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There was a flash behind his eyes. Insulted?
He directed his attention over her head, releasing a noise of disparagement. “Women do the picking up. I simply allow it.”
“I guess I’m a natural. I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing.”Wasthat what she had been doing?
Their gazes clashed again. This time the flash in his eyes was lightning that struck all the way into the pit of her belly and lower, leaving a scorch in her loins. A certain apprehension washed over her, too. It was the wild combination of exhilaration and fear when tasting nature’s raw power. Of being overwhelmed by it.
“It is me this time,” he said in that smoky voice that made her skin feel tight.
Picking her up? He was more than a natural at it. He was a world-class wizard.
“I thought this was only dinner?” She dropped her gaze to the knot in his tie, trying to hide the flare of temptation that came into her eyes.
He probably read her temptation in her tension and the telltale blush that was warming her cheeks.
“It can be, if that’s what you prefer.” Was there tension in him, too? Her ears were straining to take in every tiny signal between them. “But I like to take my fate into my own hands, rather than rely on the stars to offer me what I want.” His mouth curled at the corner. “If there’s a chance for more than dinner, I’d like to seize it.”
He’d like to seize her, too, apparently, given how his grip tightened slightly on her waist and hand.
Before Fliss realized what he was doing, he guided her away from him in a slow spin that was unexpected enough to make her dizzily catch onto him when she came back into his arms. Then he dipped her slightly over his arm, so she was off-balance, and lowered his head.
He stopped before he kissed her. His whispered “Is there?” wafted across her lips. “A chance?”
Oh, dear.
Her heart was thudding in a mix of anxiety and excitement, and her hands were holding tight to him—because she was literally off-balance. She could have shaken him off and stood on her own two feet rather than let him hold her tipped like this, but her brain had short-circuited again. All she was really aware of was his mouth, right there, filling her with such yearning she could hardly breathe.
She lifted her chin in welcome, offering her mouth to him.
The lightest of touches brushed her lips. A subtle rest of lips to lips. A greeting. Not even a dalliance. He waited for her to make the slight shift and find the angle that fit their mouths together more fully.
Then he rocked his head, a request.Invite me.
She did, sighing as his arm grew more firm around her and his tongue probed in a languorous quest. When the tip of his tongue brushed the roof of her mouth, feathery caresses seemed to scroll over her whole body from nape to tailbone, down her arms and legs and high between her thighs, into that pulsing, throbbing place that she’d been trying to ignore but felt heavy and flooded with heat. With longing.
She gasped at the startling way he brought her whole body to life, but he only deepened their kiss, as though seeking whatever she might be holding back from him. Chasing. Demanding.
Fliss had known she wasn’t his match financially or socially, but she had been pretending they were equals in a more esoteric way. Wit, perhaps. Or in their lighthearted detachment from this dinner of theirs.
This kiss, however. This kiss demonstrated just how far out of her league she really was. It was a plunge from thirty-thousand feet into thin air. It knocked the breath from her lungs, leaving her ears rushing with nothing but the scream of wind.
His lips raked across hers in an unbridled claim that shook apart all she’d ever known about kissing, which was admittedly a lot less than she’d realized. He cupped the back of her head, and the stubble on his jaw grazed her chin.
When a whimper resounded in her throat, he drew her upright, but desperation had her winding her arms around his neck.Don’t stop.She stood on tiptoe and pressed herself harder to him. She wanted to be closer. Closer still.
He growled and crushed her to his front and nipped at her bottom lip before soothing and suckling, causing more lightning to strike through her abdomen and into her sex. More trickles of need and more shivers of ecstatic pleasure traveled down her spine.
Very dimly, she was aware that they were in public, that they should stop, but she couldn’t make herself pull away. She tasted wine and traces of clove and inhaled a fading aftershave that would remain imprinted on her senses forever.
Her eyelids had fluttered closed. All that existed was this dark enveloping sense of the world having fallen away. She knew only distant sensations of satin and embroidered wool. Her fingertips found the line where his cool hair cut a precise line against the hot skin at the back of his neck. She was aware of her breasts being crushed against the plane of his chest in a way that was a relief but increased the yearning within her. His hard thighs warmed the fall of her skirt against the front of her legs, and his hand drew a slow, lazy circle in her lower back that was as promising as it was proprietary.
Thiswas what she had been waiting for in her ambivalence toward dating. Not commitment or Mr. Right but this rush of desire that pulsed inside her like a drum beat. Like an imperative.
She had been waiting for a man to kiss her as though she was essential to him. That was how she felt when he started to draw back, then returned as though he couldn’t resist one more long, thorough, greedy taste.
He lifted his head and kept her in the shelter of his arms.
She was trembling and grateful for his support. Her knees were gelatin, the rest of her soft as melted wax. His hand was tucked beneath her hair, cupping the back of her neck, thumb moving in a restless, soothing caress against her nape. The other held her body pressed close enough to feel the rapid tattoo of his heart through the layer of his jacket and the thick shape of his erection against her stomach.
