line. Ever the actress, she had years to perfect an indifferent expression. She could pretend the kiss didn’t affect her all she liked. While she could hide her emotions, she couldn’t hide the rapid rise and fall of her chest as she tried to catch her breath, or the bee-stung pout of her lips the scruff around his mouth had irritated.
Yeah, a cold shower? Not gonna help.
Kissing Savannah was neither a show of strength nor a sign of surrender, but the igniting of a wildfire he had no idea how to control.
***
Well, the tongue tangling experience hadn’t been that awkward at all. Savannah rolled her eyes, pressing her forehead to the passenger window as Glen drove onto the beach ramp. Just call her the queen of understated sarcasm.
Robbie easily towed the bogged car out of the sand, and with a brisk wave indicated they should drive ahead to make sure they didn’t get stuck again. Glen drove them over the hard-packed sand and exposed reef in strained silence.
Strained from her end, anyway.
Looking at the man, his elbow resting on the open window frame as he steered with one hand, breeze molding his tee shirt around some truly impressive chest muscles—and she knew just how impressive as she’d been snugged up against them—anyone would think she hadn’t had her tongue halfway down his throat only minutes ago.
The SUV juddered onto the gravel road. She kept her gaze fixed on the lower corner of the windshield and breathed shallowly through her mouth so she wouldn’t have to suffer the heady scent of male wafting off the borrowed fleece.
Tuneful humming, only just audible over the engine’s purr, made her dig fingernails into the door armrest. The instrumental from The Lord of the Rings?
Seriously?
The man was thinking about hairy-footed fictional creatures while she was all but squirming, trying not to dwell on The Kiss.
She fired over another glance, designed to sear off his girlishly long eyelashes. The moonlight on his side of the car highlighted a profile designed by dark angels to tempt even the most resistant woman. Straight nose, defined cheekbones, fine laugh-lines in the corners of his eyes below a crinkled brow—someone who thought as much as he laughed. God knew why that transformed her leg muscles to quivery goop. Scruff covered his jaw and circled the perfection of lips not too full but not meanly narrow, either—scruff that chafed so deliciously against her lips as he’d ravished her mouth.
Ravished? Did people even still use that word to describe how a man kissed a woman? It was old fashioned, but it fit the emotions and sensations roiling through her moments before the tractor’s headlights caught them. Down to her core, the focused intensity with which Glen kissed her left her feeling ravished. Devoured. Stripped bare. As if over the last couple of days he’d bottled every ounce of frustration, irritation, curiosity, and lust into a beaker, shaken the hell out of it, and let it explode out of him once he’d gotten his hands—and mouth—on her.
Still. She glanced away from Glen to the trees whizzing past. She couldn’t allow it to happen again. Only an idiot would believe he hadn’t had an ulterior motive with that lip lock.
Glen pulled to a stop in front of the locked gate that separated the public road from the private road leading to her property, as well as Lauren and Todd Taylor’s. Savannah collected the gate key from the console before Glen could make a move, and hopped out of the vehicle. She swung the metal gate wide open, relocking it once Glen drove through. Twin taillights glowed like demon eyes as she walked toward the car, the disconcerting image intensified when a native owl hooted its eerie and distinctive cry of morepork-morepork from a nearby tree.
Savannah stiffened her spine then opened the passenger door and climbed inside. In Maori culture the high, piercing call of the little Ruru was a harbinger of bad news. Well, she had some bad news for Glen Cooper if he thought she’d turn into a crumbling, clingy mess who’d roll belly up in submission just because he’d kissed her.
After she slammed shut the door, she turned in her seat, switching on the full-power Diva Stare. “I still want you out of my house.”
Glen’s hand stilled on the shifter and then dropped to rest on his thigh. Savannah’s gaze swept along the length of lean muscle barely concealed by the thin fabric of his board shorts. When she raised her gaze,