Page 21 of Marrying the Enemy

“Two. They’re in my bag.”

“You couldn’t lie?” he asked with exasperation, twisting his head around to glare at her.

“You could simply not use them,” she suggested with a bat of her lashes.

A wild flash of lust glinted in his eyes, one that seemed very excited by the idea of naked sex.

“I always use them,” he said in a voice that dropped several octaves so it abraded her skin as he spoke. “And you could say ‘no,’ Evie. Say it,” he commanded.

She stubbornly sealed her lips and lifted her chin in challenge.

“You’re such a pain in my ass.” He reached for her bag where it was lying on the floor and passed it to her, holding onto it when she started to take it. “It would only be sex, Eve. Once. We get it out of our system, then we never tell anyone. We don’t talk about it. We never see each other again. This isn’t the start of something.”

“You’re saying that as if I want it to be.” She noted that he called her Eve when he wanted to impress the gravity of his words upon her.

She took the bag and brought it into her lap, realizing he was doing it again, making her offer him the condoms as a tacit demonstration that this was her choice.

She dug around, brought out a protein bar. “Still hungry?”

“Not for that.” The grit in his voice was making her skin feel too tight to contain her. She remembered that voice all too well.

“You have to tell me you want this, Evie.”

She found the condoms, two squares stuck together, and offered them.

He didn’t take them. He clasped her wrist and said, “You’re shaking. Is that fear?”

“No.” She wished the helpless pang in her voice didn’t make it so obvious this was desire. Yearning.

He lifted the bag off her lap to set it out of the way, then edged into the space between her outstretched leg and dangling calf, pushing her thighs farther apart.

“If you want me to stay on my side of the shack, say so.” He waited a millisecond before he clasped her hips and dragged her to the edge of the counter so the placket of her shorts was flush to the hard ridge inside his.

A squeak left her.

He might have breathed, “Last chance,” then his hand was clasping her ponytail to drag her head back while his mouth came down on hers.

Lightning struck again, strong and sharp enough to hurt. Eve moaned and his arms wrapped around her, almost reassuring before they crushed her. She wormed her arms out of the space between them and up around his neck, then opened her mouth wider beneath his.

No soft seduction here. They picked up where they’d left off in Budapest, kissing as though the other held the last drop of water available on earth. He cupped her head and kept her where he wanted her as he angled his mouth across hers and delved for all the secrets of the universe. He stole and plundered and gave. He poured heat and passion into her. Want. Feral, angry, desperate want.

She absorbed it all with a groan of delight and dragged his shirt up, trying to find his skin. He wrenched it up and off, then pulled her T-shirt over her head. Her bikini top was a tug of two strings, then it also fell to the floor.

His wide hands shaped from her waist up her rib cage, covering her breasts in heat. His mouth dragged from her lips to her neck, heading down.

“I want to give you a collar of hickies,” he said against her throat.

“You can’t,” she moaned.

He lifted his head long enough for her to see the bitterness in his gaze, then his thumbs dragged across her nipples and he was kissing her again.

She wrapped her good foot behind him and levered herself almost off the counter, balancing on her tailbone as she rubbed and rocked, inciting them both.

Or so she thought until he drew back, expression remote and harsh.

She dropped her hands to the counter and inched herself more firmly onto it.

“Don’t lose your nerve now, Evie. We’re getting to the good part.” He released the button of her fly and lowered the zip, then clasped the waistband of her shorts with two hands. “Lift.”

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