Though he hadn’t quite finished the pans, he picked up a towel, dried his hands. Maybe it was that slim white neck, he mused. It was just begging to be touched, tasted. Or it could be those odd golden eyes that hinted at all sorts of elusive emotions, even when they shone with confidence. Or maybe it was just his own ego, still ruffled from her mocking response to him that morning.
Whatever it was, he was compelled to test her, and perhaps himself, again.
He moved behind her, quietly. Following impulse, he lowered his head and closed his teeth gently on the sensitive nape of her neck. She jerked, came up hard against him with a shudder that seemed to rack her from head to toe. As surprised as he was pleased, he took her shoulders firmly in his hands and turned her to face him.
“Not so cool this time,” he murmured, and crushed her mouth with a kiss of practiced skill and devastating intensity.
She hadn’t had time to brace, to think, to defend. His mouth quite simply destroyed her. Her head spun, her knees jellied, her blood went on fast boil. Never in her life had so many sensations battered her at once. The smooth, warm demand of his mouth taking from hers, the hard, confident hands moving over her, the smell of lemon and soap and…man.
Her mind simply couldn’t compute it, so her body took over. Some weak, accepting sound purred out of her throat. She couldn’t stop it, couldn’t stop the trembling or the heat or the sudden and baffling need to let everything she was melt into him. One shock of pleasure sparked another, then another, until there was nothing else.
His first reaction was of arrogant delight. Indifferent to him? Like hell she was. She was hot. She was trembling. She was moaning. The woman he kissed that morning had been cool and amused and mocking. Not this one. This one was…
Deliciously warm. He could have tasted that mouth endlessly, so smooth, so soft, so silky. He eased deeper, aroused by each throaty moan and murmur. His mind went blissfully blank with pleasure when he slid his hands under her sweater and found only Rebecca beneath it.
She quivered, her breath catching in her throat as he skimmed those rough palms over small, firm breasts. His thumbs scraped lightly over her rigid nipples, and he swallowed her gasps, absorbed her shudders.
The arms she’d lifted to twine around his neck went limp, dropped slowly to her sides in a kind of helpless surrender that excited unbearably, even as it warned him.
He eased back, clamping his hands on the stove at either side of her as he studied her face. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were closed, her breath was coming fast and harsh through lips erotically swollen from his.
He thought she would look just like that on the floor, with him mounting her. The image of that had him gripping the stove until his fingers ached.
Then she opened her eyes, and he saw that they were blind, drugged, and a little bit afraid
.
“Well, well, well…” He said it lightly, mockingly, as much in defense as in triumph, as his stomach lurched with need. “I’d say we had a different result this time around.”
She couldn’t catch her breath, much less form a word. She only shook her head as her body continued to suffer from quick, lethal explosions.
“No theories this time, Doc?” He didn’t know why he was angry, but he could feel his temper building. Building, then spiking, as she stood there looking helpless, stunned, and more and more terrified. “Maybe we should try it again.”
“No.” She got that out. She thought her life might depend on the uttering of that single syllable. “No,” she said again. “I think you proved your point.”
He didn’t know what his point had been—something about amusing himself, a test—but it certainly didn’t apply now. Now he wanted her with a ferocity that was totally unprecedented. He believed desire was as natural as breathing, and should cause no more discomfort than the easy exhaling of air.
And yet he ached, fiercely ached.
“You… Let me by,” she managed.
“When I’m ready. I’m waiting for your hypothesis—or would it be a conclusion now? I’m curious, Rebecca. How are you going to react the next time I kiss you? And which one of you am I going to find when I take you to bed?”
She didn’t know—and wasn’t sure she could tell him if she did. She was saved from what she was sure would have been abject humiliation when Rafe swung through the kitchen door.
He stopped, summed up the situation in a glance and scowled at his brother. “For God’s sake, Shane.”
“Get out.”
“It’s my damn house,” Rafe shot back.
“Then we’ll get out.” He snagged Rebecca’s arm and took two strides before panic gave her the strength to yank away.
“No.” It was all she said as she walked past both men and out of the kitchen.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Rafe demanded. “You had her pinned up against the damn stove. She was white as a sheet. Since when have you gotten off on scaring women?”
“I didn’t scare her.”