His eyes were open, but he couldn’t see. He tried to bring his vision into focus, couldn’t. Instead, he let his lids fall, surrendered, and accepted he was caught, somehow trapped in the moment, that her bold and totally unexpected attack had caught him unawares and snared him.
His lips gave under hers, eased, shifted; he started to respond to her blatant invitation, his arms rising to hold her, then instinct reared and he caught himself. Tried to pull back, free-tried to find the will to do so.
The clasp of her small hand at his nape tightened; she stepped closer, her lips taunting. Her body brushed his, sinuous, sirenlike. Her other hand rose, came to rest splayed against his chest, then she slid it slowly upward, over his shoulder to twine about his neck as she moved closer yet.
He felt the change in him, the sudden surge of driving need he recognized, yet didn’t. This was desire grown unusually strong, unusually forceful, born of lust heightened by her beauty, colored by a primal need to dominate, to subjugate, lashed to life by her cool contempt-a medley of deeper passions she’d effortlessly stirred, and seemed determined to unleash.
More fool she.
But if she wanted…so did he.
He played out his inner reins, lifted his arms, and closed them about her. Gathering her more definitely against him, he felt the hitch in her breathing, was even more aware of the unadulterated need that seared him. A need to conquer, to possess. To meet her challenge head-on, and triumph.
To put her in her place, beneath him once again.
He did as he wished, and kissed her back. For long moments, he toyed with her, a give-and-take that remained at the level she’d initiated, neither light nor unmeaningful, yet not threatening, more promise than action. A superficial sensual landscape, one where sexual taunts and responses belonged.
She was comfortable enough there, sufficiently in control. Able to duel with him.
He mentally smiled and ruthlessly took control, backed her against the tree, parted her lips, surged into her mouth, and laid claim. Crashed through her outer defenses and engaged her, tasted her, not the sweet but the sensual, the more intimate self she’d until then kept guarded.
Shocked, Pris tried to draw back only to feel his arms lock about her. Like steel, they caged her, trapping her, the tree a solid wall at her back, his body an even more intimidating barrier before her. A threatening barrier. As if to demonstrate, his hands, palms and fingers strong, spread over her back, then he drew her even more definitely into him, against a body far harder, far stronger than her own. One mind-numbingly masculine.
He surrounded her, alien and powerful-and intent.
Her body responded, but not as she wished. Instead of fighting to break free, her limbs melted, her muscles turned to jelly. Clamping her hands on his shoulders, fingers sinking into heavy muscle, she struggled to hang on, to cling to control, or at least to her wits, but he wouldn’t allow her even that much-angling his head over hers, he mercilessly plundered her mouth and sent her wits careening.
Some part of her continued to struggle, to frantically look for some way out even while her senses reeled, even while her mind was overwhelmed, all thought submerged by the waves of sensuality he sent pouring through her.
She tried to draw a line and hold to it, tried to dig in her sensual heels, but he ruthlessly, relentlessly undermined her, and drove her back-into deeper waters. Waters into which she’d never before stuck a toe.
His lips were commanding, demanding, forcing her to scramble to appease, to placate. His tongue dueled with hers, and he constantly won, seizing as his reward the right to caress, explicit and knowing, until shudders of plea sure racked her spine.
She was breathing all but entirely through him, helpless in his arms, unable to retreat. To call a halt, to step back from the engagement she’d started, to break away from what it had become.
There was heat and fire in him; with him wrapped about her she couldn’t mistake it. Couldn’t miss the rigid evidence of his desire so flagrantly impressed against her belly. Yet there was a coolness behind all he did-that aloof control that despite her best efforts, her fond hopes, she hadn’t rattled or rocked in the least.
Even while he engaged with her, even while he set her wits spinning, her senses whirling, he was watching her. Steering her.
He wasn’t lost in this unfamiliar world. He wasn’t out of control-he was dictating.
This, she suddenly realized, was a lesson-a warning.
As if he sensed her realization, his hands, until then splayed firmly across her back, shifted. One rose slightly, holding her pressed to him while his other hand slid slowly down, over her hips, then lower.
Even through the velvet of her habit, she felt the sensual assessment in his touch, the blatant possession.
Far from reacting with contemptuous fury, her traitorous body and even more traitorous senses all but swooned. Heat raced over her skin, prickled beneath his palm as he fondled, then more explicitly caressed.
His head angled over hers, his lips pressing hers farther apart; the ruthless yet languid thrust of his tongue became even more openly intimate, more devastatingly erotic.
She couldn’t stand against him-couldn’t stand against herself, the self he connected with, that he could command. That he’d called forth and turned against her.
Her defenses crumbled; all resistance-in her mind, in her bones and sinews-simply faded away. On a shattered sigh, half-tortured moan, she surrendered.
Dillon knew it; he had to wage a war with himself not to react. Not to brace her against the tree, lift her skirts, and sheathe himself in her wanton heat.
He closed his eyes tight, sank into her mouth, and fought to leash his demons, his almost overpowering need to have her, here and now. Fought to convince himself that what he’d already taken, what he’d already enjoyed, was enough. For now.
He’d won, triumphed, but he hadn’t expected the battle to rage so far. Recognizing her tack, he’d responded in the only way that, in the heat of the moment, he’d deemed possible-in kind. But he hadn’t expected her to meet him and match him on field after field, hadn’t expected her to defend so recklessly, to hold against him until they’d come to this-this critical point in passion’s dance; he’d expected her to yield long since. He hadn’t expected to have to press her so hard, to have to wield his own sensual weapons so strongly, not to this extent.
To the extent where he was inwardly shaking, racked with volcanic yet unslaked desire, raked by passion’s claws.
A self he didn’t recognize, one driven by hot desire, reminded him she’d started this. He’d called her bet-shouldn’t she pay his price?
With her locked against him, her slender body and lush mouth fully yielded, all his, the temptation to ravish her-to deal with what she’d started in the most appropriate way-whispered darkly through his mind.
Yet now she’d surrendered and was no longer fighting him, there was a subtle innocence in her responses; no longer screened by her determination to counter him, she-the woman within-seemed so very vulnerable.
He might wish-that harder, darker side of him might want-but he didn’t have it in him to harm her.
Drawing back from the kiss required effort; they’d traveled too far along passion’s road to simply stop and step away. He needed to draw her back to the world, needed to force himself step by step back from a precipice he’d never before faced.
The realization that that last was indeed true helped.
Eventually he lifted his head. He looked down at her lips, swollen, slightly bruised; he hadn’t been gentle. He shifted his gaze to her eyes, watched as she drew in a breath, then her lashes fluttered, and rose.