Heat slams into me from every direction.
I can’t see.
Can’t hear. Can’t breathe.
Panic claws up my throat, sharp and feral—then strong arms wrap around me.
Huge. Solid. Unbreakable.
His body cages mine completely, shielding me from the inferno that also seems to be coming from him—like wings.
It’s as if the fire itself answers to him.
I feel him everywhere.
His heat.
His strength.
The steady, powerful beat at his core that feels too large, too sure, to belong to a normal man.
Attraction—something I’ve not felt for a man in a very long time—pulses through me. I’m shocked. Maybe embarrassed.
“Hold on to me,” he instructs, and my body obeys.
I cling to his shoulders like the women in one of those historical romance novels, the ones on the covers, my grandmother used to have on her nightstand.
Stupid, Delia. They didn’t come with belly rolls back then.
There’s a rush of sound around us—something beating the air in heavy, rhythmic strokes.
Wings. It has to be wings.
The ones I thought I saw looked like they were made of flame, maybe, or just a trick of my imagination.
But no, because he’s real.
I still can’t see. My face is pressed against his chest, buried in the silky black fabric of his shirt.
It’s soft. Absurdly so. And it smells good.
Like cedar. Like pine.
Like heat after rain.
I should be screaming.
I know I should be screaming. Or fighting.
I should be doing something to get away.
But I’m not.
Why?
The thought skitters across my mind, frantic and sharp.
Normal people scream when they’re surrounded by fire and dragged into the unknown by a stranger.
