Ginger strokes my beard, making me look at her. “No, it isn’t.”

She’s got me feeling too many fucking things all at once. I can’t take anymore. I need a break from her, from this delicious, terrifying intimacy, half ready to remove her from my lap and storm out into the chill of the blizzard. But my body rebels, refusing my mind’s commands. Desperately, I ask, “What about your home life?” I have to steer our conversation into safer waters.

“My parents divorced when I was eleven. I never saw it coming. In fact, I laughed when they told me, thinking it was a joke. But laughter turned to tears when I saw Dad’s packed suitcases. He never lived with us again, and in many ways, I felt abandoned by him. Especially after he remarried. Like he ran headlong away from trouble, leaving me mired in it. One thought plagued me after that. The thought that if I’d tried harder and been a better girl, my parents would have stayed together. So, I became a perfectionist. Getting straight As, following the rules, and doing everything right. It never reunited my family, but I guess it became a habit, providing a false sense of security against the uncertainties of life … until the kidnapping.”

I can’t help myself. Leaning forward, I kiss Ginger’s cheek, and her face glows with surprise. Her juicy lips part in a radiant smile, and I fight the urge to taste her mouth, drawn to the fire inside this woman even more than the flames warming the cave.

“My parents are divorced, too. Only it happened younger for me, a little before my seventh birthday. I was happy to see the bastard—I mean my dad—leave. Mom remarried my stepfather, Steve, and then proceeded to replace me with three younger sisters. Looking back as an adult, I see where I fucked up, too. I treated Steve like a total asshole, but he made me feel tolerated rather than loved. Maybe that’s why I gravitated towards the service or being the hero, as you put it. I needed to prove my worth to my parents and Steve. Prove it to the world. But my comrades’ death taught me that despite all the fucking heroics in the world, bad shit happens to good people.”

Ginger’s dainty hand clasps mine, intertwining our fingers. I swallow hard, feeling my whole body ache. “Your heroism changed everything for me,” she observes quietly.

My willpower’s in imminent danger of evaporating. So, I steer hard towards distraction through conversation. The only way to get my body back under control. “What else do I need to know about Aries?”

I can’t help myself. My fingertips slide back and forth over her dainty ones, savoring the feel of her small hand in mine, where it belongs.

“Umm,” she pauses. “We’re stubborn, and we’re supposed to be the best kissers in the Zodiac.” Her cheeks burn as she eyes me timidly.

Before I can catch myself, I exclaim darkly, “The best ones? Huh.”

Ginger’s eyes dance with seductive energy as I bring my hand up, palming her cheek and savoring its soft warmth with the thumb I stroke over it.

“Yes,” she whispers, her voice trembling, her cheeks glowing.

I can’t take anymore. I need one taste. Just enough to satisfy me for the rest of my life. My head leans towards her, our mouths a hair’s breadth apart as she parts her juicy pink lips.

Chapter

Six

GINGER

Roscoe pauses, his lips tantalizingly close to mine, his baby blues washing over my face. The air thickens with anticipation, a primal pulse inhabiting the space between us. A sigh parts my lips, and his eyes tick to my mouth, darkening into two depthless pools.

With an anguished groan, he claims my mouth, all semblance of self-control evaporating in the ferocious heat of his demand. Tremors shudder through me, as if the planet has stopped spinning, and time unwound to a standstill. I slip my fingers from his, clinging frenziedly to his neck, every ounce of pent-up yearning animating me. My lips sting, pressing so tightly against his that I draw blood as we tread the line between passion and pain.

A deep, resonant growl rumbles in his chest, and his hands thread into my hair, locking me against him. His hot, velvety tongue swipes into my mouth, sending shivers of want shuttling up and down my spine to the juncture at the top of my legs. I feel a new tightness there, a great aching throb.

His kiss feels desperate, like his scream in the abyss of the afternoon woods. Our teeth clank together as our heads fight for the right angle. Our hands roam frantically over eachother’s bare flesh, breath rising in impetuous pants. He sucks my bottom lip into his mouth, biting it and dragging it with him for one tantalizing second. Ferocious, devouring need consumes me. I chase his lips, and he claims me raucously in return.

Tremors of pleasure run the length of my spine. My pulse pounds cacophonously against my ribs. Animalistic, unthinking, I dissolve into unadulterated appetite.

His beard tickles my cheeks, and his long hair sweeps over my shoulders, veiling me in a world of ravenous intimacy. His stroke deepens, urgent and rhythmic, an unbridled call to deeper, darker pleasures. I’m a live wire, sparking and igniting at every point his flesh touches.

Roscoe’s head drops to my neck with a rough grunt, the hard thrill of his teeth against the vulnerable flesh of my throat, ripping a hedonistic moan from my lips. Everything about him is feral, untamed. It fans a primal need in me that no man has ever exposed—voracious and insatiable.

His hands slide the length of my back, pressing my flesh hard, massaging and squeezing me down to my hips, intensifying the ache tearing me apart from the inside out with each caress. Unrepentantly, I twist in his lap, straddling him and feeling the long, hard length of his cock against my inner thigh with satisfaction. No, wicked anticipation.

His rough hands tighten jealously, his fingers digging into my flesh as he drags my pussy over his lap demandingly, drawing shudders of ecstasy from me as his shaft digs into my moist panties. I arch my hips, grinding back and forth over his boxers, stoking his passion and awakening longing I didn’t know lay dormant in my soul.

Roscoe brings his free hand to the top of my camisole, ravenously tugging it down to my waist as I wiggle my arms free of the spaghetti straps. His eyes blacken, staring at my ampletits. For the first time in my life, I appreciate my plump figure as lust sparks and flames in his eyes.

Dropping his head, he ravages my breast, swirling the areola with his tongue as my nipple hardens, begging for more. I arch back in surrender as he flicks and plays with my tits, alternating sucking and teasing them into aroused peaks. My hips buck, beseeching him for more.

The breath hisses between his teeth as he bites my nipple, wresting a shocked whimper from me as his hand pinches and plays roughly with the other, alternating nibbling and sucking me. Uncontrollable moans and cries fly from my lips. Mindless words … begging him not to stop, entreating him for more, pleading for the mountain man to possess me in savage, reckless ways.

His hands delve greedily beneath the waistband of my lacy panties, grabbing my ass cheeks and pressing my pussy tightly against his massive arousal. I amaze at its transformation from the first kiss to now as my pussy throbs, thoroughly drenched.

A throaty groan escapes Roscoe’s lips, and he rests his mouth against the pulse point of my neck, panting, “I need you so much, Ginger. You have to stop me.”