No need for any southern exploration.
The unmistakable evidence of his proud manhood was imprinted, hot and thick, against my bottom.
At my muted gasp he broke the kiss and edged me back, long enough to deliver a smouldering look of arrogant confirmation.
‘Now you know,’ he breathed.
‘Y-yes...’
A look flickered through his eyes—one that seemed to ask and answer a question in the same heartbeat. Then he was tugging me back into his body, one hand spiked in my hair, the other on my hip, pinning me to his lower body. It was as if he wanted nothing but his powerful masculinity to occupy my mind now he’d provided the evidence.
As if I could think of anything else. Feel anything else.
With only one lover in my past, and a fleeting one at that, sex was still a mystery to me—a land whose borders I’d barely breached before retreating, first out of disappointment and then through the sheer strain of holding the tattered rags of my life together.
Now, presented with this tantalising feast, every past experience paled to nothing. My instinct warned that a man like Neo would have more experience in his little finger than I would in my whole body. That this brief taste was merely a drop in the ocean of what he could deliver to the right woman.
Except I wasn’t the right woman.
I was the woman he’d goaded into taking this risky, mind-altering challenge. A challenge whose fire blazed to heights I’d never encountered before.
You can stop. Now.
But his lips were intoxicating. And the way his tongue and teeth and lips commanded mine was intensifying that persistent, needy throb between my legs...
With another moan I locked my hands around his neck, strained even closer to that magnificent body. And gasped when he abruptly pulled back, his hooded eyes darting from my parted lips to clash with mine.
He let out a heavy, unsteady exhale. ‘This isn’t how I foresaw this meeting evolving,’ he rasped.
‘Me neither,’ I muttered.
He gave a short, jerky nod before his fierce gaze bored into mine. ‘Then perhaps it’s best if we draw a line under it,’ he invited.
But the slight clench of his fingers on my hip said that wasn’t what he really wanted. And when his hold loosened, when I sensed he was about to disengage, I clenched my gut against the lash of disappointment and loss.
‘Is that what you want? For me to leave?’
His jaw clenched and that hot gaze locked on my lips. ‘The more important question is, are you ready to let go, Sadie? I ask this because you’re clinging to me as if I’m the last piece of driftwood in your ocean.’
My arms unlocked from around his neck, slow with a helpless need to stay connected, moved down his chest. At his deep shudder a powerful sensation gripped me, along with a twinge of uncertainty barely born, before it was smashed beneath the colossal hunger clawing through me.
I’d never felt anything like this. And the voice inside telling me I never would again birthed a terrifying need to seize this unique experience.
Everything around me was slowly crumbling to dust. My mother’s spiralling gambling. Looming homelessness. The job I no longer had. My own shattered dreams...
A secret fear plagued me in the dead of night. One I’d never admitted to anyone. That perhaps my father was right. That unconditional love was an illusion—an obligation fulfilled only up to a point. Or worse, that I hadn’t been worthy of the effort.
The urgent need simply to forget for a little while longer hooked me with mighty talons, refusing to let go.
‘Say what’s on your mind,’ Neo insisted.
The raw demand in his voice. The turbulent look in his eyes. The edgy hunger in his face. All of them echoed the deep clamouring inside me perfectly. Like two halves of a magnificent, earth-shaking whole. And really, in the desolate landscape of my uncertain future, where and when would I get the chance to experience anything close to this?
‘Maybe I’m not...not ready to let go. Just yet.’
For the briefest moment he hesitated, as if he intended to refuse this...refuse me. More than a little panicked at the thought of being thrust back into
my dreary life, I clung to his lapel.