The Kiss Thief

He lowered his lips to meet mine—finally—and I thought he would reciprocate, but he just grinned into my mouth. “If that’s how you kiss the man you want so desperately, I can see why Angelo didn’t put up a better fight to win you.”

That was when I lost it.

I bit down on his lower lip, hard, raking my fingernails through his hair and tugging at the same time he tore the front of my dress by the cleavage, ruining the designer number completely. My skin burned, and my back arched. I kicked out of the dress, crushed silk mounting under my heels, pulling him to me, wrapping myself around him like a deadly octopus. I was a black widow swallowing him whole. We wrestled each other furiously, stumbling toward the staircase and bumping into a hanging picture, a console table, and a statue. He hoisted me up and carried me upstairs, drowning my moans with kisses, suffocating his own groans of pleasure by biting my chin and lips and earlobes. Bruising me with punishing lust. Marking me with his envy.

Ms. Sterling was in the hallway, watering the huge plants on the marble stands against the grand crème walls. When she saw us biting and groaning at each other, me in his arms mostly-naked, she gasped, rushing toward the west wing.

He bit my upper lip and drew it into his mouth, carrying me to my bedroom. Angelo seemed a lifetime away, out of reach and as far away as the moon. Wolfe was here, in the flesh, burning me like the sun. Deadly and infuriating and—I knew, I just knew, as lost as I was in his touch. I had no idea how he was going to deal with the aftermath of what was about to happen. But I did know that he was going to be humbled when this was all over.

I was not a liar.

I was not a cheater.

I was his future wife.

I tried to warn him, but he didn’t believe me.

When we reached my room, he kicked the door open and threw me on the bed.

I laid there, staring at him with raised chin and what I hoped was confidence. I wanted to be arrogant and cold even as he took me. Even as I submitted to him. Even when I gave him my most precious and only possession. A possession he most assuredly did not earn tonight.

My virginity.

He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his cigar pants and regarded me with disdain, assessing me now that we were completely alone. I was wearing nothing but my white bra and matching panties. I knew he liked what he saw because he had that darkened look in his eyes. The one that made the room hotter, the air dense like fur.

“Take everything off but the heels,” he demanded.

“I’m not a stripper,” I hissed, narrowing my stinging eyes at him. “I’m your future wife. Strip me like you take your vows—like you mean it, Senator Keaton.”

“Vows that obviously mean nothing to you,” he said again, even more aloof. He barely looked at me as he did, making a point. “Off, Francesca.”

I grinned, gathering my courage. When my arm moved to my back, unclasping my bra, I could almost see his pulse quickening on the side of his neck. His face remained cool even when I removed my underwear, remaining in nothing but my heels in my bed.

He leaned down, still fully clothed, stared into my eyes, and brought his arm between us. He pressed the heel of his palm against my private area. I felt my wetness pushed against the dusting of hair there, damp and cool on the outside but hot from within.

“I will say this one time, Francesca, then consider my conscience clean. If you don’t tell me to leave right this minute, you will be devoured, wrecked, possessed, and owned for the entire night. I will fuck Angelo out of you, and then the rest of the idiots who were unfortunate enough to touch you and think there’d be a second time. I will not be considerate. I will not be compassionate. So if you’re used to gentle lovers and hour-long spooning, say the word, and our verbal contract will be terminated.”

“And you will still marry me?” I asked.

His nostrils flared. “I will marry you, but you’d wish I wouldn’t.”

He thought I’d been with other men. I told him I was someone else—and he took my word for it. Who I really was didn’t matter to him. Wolfe went to extreme lengths to prove that to me. What struck me as peculiar, though, wasn’t his words, but the situation. He was willing to forgive me, to honor our verbal agreement I allegedly broke, even though in his eyes, I’d slept with my former flame not once, but twice since we’d gotten engaged. He said he did not negotiate, yet he absolutely did. With me.