Beauty's Beast - By Jenna Kernan Page 0,55

hands reluctantly from his body and stepped back. His eyes snapped open, tracking her every movement. Did he think she had changed her mind? He watched her as if she belonged to him, as if he possessed her already. The intensity of his stare unnerved her.

He didn’t want this. That much was clear from his expression. But it would happen, here and now, regardless of what they wanted. They both knew it because they’d already gone too far. She would satisfy this fascination for the forbidden, and no one need know.

She lifted a hand to the hem of her skirt and concentrated. The sheer fabric vanished in a flash of brilliant light as her clothing reformed into a simple necklace, a gold medicine wheel on a short chain. The wind blew cold over her heated flesh. Alon would warm her.

His gaze swept over her nude form, tracing her curves, lingering on her breasts, diving to stare at her sex.

She wished she were a Mindwalker or a Truth Seeker, so she could read Alon’s thoughts. But he gave her nothing but the obvious excitement of his sex, the resistance of his body and the grave reservations in his eyes.

“Perhaps joining will make the hunger stop.”

He shook his head, denying her childish fantasy that she could be as she was before. No matter what happened here, she would never be the same again. Alon had changed her.

“It will never stop.” His words were like a deadly pronouncement.

She shivered in the rising wind, knowing it was true.

The realization frightened her enough to send her back a step. He captured her wrist. Their eyes met. She resisted, and he imprisoned her other wrist in a move so fast it was only a blur. His nostrils flared and his chest rose and fell in a rapid cadence too fast for a man standing still. His green irises had nearly disappeared, pushed back by the expanding black pupils that now looked like twin solar eclipses. She sucked in a breath.

For just a moment she thought he might use his superior strength to cast her aside. Instead he transferred both her wrists to one large hand.

He tugged her forward, compelling her with his gaze as he scowled down at her. He used his free hand, at the center of her back, to draw her forward until her hips collided with his.

She felt his shaft, now stiff and ready, pressed against her stomach. The desire pumped through her, rocking Samantha on her feet. Yes, she wanted this.

When he spoke, it was through clenched teeth. “I might hurt you.”

“You won’t, Alon. I’m not human. Not fragile. You don’t want me to forget your other form, but you keep forgetting mine. I’m a grizzly, and a damned big one. If that were not enough, I have the power to heal.”

“You’re not only a Skinwalker. You are Spirit Child. They are weak, fragile.”

“I’m not.”

“You don’t know what I’m capable of.”

“Let’s find out.”

She watched the tug-of-war play out on his features. Was it true? Shadow, sunshine and shadow again. And then she realized she was not only reading his expression. She felt his emotions as if they were her own. Hope. Dread. Acceptance.

She had won.

“Remember that I tried to prevent this.”

He looked the picture of control, but there was wildness in his eyes and fever in his blood. The tight restraint of his body now seemed a coiling preparation. He was a seawall holding back the unstoppable ocean.

He dragged her arms about his neck, encircled her in his inescapable embrace and slanted his mouth to hers. The riotous kiss tipped her from her axis, and Samantha reeled off into space. His fingers coiled in her hair as he took possession of her in a fierce invasion of her mouth, his tongue sliding, stroking as he controlled her.

She leaned over his arm, yielding to his superior strength, allowing his ownership of her as anticipation fluttered inside her.

Samantha gripped his forearms as he lowered her to the earth, and still her head spun. He kissed her throat, her neck and down along the line of her collarbone.

His tongue flicked out as he licked her skin, raising gooseflesh in his wake. The clouds sailed above them, billowing dark, but they did not match the storm within her.

Alon pinned her down with one leg as his hands swept up her torso to caress her aching breasts. She groaned and arched toward the sweet pressure of his skillful hands, her nipples tightening to hard knots in his