Free Betina Krahn by Make Me Yours (v5.0) Page B

second-floor landing.
    “Did you find out he was to be married before or after you kissed him?” he demanded with an urgency that should have embarrassed him. But his heart was pounding, his vision narrowing and his head was filling with the scent of the chocolate on her breath.
    “A moot point, I believe.” There was a trace of something like regret in her voice as she sidestepped him to continue to her room.
    Determined to have an answer, he bounded up the stairs and down the hall to plant himself in her path yet again. What was it about the woman that incited him to such extremes? He’d never behaved like this with a female in his life—brash, irritable, impulsive. Get hold of yourself, man!
    Standing over her, he clenched his hands and made himself swallow.
    “Well?”
    For a moment she stared straight ahead, visually scorching his shirtfront, then raised her face to him.
    “Did you kiss him?” he demanded.
    “What do you care?” Her eyes, dark-centered in the dim hallway, sought his. Whatever she saw in him caused her to smile in a way that melted the bones in his knees. “Unless, of course, you would prefer to be kissing me yourself.” Her eyes crinkled at the corners. Lights in their depths twinkled. “Which would be perfectly understandable, after this morning. I’m a delectable kisser.”
    His gaze dropped to her lips and his mouth opened and then closed soundlessly. With her words ringing in his head like a bell, he managed to make himself take a step backward and allow her to pass.
    It was a mistake to watch her walk away, he knew, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the sway of her hips, the curve of her spine, and the errant curls at the nape of her neck. Hewas suddenly galvanized by the memory of the feel and the taste of her.
    Like a spectator inside his own head, he saw himself go after her, turn her and swoop down on her mouth.

7
    T HERE WAS no squeal, no gasp, not so much as a breath of resistance as he bore her back into the shelter of the nearest door frame. Her lack of shock hinted that she had expected this. The way her arms lapped around his neck said she had wanted it, too.
    Plunging into the taste of chocolate, the velvet of her mouth, and the responsiveness of her tongue, he found himself instantly detached from the moorings of his life…adrift…suspended in time and place. Suddenly there was no before or after; this contact, these sensations were all that existed. His body caught fire and unbidden, he wrapped both arms around her, lifting her, holding her fiercely against him, kissing her with a hunger he had forgotten he possessed.
    The door behind her opened unexpectedly, and his embrace was all that kept her from falling backward through it. A man’s shocked face appeared briefly through the haze in his vision, and then the door closed with a resounding thud. Operating with only a fraction of his faculties, he managed to turn her, shift them both across the narrow hall and work the knob of another door. When it opened, he carried her into the room with him, stifling the question of whose room they’d entered, and pressed her back against the wall, kicking the door shut.
    Her body molded to his as he leaned into her, and her hands cupped the back of his head to pull him closer. Hermouth was alternately tender and yielding, then firm and demanding as she sought new combinations of position and pressure against his. The play of her tongue inside his lips, and the way she raked his lips with her teeth sent voluptuous sensations spiraling through him. Her words were no boast; she was a delectable kisser.
    He could have stayed there for hours, immersed in kissing, licking and tasting her, feeling as if together they had just invented that oral entree into pleasure, but there was so much more of her to experience. He trailed his lips down the side of her face to her throat, kissing, nibbling and registering that her head sank to the side to give him access. The sight of her tongue