I move my head closer and she jerks back.
‘What’s the matter? Don’t trust yourself to resist even a little kiss?’ I taunt.
‘I trust myself,’ she says, and, holding her chin high, closes her eyes like a schoolgirl expecting her first kiss. This is unfamiliar territory! It’s been a long, long time since any woman behaved in such a virginal way. If I wasn’t bursting out of my trunks to get to her, I would have found it funny.
I pull her toward me, bend my head and touch my lips lightly to hers. Her reaction is explosive. She moans, her hands snake around my neck to twine in my hair, and she practically melts into me. The water laps around us as her mouth opens and her nipples are like little pebbles burning against my chest.
I kiss her full and hard, my tongue pushing into the warm softness of her mouth. And there is not a damn thing tentative about the way she sucks on my tongue. She looks like a little spring flower, but she kisses with the kind of wild, reckless passion that blows my mind. She does it with the kind of desperation of someone starving.
I wrap my hands around her waist and push her upwards. Water cascades down her beautiful body, as I lift her onto the edge of the pool and place her firmly on her butt. I haul myself out. Getting on my haunches, I untie her bikini top. It falls away easily.
‘Shane,’ she whispers, my name catching in her throat.
Her breasts are small and perfectly formed, the areolae, shy rose buds. She gazes up at me, her eyes enormous, the eyelashes wet, and her delicious mouth swollen and red. My lips brush the side of her neck and she leans her head to the side and offers me her throat. It is a call to mate as much as it is when a female wolf lifts her rear and exposes her vulva to tell her alpha that she is in heat. My tongue trails down the silky skin. I’ve done this a thousand times before, but this time my movements are jerky with urgency.
I lay her on the cool tiles and wrap my lips around her nipple. She groans and closes her eyes. My hand slides down her body and moves toward her bikini bottom. I hook my fingers into it and suddenly she starts struggling under me. I lift my head in surprise.
Her hands move to cover her breasts.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she says.
I feel a surge of searing temper. This is fucking bullshit. I’m too old to play these cock-tease games. I grab her wrists and pull them apart and hold them high over her head so her breasts are exposed to me. She does nothing to stop me. Then I look deep into her frightened and excited eyes.
‘Well, I’m fucking not,’ I grate. I don’t hide the feral hunger in my eyes as I let my gaze roam her whole body, lingering lustfully on her breast, as if I own it all. And in my mind I do. She will be mine if it’s the fucking last thing I do. ‘I will have you, Snow Dilshaw. Fucking count on it. Not tonight, but you will be mine. And you know it too. You just like dragging things out. But you’re wetter than you’ve ever been, aren’t you?’
She says nothing, just stares up at me.
So, I slip my fingers in that last scrap of cloth between her and me, and brush my fingers between the soft lips. They are fucking soaking. I smile. I take my fingers out and suck them. Her eyes widen with surprise.
What is it about her? She is like no other woman I have been with. Even at a time like this, I can’t be angry with her. All I want to do is wrap her in my arms and tell her it’s going to be all right.
I stand and pull her to her feet. I pick up her discarded robe and tie it around her waist. And the strangest thing happens to me. I had a raging hard-on and yet at that moment I could have been belting little Liliana into her coat. I feel only a fierce sense of protectiveness toward her. Anybody touches her or tries to hurt a single hair on her head and I’ll break their fucking backs.
The day will come when I will yank her hair and she won’t be afraid of what comes next. She will just call my name, and tighten her muscles around my cock as I thrust it deep inside her. She’s mine. She just doesn’t know it yet.
‘Come on, I’ll show you to your room,’ I say.
I need to put some space between us. I don’t completely trust myself with her. I need to be level headed.
Because this one’s a keeper.
Twelve
SNOW
I wake up, confused by the faded splendor of my surroundings. And then I remember where I am … and what happened last night. And I touch my lips wonderingly. No one has ever kissed me like that. So dominant and possessive, as if he owned me. And I have never felt so alive, almost high. Like that time I was buzzing from drinking too much cough medicine. Heat and lust had pooled between my legs and I longed for him and yet I stopped him.
I think of Lenny saying, ‘Before I’m finished with any man who touches you, he’ll be wishing I had killed him.’
The thought makes me turn and bury my head in the soft, fragrant pillow, away from the wrongness of what I am doing. Sharp guilt slashes through me. It makes a bright new wound. I am betraying Lenny who has never been anything but kind to me when I was broken, and, to make matters worse, I am endangering Shane.
Lenny will have him for breakfast. Shane is a playboy; Lenny is a psychopath. Right now, just lying in this stupendous bed alone, I am cheating on Lenny and implicating Shane. Last night … Oh God, if he knew.
Oh God.
Show some freaking spirit, Snow.
I sit up suddenly, with a new resolve. No, I won’t betray one whole year of kindness for one stolen night of dark pleasure. In my own way I care about Lenny and I’ll never forget what he did for me. I won’t do this to Lenny. I will leave him in a good way. A way that I can be proud of. Without betraying him. Without anyone getting hurt.