‘Ah. Home of koalas and kangaroos, sí?’
She laughed. ‘Yes.’
His grin broadened. ‘And beautiful women.’
She laughed again, shaking her head at his cockiness.
He glanced over his shoulder to where his friends—a group of fit-looking young men and bikini-clad girls—stood waiting for him to bring back the ball. ‘You would like to come and play, bonic?’
Amused, she opened her mouth to decline, but just then a shadow fell across the sand and her nape prickled with awareness.
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‘Jordan.’
She stilled at the sound of Xavier’s deep voice behind her. How had she known it was him before he’d even spoken?
He came and stood close beside her and the prickling awareness migrated to other parts of her body.
‘Is everything all right?’
She glanced at him, registered the dark scowl on his face and felt annoyed with him all over again for dampening her day with his bad attitude.
‘Perfectly,’ she said breezily.
‘Then let’s go.’
The command—and his obvious expectation that she’d obey—only stirred her anger. A reckless urge gripped her to push back and get under his skin somehow.
She looked at the younger man and shrugged. ‘My brother,’ she said, on a heavy sigh. ‘He can be a little—’ she rolled her eyes ‘—overprotective.’
He glanced from her to Xavier, looking confused, no doubt due to the lack of physical resemblance. He took in Xavier’s powerful form, the aggressive stance, then backed away, firing a rueful shrug at Jordan. ‘Another time, preciosa.’
Jordan waved her fingers at him and then, her bit of mischief complete, strode past Xavier and back along the footpath to the car, ignoring him as much as it was possible to ignore the presence of a thundercloud at one’s back.
She reached for the door handle, but her fingers had barely brushed the metal before her wrist was seized and she was spun around unceremoniously and backed against the car.
She gave a startled cry, then an outraged gasp as Xavier whipped off her sunglasses and tossed them onto the roof.
‘Hey!’ she protested, even as she instinctively knew the welfare of her sunglasses was the least of her worries just then.
He discarded his own, then palmed the back of her skull while his other hand released her wrist and claimed her hip in a hold that was blatantly possessive and intimate.
She stared at him. ‘Xavier?’ Her voice emerged as a breathless whisper. ‘Wh-what are you doing?’
‘Making a point,’ he rasped.
And then his mouth came down on hers and Jordan felt as if she’d slammed into a wall of electricity, shock and heat consuming her so completely she could do nothing more than tremble and burn under the savagery of his kiss.
And it was savage. Like no other kiss she’d ever experienced before. A kiss of anger and dominance and control. It should have horrified her, incensed her, but there was something sinfully sensual, darkly exhilarating, about the way his firm lips moved with such brutal purpose over hers.
She made a sound she told herself was protest but feared was actually acquiescence. Heat stung her body in places he wasn’t even touching. And where he did touch... She felt branded. Claimed. By his hands. His mouth. Even the scrape of his thick stubble on her skin seemed like a deliberate attempt to mark and punish.
Never in her life had she been kissed with such utter, breathtaking mastery.
Her mouth yielded under the relentless pressure of his and he went deeper, angling his head and prising her lips apart, stroking his tongue boldly against hers so the combined tastes of coffee and almonds and virile male burst in her mouth like an intoxicant, dangerous and shocking and yet oh-so-delicious.
A deep, responsive shiver rippled through her muscles, and she thought she felt a similar shudder go through him. But then, abruptly, he tore his mouth off hers, throwing her into a state of dazed confusion.