her had a past, and his need to be with her had taken on a life of its own.
Lowering his mouth to hers, he kissed her, gently sliding his tongue inside when she opened for him. A small groan escaped her, and he deepened the kiss, feeling her body soften against him in a thousand lush and lovely ways.
This was what he’d needed.
Her.
He’d needed to sink himself into the sweet mystery of a woman’s sensuality—this woman’s, the urban jungle girl with the backbone of steel and the .380 to back it up.
Cupping her face in his other hand, he pressed her back against the wall and kissed her like there was no tomorrow—because who knew if there would be?
Who in the hell ever knew?
Not him, that was for damn sure.
Opening his mouth wider, he kissed her deeper, longer, exploring her mouth and letting the taste of her slip into his veins like a drug. She sighed in his mouth, all the while with that compelling, fascinating grip on the waistband of his jeans, the backs of her fingers brushing against his skin. Geezus.
The wind picked up outside, bringing with it a faint smattering of rain and a drumroll of far-off thunder—and he kissed her, endlessly, the taste of her infusing his senses, on and on and on. Through it all, through every moment of mouths and tongues, of need and heat, she moved with him, her body all curves and desire, the sheer eroticism of her running like wildfire from his heart to his groin.
Geezus, she smelled like an angel, so female, so profoundly rich, a thousand scents layering and melding together to form a picture of her in his mind. She was golden light with a rose-colored center pulsing brightly at her core.
“J.T.” she murmured, and for the first time, the name felt right, the way she felt right.
“Hey, baby,” he whispered against her lips. I’m here for you. And he was, whatever she wanted, whatever she needed, he was the man who could bring it.
“You … me, this is …” Her voice trailed off as she tunneled her hands up into his hair and held him for the sweet kisses she was pressing to the side of his face, along the length of his jaw, to his lips.
“Real,” he murmured. So real.
Four years ago, on a night when he’d been high in the mountains of Honduras, on a wild and lonely stretch of the Cordillera Isabella, he’d fallen asleep and woken to a sky full of stars, millions upon millions of them strewn across the darkness. In all of them, there had been one brighter than all the rest, one that had held his attention and drawn him in, until he’d felt the scent and essence of it reaching across the eons of endless time, felt it tease him with an incomprehensible nearness from light-years away—and he’d wondered, oh, God, he’d wondered what Souk had really wrought within him, what the possibilities were, how far he could go, if he dared.
She was the same, the star here on earth, incomprehensibly alluring, beyond the erotic lushness of her body, beyond the compelling enticement of her kiss—farther, deeper, to the taste of her sinking into his cells and freeing him from the bondage of loneliness, of always and forever being alone.
This was his need, not hers. Out of the millions of people who’d passed him on thousands of street corners in hundreds of cities across the world, only one had ever stopped him in his tracks, only one had triggered the most primal parts of his brain with remembrance.
Her.
“I missed you,” she murmured. “Even if you weren’t ever my boyfriend, I missed you.”
So sweet, so welcome. He’d missed everybody in the world, including himself. It had been a strange, mind-bending dilemma, wondering why he was so goddamned alone. Knowing there had to be someone somewhere who knew him. Hoping there was someone who missed him.
And all along, there had been her.
She shifted her hips, and with his hand sliding up her leg and under her dress, pulling her in close, they found their rhythm—up against the wall and going down fast.
Yeah, he needed this. Precious woman, he wanted to get lost in her, and there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that she could do it for him.
He cupped her bottom, and her fingers went to the top button on his jeans.
“John Thomas,” she whispered. “John Thomas Chronopolous.”
Yeah, that was him, the guy she was undressing one button at a