His kiss was long, sensual, seeking. He firmly slanted his lips over hers, first at one angle, then another, while his tongue moved inside her mouth with sinful skill. She wanted to hate this blatant violation, but she loved it. The texture of his tongue intrigued her. She wanted to feel it not only against hers, but everywhere. She wondered if the myriad textures of his body were this fascinating and thrilling, and yearned to have her curiosity appeased.
But she steeled herself against feeling anything but contempt for him and his hateful kiss. She tried to ignore the heat spilling down her chest and into the lower part of her body, tried to disregard the desire that ribboned through her like a river of wine as golden as his eyes, tried to dismiss the swirls of sensation that licked at her thighs, her middle, her breasts. She wasn’t entirely successful, but she forced herself to lie still when she wanted to writhe against him like a cat being petted.
“You might just as well participate,” he rasped when he felt her body tense. His lips coasted over her cheek, pecking light kisses on her creamy complexion, now tinted pink by exposure to sun and wind during her morning horseback ride. Linc didn’t allow himself to admire it too long. Feeling any tenderness for her was to be avoided at all costs if he were to regain his pride. “Because I’m not letting up until you’re crazy with lust. The longer you resist, Kerry, the longer it will take.”
“Go to hell.”
He made a tsking sound. “Is that any way for a nun to talk?”
“Don’t.” When his tongue playfully batted against the lobe of her ear, she tried to sound irritable, but the protest came out as a low groan of arousal.
Linc recognized the sound for what it was. He’d never had difficulty sexually communicating with women, whether they spoke his language or not. It wasn’t so much what they said as how they said it. And clearer than the single word of denial, was Kerry’s breathless way of saying it.
“You like that?” he murmured, catching her ear lightly between his teeth.
“No.”
He chuckled. “We both know you’re a liar. I think you like it a lot.”
He kissed the soft skin beneath her ear, nuzzled behind it with his nose, flirted with the rim of it with his tongue. It was hard to tell now whether her fitful movements beneath him were meant to put more space between them or to get closer.
His breath was warm as it drifted over her face. It smelled appetizingly of coffee. And that was just one of the reasons why her lips were far more obliging this time when his, with very little pressure applied, settled over hers. His open mouth moved upon hers, separating her lips for his thrusting tongue. As it speared into her mouth, she felt a correlating stab of desire in the depths of her body.
When he raised his head and peered deeply into her eyes, she thought that she might have made an involuntary sound. He asked, “Feel that?”
At first she thought that he was referring to that sweet ache deep inside herself. Then her eyes went wide with alarm when she realized that he was talking about the rigid flesh between his own thighs. She clamped her upper teeth over her lower lip and squeezed her eyes shut. His low laugh was nasty.
“I see that you do. Well, that’s how it’s been, baby. While you’ve been playing your devious little games with me, I’ve been hard with wanting you. All that time we were stalking through the jungle together, I was miserable not only with heat and fatigue and hunger, but with a desire that I couldn’t quench. I was ashamed of it because I thought it was a violation of your holiness.” He kept his voice as smooth as expensive brandy, but it had a bite as strong as cheap whiskey. “There’s nothing holy about you, is there?”
He worked his hand between their bodies. When Kerry realized what he was going to do, she went rigid. “No!” It was a soundless cry.
“Why, Kerry, you surprise me. Don’t you want to know the full extent of your powers?”
When he had unbuttoned his jeans, he reached for one of her hands and dragged it down. “No!” This time her protest was stifled by his kiss, a hard, possessive kiss that glued his lips to hers and sent his tongue deep into her mouth.
As he opened her hand over himself, Kerry’s brain recorded a thousand fleeting impressions. One prevailed. She wanted to touch him. She wanted to discover. She wanted to catalog the smoothness, the hardness, the warmth. She wanted to sink her fingers into the hair that was coarse and springy, but soft.
She fought the temptation as long as she could, but self-discipline didn’t serve her long enough. Her hand stopped resisting the relentless pressure of his. Of its own free will it molded to his shape and became inquisitive.
Making an animal sound, Linc tore his mouth from hers and roughly shoved her hand away. His breathing was unsteady and rapid. “Not that way, Kerry,” he said in a voice hardly above a growl. “You won’t get by with that. You never quit playing dirty, do you? I guess it runs in the family. You’ve always got one more trick up your sleeve. Well, your tricks won’t work this time.”
Perplexity filled her dark blue eyes, but he didn’t seem to notice. He was studying the buttons on her casual shirt. He negligently opened the first one. “I vaguely remember how it feels to touch you. You’re small, but nice.” The sexist comment brought a wave of resentment rushing through her. He saw the mutiny in her eyes and smiled arrogantly. “And as I recall, your nipples respond nicely.”
Her cheeks flared with color, especially when he succeeded in opening all the buttons on her blouse and spreading it open. She and Jenny were of comparable size when Jenny wasn’t pregnant. Kerry’s breasts filled the cups of the lacy brassiere she had borrowed. With the sunlight pouring over them, there was little left to Linc’s imagination.
His eyes turned dark and Kerry thought she saw a muscle in his cheek twitch with something akin to remorse, before his lips formed that hard, unyielding line again. “Open it.”
“I won’t.”
“Then you can explain to Jenny how the fastener got broken,” he said, reaching for the clasp.
“You’re vile.”
“Open it.”
Setting her jaw stubbornly, she opened the clasp, but left the cups alone. After muttering a snide thank you, he moved them aside and left her bare to his gaze. It was as scorching as the sun overhead.
Kerry’s bravado deserted her. Her eyes closed in shame, so she missed seeing him swallow convulsively. She also missed the spasm of regret that twisted his stern lips as he ran his hands over her. The words he spoke fell like harmful blows on her ears.