“I guess.”
“What better venue than now? Tonight?”
“Okay, yeah,” she said, casting a look around the huge, packed nightclub.
It hadn’t gone unnoticed that he’d summoned her and she’d answered the arrogant summons. One look at their body language would be more than enough for anyone to see that their interest in each other was anything but platonic. “Most big media outlets have someone down there. What were you thinking? A statement as we walk out?”
After what felt like an eternity, he covered the short distance between them, his arrogant stare taking on an edge of something else. Another step and their thighs grazed just a little.
Alex shivered, every inch of her body, desperate for contact, bowing toward him. His fingers landed on her temple, pushing the mass of her hair from her face. And then he cupped the back of her neck gently. Giving her a chance to step away. “I was thinking a kiss, right here. Stir up some interest before we announce the pertinent facts.”
Music hammered around them. The intimate contact, after the drought of so many months, felt like a spark of fire in her body. She was going to say yes. She knew it. He knew it. The hungry denizens of the press were just a reason they were both using. Except she didn’t want to be the one who gave in too easily. Who blinked first.
She ran her fingers through her hair and fluttered her lashes at him. “You’re doing this to punish me for walking out on you.” She pouted, knowing that the particular red she was wearing tonight made her mouth look like a tart strawberry.
“I didn’t realize kissing me was such a punishment, bella.”
She bent her mouth closer to his ear. “It isn’t. In fact, there’s very few things in life I enjoy more. And you know that. That’s the punishment. To be reminded of how helpless I am to this…thing between us even when I don’t trust you.”
A vein pulsed in his temple. “All I want is to kiss my wife after months of going to bed alone, wishing she was there to welcome me. Of waking up alone in the middle of the night fully aroused, but knowing that no relief is forthcoming except by my hand. While wondering if I had imagined how bloody good it had been when you came to me that first time in Bali and I took you under the stars in the night sky.”
“It was that good,” she added simply. Wishing she was the type that could play games. Wishing she could somehow use his attraction to her, that desperate huskiness of his tone, to her advantage.
But she couldn’t. “Okay. Let’s get it over with.”
“That sounds like you’re bracing yourself for battle.”
“You don’t think the battle’s already begun?”
“I guess you will claim I started it?”
“Yes.”
“And must I finish the battle too?”
“No. I will. You should know, though, that I intend to win. At any cost.”
“All I wanted was a peaceful marriage with a biddable woman,” he said, with a put-upon sigh.
Laughter roared out of her, melting away the stress and grief of the past few months, at least for a moment. This was the man she’d fallen for in that lush island paradise. This man who’d laughed with her, who’d teased her. Who’d listened to her talking about her dreams.
He didn’t quite laugh with her but his eyes gleamed in the darkness. In the flickering light and shadows of the club, the lines of his face looked astonishingly beautiful. “And the prize for winning?”
“There’s a prize?”
“There’s always a prize in these things. Shall I tell you what it is, Princess?” he whispered, his breath hot against her lips, his arrogant nose flaring.
Alex placed her open palms against his chest. His heart thundered under her fingers, the beat steadily rising as she leaned her thighs against the rock-hard cradle of his. Heat. Hardness. Hunger. His maleness was an ocean she wanted to drown in. “What?” she croaked.
“Surrender.”
“Never,” she declared just as arrogantly, his very words imbuing her blood with challenge.
She pushed her palm up, up until she reached his neck. Sneaking her fingers into the thick hair at the nape of his neck, she tilted her head. His breath drew a hot path down her cheek, the scent of him a trigger her body instantly associated with long, lazy nights and indescribable pleasure.
Her other hand she kept on his abdomen, loving the tight clench and release of those powerful muscles every time she touched him.
“Not unless…”
“Not unless what?”
Slowly, she pressed her lips to his, pressing his head down with her fingers. As if he’d been made for the express purpose of pleasuring her. “Unless I take you down with me.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Yes. I want to make you drown. In me. Until you can’t tell what’s right and wrong anymore. Until…”
Soft lips met hers in a rush of warmth and rollicking hunger. Alex drew a sizzling trail along the seam of that sensuous mouth with her tongue, her breath a labored hiss against his bristly jaw. The remembered taste of him was like a detonation going off inside her body.
She nipped and kissed, licked and played with his mouth, but it wasn’t enough.
Nowhere near enough.
She sneaked her tongue into his mouth on the next swipe. Pleasure exploded in sweet rivulets down her body as the taste of him filled her. Whiskey and want—he was all solid and real. And after the roller coaster of the last few months, here was the thing that had anchored her. She devoured him as if the taste of him on her tongue, the solid breadth of him in her hands, the labored rush of his breaths on her skin could fill the emptiness inside of her. As if he was all she needed.
Pressing herself into him, she took his mouth with a feral hunger. She licked and nipped, bit and laved at the pillowy lushness
