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Then, after the shortest pause, and with a look in his eyes that strikes clean through me, “You all are.”

As he says it, both of his hands come to me, slow and sure, moving over my stomach and to my lower back as though he means to gather up every wandering thought and turn it toward him before he pulls me flush to his chest.

The breath leaves me.

I can feel the warmth of him through every place we touch, solid and male and painfully real, and it’s as obvious as ever what standing this close to me is doing to him. There’s no mistaking the press of his cock against me.

Hunger flashes through me so sharply it near makes me dizzy.

All at once, I want a taste of him so badly I could weep from it.

The ground beneath me might as well split.

Because I have known for some time now that I’m lost where this man is concerned. I’ve known it in all the quiet ways that matter.

In the way I look for him without thinking.

In the way my whole body settles when he comes near.

In the way every room feels altered by his being in it.

I’ve known it and denied it and danced around it and called it anything but what it is.

But there’s no dancing around anything now.

Not after that look.

Not after those words.

Not after watching him in the yard with blood on his hands and fury in his face, defending Ellen as if her hurt were his own to answer.

I’m besotted with him.

Hopelessly. Entirely. Past all sense.

And if I don’t kiss him this instant, I think I may well go out of my mind.

So I do.

I catch a fist in the front of his shirt, rise onto my toes, and throw myself at him like a madwoman.

My mouth finds his with all the sense and restraint the Gods forgot to bestow upon me. It’s not a gentle kiss. It’s wild and hungry and half born of fright, half of want, and wholly of the fact that I have been wanting this for far too long.

For one startled instant, Alex does nothing.

Then he makes a rough sound low in his throat and catches me hard about the waist.

He gathers me closer as if he’s wanted it too, one hand spreading hot and firm at my back while the other comes up into my hair, and whatever bit of sense I had left goes scattering to the four winds.

I wrap myself around him near shamelessly, one arm flung about his neck, the other still twisted in his shirt to keep him where I want him, though he has no look of going anywhere. His mouth is hot and demanding beneath mine, and all that fury he’s spent has turned into something else now, something that makes my knees weak enough I’m grateful for the strength of his hold on me.

He backs me up a step without breaking the kiss until my shoulders near brush the stone wall of the house.

I’ve never had a kiss like this in my life.

As though all the things that have gone unsaid between us are saying themselves now in heat and breath and hands.

When he finally breaks from my mouth, it’s only far enough to breathe.