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‘Would you worry?’ he asked, moving up behind her.
‘Not about you, but about others you might meet on the way,’ she said bluntly. ‘My mother’s accident happened when a drunk ran into her. He got off with a few scratches, the loss of his licence and a couple of months of periodic detention while Mum got seven years of confinement and pain.’
‘I’m sorry.’ His quiet sincerity took her off guard and she turned, just as he moved to pick up the tea-towel on the bench beyond her. Trapped against the cupboards, Anne could feel every inch of him from chest to knee…every impressive inch! ‘Anne?’ He picked up her plait, which had flopped on to the bench, winding it around his hand as she maintained her silent resistance, forcing her to look at him. ‘I’m sorry.’
She meant to say something flippant, something smart, something sophisticated. Instead she could only stand there, transfixed by the dark compassion in the heavy-lidded gaze, aware of simmering heat that had nothing whatsoever to do with the sultry, late-summer night.
And then he kissed her.
CHAPTER FIVE
SHE might have known that something would go awry. After all, nothing so far in her life had gone precisely to plan—why should kissing be any differen
t?
Anne pushed the button on her tape-deck and grinned at the staccato sound that issued. She turned up the volume and directed the speaker towards the wall so that the incessant typewriter tap-tapping mingled with a similar sound issuing faintly from the other side. She cocked her head as the distant echo faltered while hers continued with machine-gun precision.
Aha, she thought smugly, dusting off her hands as she left the bedroom, let Hunter now accuse her of not working hard enough!
She went back to her Russian text, sprawling on her stomach on the floor beside Ivan’s cot, surrounded by her books, but found it next to impossible to concen- trate. She sighed and pillowed her chin on folded arms, her drying hair sprayed like a damp blanket across her back, providing a cool relief from the sultry evening air that wafted in the open window.
She hadn’t had any trouble concentrating on that damned kiss. It had absorbed her whole being. A week later, just thinking about it still made her go warm all over. Nothing in her unadventurous past had prepared her for the impact of all that concentrated masculinity on her senses. Funny, she had never thought of herself as being a particularly sensual person. Hunter Lewis had changed all that.
She closed her eyes as she remembered with a stab of satisfaction that Hunter had seemed every bit as shaken by their kiss as she had been.
She had seen the faint look of surprise in his dark eyes when his head had bent towards hers, as if what he was doing had caught him completely unawares. Then her thoughts had been scattered under an avalanche of sweet sensation…
His fist tightened on her plait, pulling her head back, and she instinctively went up on tiptoe to meet his descending mouth. It was hard, hot, and faintly hostile. Instead of frightening her, his restrained aggression was fiercely exciting. He wasn’t asking for a response, he was demanding it, and Anne gave with greedy gener- osity. When he bit at her soft lips they parted instantly and he plunged inside, making a rough sound of triumph that vibrated on her tongue. He tasted deliciously warm and spicy, and as he sank recklessly deeper she pressed her palms flat against his chest to steady herself and was entranced by the straining tension in his body, the rapid, erratic pounding of his heart. Her hands slid to his sides, fingers curling jerkily into the taut muscle as he made another primitive sound and shifted, crowding her closer against the cupboards. His thighs tangled with hers, his hips pushing, forcing her to acknowledge his superior strength and aggressive maleness.
He tugged her hair, using it to control the angle of her mouth against his, adjusting her so that he could penetrate her more thoroughly, arching her throat so that his free hand could run down the vulnerable length of her, from jaw to flank and then slowly back up again to stroke the velvety skin of her throat with a threatening deliberation. His fingers trailed lightly against the sensitive flesh, teasing her with an unbearably gentle possessiveness until his thumb found the betraying throb of her pulse under the point of her jaw and pressed into it so deeply that she felt dizzy, more dominated by him with every heartbeat. She uttered a tiny, melting moan of confusion and his mouth let her go, but only long enough for her to blink at him in dazed disappointment, her eyes slumberous, her tender mouth a languorous invitation. His bruising expression flared into one of whitehot satisfaction and then he was back, burrowing into her moist heat, using his tongue to explore the completeness of her submission to his masculine aggression, his hunger so intense that he was shaking as much as she.
His hips anchored the centre of her body while his stroking fingers drifted leisurely down from her throat and over the honey-smooth slope to the soft elastic of her blouse, tugging at it until it dipped below her laceclad breast. His palm was warm and dry, creating a delicate friction as he cupped the fragile lace and shaped her to his touch. Oh, yes, this was what she had needed. She arched herself into the pleasurable new sensation and his fingers tightened, his thumb moving to rub insistently back and forth across the firm crest of her breast until Anne felt she was going to burst with exquisite agony.
‘Oh, please…’ She shuddered as his mouth moved to nip at her ear and exposed throat. His fingers paused in their magical work and she cried out in soft protest. ‘Oh, no…please…don’t…’
To her horror he released her breast entirely. ‘Are you still tender from feeding Ivan?’ he murmured raggedly. ‘Are your breasts too swollen and sensitive to be touched…?’
‘Oh, no, I meant don’t stop,’ she begged incoherently, dragging his hand back to her breast, taking over the role of the aggressor as she pulled his head down and began kissing him eagerly, using her tongue the way he had shown her.
She pushed her hands eagerly up under his shirt to stroke his silky, hot, hair-roughened chest. She touched his flat, masculine nipples and was startled to feel them react sharply, hardening under her clumsy caress. Intoxicated by a rush of feverish curiosity, she pulled her mouth away from his and pushed the soft fabric up out of her way, revealing the thick muscles bunching and shifting with every convulsive breath.
‘Anne…’
She was too enraptured by her discovery to notice the husky note of warning in his voice as his hand stilled on her breast.
‘Why, you’re just like me,’ she murmured wonderingly, touching a finger lightly to one rigid nipple where it peeped out of its thick nest of hair and watching it stiffen further.
He shuddered and swore savagely under his breath and she looked up at his face, fascinated by the mixture of smouldering resentment and carnal desire that she saw there.
He was fighting against her, she realised with a quiver of shock—against what she could do to him. But she wasn’t his enemy and she wasn’t about to let him shrug off what had just happened between them as a momentary aberration!
Holding his smoking black gaze with dreamy intentness, Anne leaned forward and pressed her open mouth over the stiff brown button of his nipple. His reaction was gratifyingly swift. As she began to suckle he gave a hoarse cry of shock, his head jerking back and his jaw clenching, his whole body tautening and lifting towards her.
He made the mistake of looking down at her again, seeing her watching him with those provocatively knowing eyes as she feasted on his flesh. Her tongue flicked over him in a wicked, velvety rasp and he went rock-hard at the involuntary image of her sinking to her knees and using that sultry, skilled mouth on him in other, even more pleasurable ways…
‘No, damn you, that’s enough!’ He dragged himself out of her reach, staggering slightly as he turned away to readjust his clothing, leaving Anne bereft and feeling somehow betrayed, an angry frustration clawing at her insides.
He swung back and stiffened at the sight of her dishevelled figure, a sweet disorder of femininity. Her wistful expression of wanton dismay seemed to spark an even greater rejection.
