She shivered as a potent desire flooded her body. His hands molded her ever closer, making her vibrantly aware of every hard curve and plane of his muscular form. She opened her lips, allowing him ready access to the moist warmth of her mouth.
This was what she had sensed between them from the beginning, she acknowledged dizzily.
This fierce, blazing hunger that threatened to consume them both.
She knew she should be terrified. This was not what she had planned at all. He was the one who was supposed to be lost in a haze of need.
Still, it was not until those clever fingers slid upward to lightly cup the fullness of her aching breast that she came to her fogged senses.
A pleasure that she had never before dreamed existed exploded deep within her, making her sharply pull away in shock.
Dangerous waters, indeed.
Licking her tingling lips she regarded him with wide, startled eyes. His own expression was much more difficult to read, although there was no missing the thick tension that smoldered in the air.
“You tremble in my arms,” he at last murmured in smoky tones.
“I ...” Determined to deny his arrogant charge, the words stuck in her throat.
“Yes, my temptress?” he prodded.
The lie would not come and she sucked in an unsteady breath. Surely it was not cowardly to realize when it was best to retreat? There would be other nights to teach this gentleman a lesson he so richly deserved, she attempted to ease her damaged pride. And on the next occasion she would be prepared to battle those dizzying sensations that threatened to overwhelm her.
“We should return to the ballroom,” she managed to say in a husky voice.
His lips twitched as if he were fully aware of the heat that still tormented her.
“But I have not yet fully beguiled you.” His accent was more noticeably pronounced as he reached out to gently stroke his hand down the curve of her neck. The dark eyes smoldered with an unreadable fire as she shivered beneath his caress.
“We will be missed,” she breathed.
“I thought you shunned society’s rules?”
Those fingers brushed the frantic pulse at the base of her neck, the moonlight adding dangerous shadows to his lean countenance. He suddenly appeared different.
Harder.
Perilous.
Inflexible.
A predator that could destroy her with ease.
“Gideon?”
“Do you still prefer to be among the wolves?” he demanded, his dark velvet voice sending a shudder through her. “There is danger here in the dark.”
Simone readily believed him.
She could feel the danger.
It pulsed in the still air and cloaked about her slender body. She suddenly felt vulnerable in a manner she had never before experienced.
“This is madness,” she whispered more to herself than to the gentleman watching her with those glittering eyes.
“Then remain with the sheep where you are safe, my dear.”
The challenge was unmistakable, but for once Simone was not so swift to rise up and meet it.