it.
I can’t do this.Not with my newly rediscovered power roiling inside me, pressing and swelling just beneath the surface.
I grabbed her waist and forced her to still. “Stop.” I didn’t recognize my own voice. I could barely breathe as I dragged in a ragged lungful of air, but it did nothing to soothe the burn. She would probably never forgive me, but I couldn’t risk hurting her. “I can’t do this with you.”
Hurt flared in her irises a split second before she slammed her eyes shut and twisted out of my grip. She lurched off the bed and stumbled toward the curtained windows.
“If you won’t let me out of this room and off your ship, then you need to leave.” She wouldn’t look at me, wouldn’t even turn my direction. Even with the distance between us I could see the tremble in her shoulders.
Never folded her arms over her chest and drew in a bracing breath. “Now.”
I dragged my idiot self off the bed and took a step toward her. “It’s not that I don’t—”
She cut me off with a wave of her hand and all but spit her reply. “I get it.”
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