The air around them seemed to crackle and sizzle with the heat they’d generated. This had been building between them from the time their eyes had met. Savannah wasn’t certain she could control it now, even if she tried.
“I want you,” he said, and there was a man’s raw, possessive hunger in his words.
Panic shot through her, and she froze beneath him. Suddenly this moment seemed, too strong, too real.
What was she doing?
4
KIT’S EYES narrowed, as t
hey swiftly searched her face. He groaned.
“Don’t do this,” he grated, half command, half plea. “Not now.”
He crushed her mouth beneath his again, lifting her into him. She felt the power in his arms, the sheer strength of him. And now she shivered in desire as well as fear.
“Don’t be afraid of me,” he whispered, feathering kisses across her temple. “I would never hurt you, Savannah.”
She looked up at him, and she realized with staggering abruptness what a fool she’d been.
Kit wasn’t a fantasy. He was a man. A strong, virile, healthy male whose borderline-arrogant self-assurance had already made her think of him as a pirate on more than one occasion.
Pirates, she reminded herself, didn’t like to be refused when there was something they wanted. It wasn’t the first time the thought had crossed her mind.
Why hadn’t she paid more attention to her own mental warnings?
She’d tried to convince herself she was in love with him. Tried to rationalize her behavior with romantic fantasies. Now she couldn’t be sure whether what she had felt was love or mere lust. And that uncertainty was an all-too-painful reminder of her past.
“Kit, I—-I don’t think I can do this,” she said, forcing her voice through the knot of mingled remorse and anxiety in her throat.
“Sure you can,” he replied bracingly, burying his fingers in her tumbled hair. “There’s nothing stopping us.”
He suddenly stiffened, and looked down at her with a frown. “You aren’t—tell me you aren’t married.”
“I’m not married,” she complied. “I never have been. But—”
He let out a deep breath of relief.
“Oh, man. That shook me for a minute,” he admitted. And then he slanted his pirate’s smile at her again and started to gather her close. “So there’s absolutely no reason we can’t—”
“I can’t,” she repeated, using her hands on his forearms to hold herself away from him.
She hoped he wouldn’t insist that she explain her sudden change of mind. She didn’t think she could, even to herself. She only knew that everything had suddenly become too real to her. Too serious.
She saw the instinctive refusal in his expression, the temptation to sweep past her objections and continue where they’d left off. She couldn’t help remembering Vince, thinking back to the bruises he’d given her when she’d annoyed him.
She reminded herself that she wasn’t that inexperienced, insecure girl now. She would never be treated that way again.
She held Kit’s gaze levelly with her own.
He studied her expression closely, and seemed to see something there that made up his mind.
He sighed and closed his eyes. She sensed the battle going on inside him. She knew that it had been hard won when the tension left his arms and he nodded and drew away.
“I’ll walk you to your cottage.”
She swallowed, only then admitting to herself how uncertain she’d really been about Kit’s reaction to her last-minute rejection. She couldn’t blame him, of course, for being annoyed with her. After all, she’d been all over him all day, she thought with a twinge of guilt