A little smile quirked at his mouth, though she saw it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Whoever said I was heading to a stuffy office without a window?”
“Wild guess. Am I right?”
“Not exactly. But close enough, metaphorically, I suppose.”
“If that’s not what you want, you need to tell Henry. You only have one chance at life. Why spend it living someone else’s dream? Take what you want.”
Before the words were out, before she realized what he intended, Ian was reaching for her, his mouth fierce and passionate on hers.
For an instant, she froze, not quite sure where the kiss had come from. This was a side to him she didn’t recognize. Fierce, wild, passionate.
Wonderful.
His mouth was firm, determined, on hers, leaving no doubt as to what he wanted. Samantha kissed him back, her heartbeat racing and desire lapping at her like water against the dock.
So much for emotional equilibrium. All her emotions were raw and close to the surface.
She wanted him. Right here, right now. The attraction she had felt for him before had seemed powerful enough but this wild rush of her blood consumed her until she could think of nothing else but being with him.
She wrapped her arms around him, wanting to hold tightly to this man, this moment. The wedding was only a few weeks away and she knew he would be gone shortly after that, out of her life forever.
She couldn’t let herself fall in love with him, as she had done before with alarming regularity, but was it wrong to want to hold on to every moment she could while she had the chance?
SHE HAD TOLD him to take what he wanted and her words had triggered something deep within him.
She was what he wanted.
All evening, he had been fighting against the hunger prowling through him like a caged beast. Every time he looked at her while she laughed at something his father said or smiled at a joke Amelia made or listened, deep in conversation, to his mother and Gemma, he had wanted to grab her by the hand, tug her into the darkness and kiss her just like this.
He wanted to kiss her until she was making those soft, sexy sounds in her throat, until her heart beat as rapidly as his, until neither of them could remember all the reasons why they shouldn’t be doing this.
What was it about her that turned him from a staid, rather boring professor to a man consumed by hunger?
The salmon he studied had a biological imperative to return to the waters of their birth to spawn. They could cross hundreds of miles to do it, swimming upstream against fierce currents, leaping up vast waterfalls.
For the first time in his life, after more than a decade of research, Ian began to understand the wild need that drove them.
When she pressed her soft curves against him, he lost all sense of reason. She kissed him with a hunger that seemed to match his own, her mouth tasting of strawberry tarts and the wine Gemma had served at dinner. It was an intoxicating combination that kept him returning to her mouth again and again.
Over her summer dress, she had put on the little jumper she’d brought along against the evening chill and he slid his hands beneath it to the warm, silky skin of her back. She shivered and made another of those sexy sounds that seemed to cut away all his restraints like a rigging knife on a bowline.
He wanted to make love to her. Right here on the dock, if he had to, or on his research boat, which bobbed softly on the waves. He wanted to be inside her, to feel that soft body arch against him, to lick and taste and savor all her hidden, delicious spots...
Some sort of lake creature splashed offshore, a small sound in the night but enough to jolt him back to his senses.
What was he doing?
Ian wrenched his mouth away from Samantha’s, his breathing harsh.
He couldn’t remember wanting anything as badly as he wanted Samantha Fremont in that moment.
She had shared with him deep pain from her childhood, and five minutes later he was kissing her like a prat who could only think about one thing.
Usually he prided himself on his control, his unfailing ability always to say and do the right thing in the right circumstances. Yet here he was, a heartbeat away from breaking all his rules and seducing this lovely, sweet, vulnerable American girl.
Good Lord. He had been willing to make love to her on a wooden dock, without any thought to privacy or dignity or, at the very least, comfort. Think of the splinters.
All right, yes, she had kissed him back. That didn’t excuse his actions. He was mortified with himself at the lack of control, even while a large part of him was more than a little regretful that he had somehow found the strength of will to stop.
She gazed at him, eyes wide in the moonlight while she tried to catch her breath. He wanted to kiss her all over again, that charming cleft in her chin, the dimple that appeared only on the left side of her mouth when she smiled, those perfectly arched brows.
He wanted to kiss her everywhere.
He released a heavy sigh. “We are apparently a dangerous combination, Ms. Fremont.”
“I fear you are correct, Mr. Summerhill.”
He should probably correct her. Tell her the truth. Everything would be so much easier if he truly was still merely Mr. Summerhill.
He couldn’t do it. Not yet. He had promised Gemma, for one thing. For another, he wanted to forget the rest of it for a few more weeks at least.
Instead, he rested his forehead on hers. “This is madness between us. I’ve never known anything like this heat we seem to generate.”
“Neither have I,” she said, her voice small.
“I’m leaving in only two weeks’ time.” Was he reminding her or himself?
