Her heel caught on the kerb, twisted awkwardly and went from beneath her. She would have gone flying off the footpath, falling headlong onto the wet tarmac, into the middle of the road and the path of the oncoming cars, if the man beside her hadn’t reacted with instinctive speed.
‘Skye—look out!’
In the blink of an eye he was beside her, reaching out and catching her before her stumble became a fall. She was held tight, hauled up into arms that felt like tempered steel as they tensed, took her weight and then pulled her back to safety.
Safety? Or right back into the heart of danger?
Skye had no way of knowing and her head was whirling too much in the aftermath of the shock of her near fall to be able to think clearly.
The position she was in didn’t help either. Anton had spun her round as he caught her up so that now she was clamped tight against him, enfolded in his arms, with her body crushed against the hard length of his, her head on his chest, her cheek above the heavy, heated thud of his heart, the sound of his pulse in her ears.
And it was all happening again.
Just as it had when he had come up behind her in the bar, so now her blood was heating in urgent response to his closeness, her heart racing in time with the fierce beat of his. She was surrounded by him, held in the heat and hardness of his grip, the clean, male scent of his body surrounding her, melting her thoughts inside her head.
It felt like coming home.
It felt as if she had always been there. As if this was truly where she belonged. Where she most wanted to be in all the world. And with the instinctive cuddling movement of a small creature seeking comfort from the cold, hard world outside, she snuggled closer, burying her face in his shirt front, her hands sliding under his jacket, her arms going round the narrow waist.
She felt his grip tighten even more, and his dark head bent, his face coming so close to hers that the faint roughness of the beginnings of evening growth of beard rubbed lightly against the delicate skin of her cheek. She sensed—unbelievingly—the warm caress of his mouth on her neck, at the base of her ear, and heard his deep sigh as he whispered harshly against the delicate lobe.
‘Skye, don’t go—stay! I want you to stay.’
‘What?’
Had he really said what she thought she had heard? She couldn’t believe it. It couldn’t be true. It had to be her ears deceiving her or the voice of her own hungry longings sounding inside her head, telling her what she most wanted to hear.
But she couldn’t have heard it. Men like this Anton didn’t suddenly beg girls like her to stay with them, not on such brief acquaintance.
Had he really said…?
Tilting her head, she tried to look up into his face, to read the answer there, but even as she moved his dark head came down towards hers. His mouth closed over hers and captured it in a searing, blazing kiss that sent a sensation like a lightning bolt fizzing through her body, right down to the tips of her toes.
This couldn’t be happening, was the one brief thought that Skye managed before her brain short-circuited and thinking became impossible. Before it was replaced only by feeling.
His mouth was pure enticement, pure sinful seduction. His kiss worked a spell on her that had her melting against him, into him, losing herself in the feeling of becoming part of him. Her lips parted, encouraging the heated invasion of his tongue, her sighing moan a sound of pure surrender, all that was female in her responding to the darkly elemental male in him. Something rich and dark and deeply sensual uncoiled way down low in her body and set up a heavy, honeyed pounding between her thighs.
The sounds and the lights of the street became nothing but a blur in the back of her mind as the strength of his hold lifted her up onto her toes, almost off her feet. Powerful hands thrust into the fall of hair, sweeping it back from around her face as hard fingers dug into her skull. The rain came down harder, colder, but she was lost and oblivious to it, adrift in a heated world where nothing else could reach her.
In the distance someone wolf-whistled, and slowly, reluctantly, they drew apart, breath coming heavily, eyes wide, expressions slightly dazed as they met each other’s gaze and acknowledged the primitive fires they had lit between them.
‘I…’ Skye began, but her voice broke in the middle, failing her completely as the reality of what had happened to her hit home like a savage blow to her head.
This was what it was all about. This was what male-female relationships really meant. What those words like desire and passion and hunger had had hidden behind them, unrecognised by her until now.
Now.
The single word sounded like a knell inside her head, deadening her thoughts and bringing the cruel sting of tears to her eyes.
Now, when it was too late. When a malevolent fate had stepped in and decided her future for her.
When she knew that these delights, this sort of happiness, were to be denied to her for ever. She had learned the truth too late, only to have it snatched away from her in the same moment that she discovered it. And with no chance of anything more.
Except for tonight, a tiny voice whispered in her mind, bringing with it dreams and hopes of the sort that she had never allowed into her thoughts before. Dreams that made her shiver just to contemplate them.
Dreams that were here, now, within her reach, and all she had to do was to stretch out a hand and grasp them, make them hers, for tonight; for one night only.
‘Skye?’ the man called Anton questioned softly, making her realise how long she had been standing there, silent, distant, locked in the shadowed, ominous darkness of her thoughts.
The heat of his body still enclosed her, His hold had loosened, but she still pressed up against the powerful length of his body, feeling the hard ridge against her stomach that spoke of the desire that had been in his kiss. The same desire that had been in hers. That still throbbed along every nerve pathway, pulsed in her blood.
He had wanted her every bit as she had wanted him—he still did.
But she had only met him tonight.
‘I won’t hurt you.’ His voice was low and husky with need. So low and husky that it shocked her to think that she could ever have such an effect on any man—least of all this man. This tall, darkly imposing, devastating man.
‘I promise you, you’ll be safe with me. I swear…’
Her heart slammed against the wall of her ribcage, jerky and uneven, coming close to panic at just the thought of what she was considering. But the ache of need still suffused her own body and wouldn’t let her go.
If only this had happened sooner. If only she had met this Anton before…
But no. That was to wish for the impossible. Her fate had been sealed and she had no alternative but to go down the path that had been chosen for her. The path she had agreed to.
The path she had had no choice but to agree to.
From tomorrow, everything would change. From tomorrow her life would no longer be her own.
Skye’s teeth
