No More Sweet Surrender

“Miranda.”

That was all. Just the lightest of touches, a brush of his hand. Her name.

But that was all it took.

The world sizzled, burned to white, then simmered red. Like everything simply burst into flame, incinerating her. Leaving her nothing but red-hot embers and that driving, incapacitating need.

For him. For more.

She didn’t know who moved first. Who closed the distance between them. But his mouth was on hers, hard and hot. Her hands were buried in his thick dark hair as she kissed him back, greedy and wild. There were no cameras here. No one to watch them, record them. Report back.

So there were no brakes. No boundaries. Nothing to stop the impossible rush of pure sensation.

Miranda stopped fighting and wrapped herself around that hard, tough body of his. That warrior’s physique, so roughly hewn and finely muscled. Finally, her breasts crushed into the great wall of his chest. Finally, she explored that breathtaking sweep of hot, chiseled male beauty that was his back, his waist, with her own hands. Finally.

He kissed her like a starving man. And she was just as hungry. Just as desperate.

She felt the world tilt and spin, more than usual when he was near, and he was lifting her up, pulling her legs around his waist, then taking her mouth again.

As if she was his in every possible way.

And she exulted in it. She loved the hardness of his strong, callused hand against her cheek, giving him total control over the depth and fire of the kiss. His other hand was hot and delicious against her bottom, holding her against the hardest part of him, making her feel shivery and glazed with heat. She loved the thrust of his tongue, the press of his lips, the way he teased and took in turn. He stood there like a rock, holding her so easily, as if she was made of something as insubstantial as cotton, and that made her tremble all the more.

He was so massive. So incontrovertibly male. Sinew and muscle like marble, as if he’d been carved from stone, and yet he was so hot to the touch. So hot.

He began to walk, still kissing her with all of that intensity, all of that insistent fire, and she was aware of only a jumble of things around her as he carried her into his house. There was blue everywhere—endless sky and sea through the glass on all sides, a huge abstract painting on a whitewashed wall. Wide-open rooms in that sleek modern style with unusual pops of color here and there.

But mostly she saw that hard face of his, taut with the same mad desire she felt eating her alive. Then everything shifted again and she was flat on her back on some kind of soft white rug near a fireplace that dominated one stark wall, and he was coming down over her with the kind of fluid ease and heart-stopping masculine grace that reminded her, forcefully, that his body was a sleek machine under his command, and he could make it do anything he wished.

Anything at all.

He stretched out beside her, running one of his hands down the length of her slowly, as if claiming her. Learning her. A languorous sweep from the side of one breast to the indentation of her waist, over the curve of her hip, then down the outside of her leg. It was like being bathed in lightning; electrified. One searing burst then another, the voltage of it jolting through her, making her close her eyes against the madness of this. The insanity.

He whispered that phrase again. “Milaya moya.”

“I don’t think I want to know what that means,” she whispered, hardly recognizing her own voice when she heard it, so glutted was it with the wildness inside of her, the riot of the storm he’d raised. The storm that showed no sign of easing.

When she opened her eyes, she met his. Black, searing hot—and she trembled at the passion there. The stark sensual intent.

“Sweet.” His voice was a rasp in the quiet room. Like a touch all its own, another devastating caress. Something moved across his face then, almost like a kind of anguish, then was gone. “It means ‘my sweet.’”

And then he took her mouth again, demanding and possessive, and it was long moments before she realized that as he did, he was also lifting up her dress. He tugged it above her knees. Then up to her waist. The cool air moved over her flushed skin and she froze. Reality trickled back in, and with it, a sudden sharp pang of uneasiness.

“Ivan—”