and I cannot even entertain …” Marissa had never been so at a loss for words in her life as she was whenever she was clashing wills with him. It was completely flustering and infuriating.
“Knowing doesn’t always dictate desires,” he retorted quietly, his hand coming out with blinding speed, snagging her by her upper arm and yanking her forward until she crashed up against him, her feet jumbling up together beneath her. But before she could fall his other hand was at her back and jerking her up completely off the ground. “You think I don’t know what I’m doing? You think I haven’t weighed all the possible rights and wrongs of it? Do you think I’m really that thoughtless? I’ve thought of nothing else for weeks. Fought myself into wild circles of confusion as the part of me that craved you warred with the part of me that knew you should be off-limits. Even now I hear the voice of my conscience telling me to stop this, but it can hardly be heard over the voice screaming at me to take you in every way I can possibly imagine.”
His words were like hot honey being drizzled all over her skin, burning and sweet at the same time. Marissa couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t speak to stop him again.
It was probably because she had the very same voices holding the very same argument inside of her. And somehow, knowing he couldn’t heed them despite his better judgment made her whole existence go up in flames. By the time he had dragged her up to meet his mouth, she had confessed to herself just how badly she had wanted it.
His lips touched hers, the contact so light it was barely there. They were both working hard for breath, both tense and troubled just as much as they were burning with craving.
“I just need a moment, Marissa. Just one little moment where who and what we are doesn’t matter. Because it has been just as hard for me to accept all the things you are trying to accept right now. But in all this upheaval,” he breathed, the softness of his mouth brushing over hers as he spoke, “the only thing that comes crystal clear to me is the way I burn for you.”
Then he swept up her mouth with his, holding her so tightly to himself with the wrapping strength of his arms, his hands running fiercely hot across her back.
She should have pushed away from him, but there was no strong, instinctive desire to do so. In fact the ultimate opposite desire was in play, until it felt as though her actual soul was craving to feel him kiss her.
She wanted the kiss to pale … to be less than her illicit fantasies had made of it. She wanted the reality to help her find a reason to never let this happen again. It was a wish that would never be fulfilled. The painfully soft and powerful strength of his kiss, the poignancy of the struggle within them both, made it everything it could be and more. He smelled of the woods around them, so unbelievably earthy, as if this were his natural habitat and she had been caught trespassing. She had been cold before, as the waning spring night bit at her poorly clothed body. Now her chilled skin gave way to the heat that had been flirting beneath it for every last moment she had been in his presence. It was like pressing herself up against a radiator, his heat enveloping and permeating her. He took no half measures, his mouth testing hers for all of a few moments before his tongue came into play and commanded ownership of hers. She’d never liked men who assaulted her with all tongue from the start of a kiss, but what others had made offensive, he made a seduction. His hand came up to cradle the back of her head, his fingers burrowing into her hair and he used the possession of his hand to turn her into his kiss more fully. He did not invade, but conquered just the same as the taste of him was swept into her mouth and against the buds of her tongue.
Marissa drew breath in little shots, only to let it slip away again just as quickly in stunned hitches. She couldn’t think as the heat he delivered burned away all thought, burned away all reason, leaving nothing for her but the feel of his mouth