Page 64 of Devil in Her Details

Lilly blinked at him. “I don’t believe you.” Well, she did believe him, but she didn’t. It was one of those confounding moments she’d been experiencing of late that she didn’t know how to approach. Which direction to take.

He stepped to her, forcing her to lift her chin more and more as he closed the distance between them. Seriously, the room had not changed, everything was exactly as it had been thirty seconds ago, and yet something had shifted so completely that Lilly found she had to remind herself to breathe.

“You’re very direct,” she managed, “for a man who tells me nothing.”

“I tell you what matters.”

“And what matters right now?” Lilly asked softly.

He looked at her for a long moment, and a furious debate flashed behind his eyes. A decision being made, she thought. Or perhaps one that had already been made, and he was simply debating whether he should act upon it now.

She had approximately half a second to process the moment his eyes darkened before his hands were at her waist, and she was being lifted into the air as though she weighed nothing at all.

Lilly gasped, gripping his shoulders at the sudden loss of footing.

“Dagger!”

In answer, he carried her to the piano placed in the corner of the room and set her down on the edge. His lips were on her in the next second, his tongue sweeping into her mouth with vengeance, fingers digging into her flesh.

Lilly hadn’t the faintest idea what had gotten into this man, but she didn’t hate it. In fact, when his mouth moved against hers, her whole body erupted into flames. She knew his mouth by now. The previous two kisses had branded themselves onto her lips, into her memory. But there was something different in this one. The others had been, well, tame in comparison to this one.

This kiss was wild.

Very much untamed.

She kissed him back with every bit of the desire he brought to her, her hands finding the front of his shirt, pulse pounding in her breast, her throat, even the tips of her fingers. He growled into her mouth, and then his hands were in her hair, tilting her head back with a gentleness that contradicted everything else about the kiss.

She lost track of time entirely, and then there was simply nothing but him, the moment melting into something that no longer had a clear beginning anymore, and she had no interest in finding its end. Lilly suddenly understood the meaning of being swept off her feet. Swept, she was most certainly.

When he finally lifted his head, she needed a moment before she trusted herself to open her eyes.

He was watching her when she did. That unreadable gaze, slightly darker than usual. Beneath her hands, she could feel the beat of his heart matching hers.

“I’ve wanted to do this,” he said roughly, “since the moment you shut those curtains on me.”

Had this been the hunt?

Well! She’d been thoroughly captured, then. Should she have given in so easily? But seeing the brooding depth of his gaze laced with unmistakable desire, Lilly decided that was enough for her. She might have been hunted, but this panther hadn’t gotten away unscathed.

“The curtains,” she said, her voice impressively steady for a woman whose heart was still rioting. “All of this over the curtains?”

“I’d kiss you for less.”

Lilly blinked. Well. That was . . . She suddenly became aware of his hands still entangled in her hair, her own still fisted in his shirt. She released him slowly.

“Is that a warning,” she asked, “or a promise?”

His gaze dropped briefly to her mouth. “It can be whatever you want it to be, love.”

She smoothed the front of his shirt where she’d crumpled it, mostly because she wanted an excuse to keep her hands there. “I’ll pretend you never said that.” For her heart and her sanity.

A throat cleared.

Dagger’s face darkened into a scowl as Lilly pushed him away with a gasp, his hands dropping to his sides as he took a step back.

“What is it now?” he growled at Hewitt.

Lilly sighed. The man really had adapted too well to this household. “What is it, Hewitt?” she asked politely.