Free Bachelor Untamed by Brenda Jackson Page A

Instead, she felt provoked into seeing just how far he would take this.
    Ellie pulled in a deep breath. She needed to think, and then quickly decided that, no, she didn’t. What she seriously needed to do was play this out, see where it would go and put a stop to it if it became too much. This was Uriel. He wouldn’t force her to do anything she didn’t want to do. Although he had initiated the kiss, she hadn’t fought it, because she had needed it. Seeing him naked, and then seeing him every morning working out, had been too much for a woman who hadn’t had sex in quite a while to handle.
    Staring into his face, she knew he was waiting for her to make the next move, since she’d been the one to end the kiss. She detected patience in him and knew he would wait, give her time to make up her mind. But she also understood, and very clearly, that if the decision didn’t go the way he wanted, his untamed side, the one she detected he possessed, had no qualms about using seduction to sway her to what he wanted. The very thought of being seduced by him had her drawing in another breath, just seconds before she leaned closer and touched her mouth to his again.
    And he took things from there—immediately deepening the kiss, to make up for lost time. In a way, she wasn’t the least bit surprised or shocked by the intensity of the kiss. He was kissing her with the confidence of a man who knew exactly what he was doing. A man who knew what he wanted, with no qualms about getting it, but making sure he enjoyed it in the process. A man who knew how to combine an ample measure of warmth with his hunger, an enormous amount of sensuality with his greed, and who had the ability to ignite passion around with a force that made her weak in the knees.
    When she felt his hands move to the waistband of her shorts, felt his fingers inch lower, tracing a path past her panties, seeking hot bounty, she pulled her mouth away. “We have to stop.”
    His brow lifted with an arrogance that she found totally captivating. “Do we?”
    The man was too much. “I think we’d better,” she whispered.
    He held her gaze. “You think so?”
    “Don’t you?” she countered.
    His response was quick. “No.”
    She couldn’t do anything but drop her head to his chest and mumble against his shirt. “You’re not helping matters.”
    “Am I supposed to?”
    She lifted her head, gazed into his eyes and tried smiling reassuringly. “That would really help.”
    “All right.”
    He then pulled his hands from within her shorts, but he didn’t move away, just backed up. A little. A quiver slid down her spine at the intensity of the gaze holding hers. And she knew he was in a waiting mode, to see what she would do or say next.
    “How did we go from just friends to this?” she heard herself asking, while still trying to force air through her lungs. She had never been kissed that way. Had never participated in anything so intense that it nearly snapped her senses.
    He shrugged and then said, “I’ve wanted you pretty bad ever since I saw you that night at the window.”
    She lifted a brow. “You saw me at the window one night?” At his nod, she asked. “When?”
    “A few nights ago. Evidently, you couldn’t sleep and neither could I—which has been happening a lot lately—so I thought I’d sit on the back porch a while. The lights came on in your bedroom and sometime later you came to the window to look out at the lake. You were wearing a very short and ultrasexy nightie. I couldn’t see everything, but I saw enough.”
    Ellie swallowed deeply. Yes, she could tell by the look in his eyes that he had seen enough. She remembered that night. She hadn’t been able to sleep and had drunk more wine than she really should have. “I didn’t know you were watching.”
    “I know. It was dark, and not once did you glance over at the porch. You just stood there staring at the lake. I could understand why. It was a beautiful night and a full moon was in