Free Elijah by Jacquelyn Frank Page A

unbelievably perfect, so well formed, and so beautiful she had the power to literally stop his heart. His chest hurt with the sensation, but not as much as the sudden, blinding urge to go to her did. He could smell her, feel her as every hair on his body became erect, making him feel as though his very skin was reaching toward her. Every sense and natural device for sensing demanded more input.
    In the water, the Lycanthrope Queen went still very suddenly. Her head cocked to one side in awareness, her nose twitching as she scented the air in order to identify what exactly it was that she had already begun to intuit on other levels as being amiss. Siena had just identified the familiar scent of masculine musk when she heard the abrupt sound of water splashing behind her.
    She whirled around just in time to spin into the warrior’s arms.
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    Siena gasped as Elijah hauled her up against his body with one powerful arm, seizing her by her hair with his opposite hand. His mouth was on hers in an instant, giving her no time to even anticipate or react. Having lived a life of protected privilege and marked reserve when it came to any kind of physical contact, Siena had never been seized in such a manner. No one with an ounce of sense would have dared to do such a thing. She would have thought her initial reaction to such an action would be something in the nature of a definitive, violent slapdown.
    Instead, it was great shock that caused her to inadvertently accept his kiss. The warrior was demanding, just shy of being brutal, and reflecting to her every feeling he had been inundated with during his unnoticed moments of observing her. Siena came to life an instant later, finally trying to push away, her hands going to the enormous wall of his chest. But she felt the bulk of the bandage that yet remained over the most serious of his wounds and instinctively resisted any pressure that would potentially reopen the healing flesh. Even to save herself, for some reason, Siena could not bear the thought of causing him harm. She was not that noble a creature in general, and certainly not when she was feeling threatened, so the impulse to protect him left her baffled and disoriented.
    By the time she had finished curbing her escape impulse and contending with her feelings of confusion, she was being swamped by a thousand other sensations and emotions.
    All of them were centered around heat.
    So much amazing, delicious heat. Heat from his body burning its strength and form into hers as if she were a soft putty meant to take the impression of his fit into the memory of her own shape.
    They were like a puzzle. Two pieces cut apart but always meant to be perfectly reunited at some future point. They locked together like the flow of nature, thigh to thigh, belly to belly, and breast to breast. Even the water running down her steaming skin could not come between that perfect seal. There was heat from her body burning into his, blazing in places she had never felt such intensity before. The sensation was so baffling as it ran along her entire body, even the incongruous places like the small of her back, under her arms, and the soles of her feet, that it was just shy of being ticklish.
    She could not laugh at it, though. She was far too engaged by his kiss to even consider it. His mouth was like a demanding and wet fire, his velvet tongue thrusting past her teeth to demand reciprocation from hers, leaving more licking flames in his wake as he went. Had she ever thought his lips to be almost feminine? He was nothing but male, the fit of his lips skilled and aggressive and very, very masculine in their flavor and force. He was drinking from her mouth in long, satisfying drafts, until Siena could hardly catch her breath. She felt her body bowing backward. She was being held so tightly that her body was forced to fit into the aggressive lean of his embrace. Her hair skimmed through the water, the ends recoiling in shock at the contrast of the cold