The shift in him is immediate.His eyes darken.His lips part, and his muscles tense, readying.
“You want me.”He steps behind me, so close his breath stirs my hair.“Deny it.”
“Can’t do that.”
He circles slowly, a predator’s prowl, deliberate and controlled.His fingertips graze my hip, a featherlight caress that makes my heartbeat ricochet.
“I want you, too.”He flicks his tongue against my earlobe.“What are we going to do about all thiswanting?”
My knees weaken.
He comes around to my front, his chest rising and falling, every inch of him confident in an unrehearsed way.This is instinctual.The real him.The alpha wolf.
He lifts a hand and touches my jaw with the brush of his knuckles, lighting fireworks in my veins.
“You’re going to stay.”He lowers his head and nips at the sensitive spot beneath my ear.“You’ll give us a week.Just you and me.No work.No leaving the island.We’re going to hole up here and get to know each otherreallyfucking well.”
My lungs can’t keep up, and my heart races so fast I fear I’ll pass out.
“We’ll spend time talking.”He traces a slow line down my arm with one finger.“Touching.”His lips ghost near my cheekbone without landing.“Exploring.”His hand settles at the base of my spine, warm and assertive.
Every word curls around my ribs, every touch coiling a fierce need inside me.I can’t feel my face.My skin tingles everywhere, and the hollow ache in my chest transforms into a bright, urgent pounding, pounding, pounding.
“I’m going to learn everything about you.”He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers lingering at the hinge of my jaw.“All of you.Your mind.Your body.Every secret.Every warm, dark place.Inside and out.”
All the arguments I rehearsed melt beneath the heat of him, and my body betrays me.A breath caught too long, a pulse that skips, and he notices.
“Before the week ends…” Pressing closer, close enough to let me know how goddamn hard and hungry he is, he takes my face in his hands, tips my head back, and forces my eyes to his.“You’ll fall in love with me.”
He’s frighteningly right.I’m already falling.
The electricity between us is unbearable, want threaded through fear, tenderness tangled with risk.His hand cups the back of my neck, holding me there, asking without words.
Despite my exhaustion, despite the grief and fear and everything breaking apart in my life, a warm glow cracks open inside me.A yes I’m not ready to say aloud.A want I can’t swallow down.A need that erases all rational thought.
This time, I don’t pull away.
I open my mouth, and he captures it, not gently, not cautiously, but with a certainty that steals every scrap of air from my lungs.
The kiss hits me sideways, knocking me off balance in the shockwave.His hand fists my hair.His other collars my throat.A desperate claiming wrapped in tenderness, complete control, and domination.
I liquefy.
He tilts his head and deepens the kiss, bolder, wetter, coaxing, and demanding.His lips move over mine with a reverence I’ve never felt, memorizing, learning, and infusing me with deep hunger.
My fingers clutch his shoulders, tight, greedy, aching for more, and he answers with a rough, guttural growl against my mouth, unraveling me.
The world narrows to taste and breath and the impossible pressure of his mouth on mine.
The hand in my hair wanders to my waist, pulling me flush against his chiseled body, aligning our hips.Then he grinds.
Oh, God.
I gasp into him, and he smiles against my lips, a dark, knowing curve.He kisses me again, harder this time, swallowing the sound I make as if it belongs to him.
Everything inside me tightens, sparks, shivers, and gushes.It’s dizzying, devastating.A one-of-a-kind kiss that resets the tectonic plates in a woman’s heart.
“Tell me you felt that.”He pulls back, his forehead against mine, breath shaky, eyes dark and heavy-lidded.
