assume?’ Hayden’s smile reminded her of the Huntsman-wolf in Red Riding Hood. All the better to eat you with …
‘If that makes you feel better about your chances of resisting,’ he said.
He pulled her a little closer. Closed his arms around her, hot and strong. Her heart went berserk. ‘So the question is, Shirley … knowing what I’m doing and knowing what my goal is—’ he breathed down on her ‘—are you any less inclined to let me kiss you?’
She licked her lips. Struggled for air. ‘You’re assuming you already have my buy-in?’
Hayden blinked, slow, confident. That caused Shirley’s own lids to follow suit, growing heavier. She tried to glance away to break the contact.
‘A kiss is the touching of flesh on flesh. You started to buy into me touching you months ago … the first time you let my glance rest on your porcelain skin. Then later, when you let my fingers graze your hair. Then take your hand. Even now … my eyes are roaming where my lips cannot and you’re allowing it.’
Sure enough, his veiled gaze browsed her mouth and made it part in breathless anticipation. She forced it closed.
‘And now, even knowing what I plan to do and why, you’re still in my arms. I think I’d call that buy-in.’
‘Pretty clever,’ she breathed, desperate to preserve some dignity. ‘Assuming it’s going to be any kind of kiss at all.’
His teeth flashed white and dangerous. ‘And there it is. Full commitment.’
He took her weight on his arm and leaned her back into it, his mouth pressing down confidently onto hers, sliding against it, still half-smiling in his victory. She held firm against the heavenly feel and smell of him so close, refusing to give in.
She would have loved to stand, unmoved, in his hold. To let him kiss her senseless and then to emerge untouched. Indifferent.
But that wasn’t going to happen.
Not in this lifetime.
The moment she resisted, holding her own—barely—against the breathless spin of her mind, he upped the ante. Plying her with the technique that must have unzipped many a skirt in its time. His mouth glided over hers, alternating pressure, his tongue teasing the firm line she maintained where her lips met. His flesh blazing against hers. Her head spun wildly.
He pulled back a little, breathed words against her flaming skin, and something about the shift of colour in his eyes told her he wasn’t playing a game any more. ‘I’m going to kiss that dark gloss off until I reveal what’s underneath it.’
A sudden erotic lance speared way down deep inside. He set to work doing just that, pressing himself more fully into her, binding them close and kissing the living daylights out of her. Her fingers, pressed against his chest to stop him getting closer, curled, of their own accord, into the fabric of his shirt. Her feet, which she’d positioned to help her push against Hayden, subtly shifted weight so that she leaned more fully into him.
Into his kiss.
Her head, which should have been screaming resistance, swam uselessly in the wash of scent and sensation pumping off the human hormone holding her up.
And her mouth opened.
Instantly he was in, his triumph punctuated by the thrusts of his tongue and the heaving breaths they both stole between kisses. Her whole body flamed with desire and she speared her fingers up into his hair, keeping him close. He backed her up against the wall.
‘Witch,’ he pressed into her hungry lips. ‘There was never any other avenue for us.’
Something about speech. Something about the incendiary way the two of them had burst to flame the moment they touched and the way the oxygen they sucked in only fuelled it more. Something finally drew her attention to what they were doing and where.
She pulled back, chest heaving. ‘You assume that was all your doing,’ she whispered the moment her lips were free. ‘What if I’ve been angling for a kiss since the beginning?’
His eyes darkened, dropped. Then his hands followed suit. Then he stepped away.
‘That’s the other key principle of influence,’ he heaved, dragging his wrist across his lips. ‘Convincing the subject it was their idea all along.’
And then he was gone, back across the hall to his own room, leaving her half sagging against the cold steel wall of the cabin.
Damn you, Hayden Tennant.
It was minutes before she had the strength to lever herself upright away from the wall long enough to sag down onto the little bed.
Had she ever before wanted something as badly and resented it so thoroughly as that kiss? She hated the fact that she was no more a match for his seduction than any of the other women he’d targeted and overpowered. And she really hated the fact that he’d been so supremely confident of her capitulation. Was he that sure of his own prowess or did he think her so lacking in resolve and character?
Quite accurately, as it turned out. On all fronts.
Should she cut herself some slack that it was—without question—the best kiss she’d ever received? That it jammed electrodes into parts of her that usually slumbered happily and forced them into sparking, buzzing animation until they lurched to life like the Frankenstein of body organs. It was as surreal and unforgettable—and futile—as being snogged by some handsome movie star who kissed for a living. What hope did she have?
Yeah, that was satisfactory. No personal responsibility required at all, then.
‘Ugh.’ She bounced her head a few times on the neat pillow in its faintly diesel-smelling coverslip.
Of course she was responsible.
She’d been on slow simmer since the day of Tim’s party, having filled her imagination and the weeks since with images of an oil-slicked, half-naked Hayden sprawled so comfortably on that lawn chair. Yet strangely, it had been his comfort—not his state of undress—that had particularly appealed to her that day. She’d stretched out alongside him, dripping and smiling, and felt such an astonishing sense of amity for the man she’d only sparred with until then. Fellowship made a nice change from the thin edge of conflict or the dangerous high-wire of attraction. The best parts of being with Hayden were just … being.
But she knew which part got her pulse racing hardest.
She lifted her fingers to her lips.
So he’d kissed her. So what? He was just making a point. It just happened that he was as good a point-maker now as he had been when he was younger. Thorough and convincing. And she’d been well convinced by his kiss.
Right up until the moment he’d taunted her that it was fake and walked out of the room.
She rubbed the puffy skin of her bottom lip. Ridiculous. It was not still tingling. It was projection. It had just been a really spectacular kiss from someone self-proclaimed in the art of seduction. And she was generally hormone-deficient, so hitting a charisma bomb like Hayden was bound to have an impact.
Not
