Page 10 of At the Edge of Surrender

Cedar and clove.

Hazard and the starkest sort of sincerity.

“And what is it you want to feel?” he grated.

“You. This.” I pressed his hand closer, wondering if it was possible he felt it, too.

The energy that crashed and compelled. A gravity that tugged at every cell in my body.

My body that never reacted, but somehow, right then, it was alive.

Tingling with a need that sped through my veins and lifted chills across the surface of my skin.

The grunt he released sounded like a warning. “Not sure that’s a good idea.”

“Because you don’t want me?” It was out before I could stop it.

Right then, I didn’t care. I didn’t care about shields or reservations or the insanity of what I was doing.

A dark chuckle rolled out of him, and he reached out and framed my face in both of his big, powerful hands. “Don’t want you? I’ve imagined peeling you out of those clothes no less than a hundred times since I saw you alone across the bar, but I’m not sure you’re up for what you’re asking. I’m no gentleman, Emery. Not even close to being a good man. I’m not the dragon slayer you think I am. I’m the dragon.”

Maybe part of me knew that. Could feel what underscored his being. The danger and threat that loomed.

Yet he was the one holding back. The one who made me feel likethis.

I didn’t care about anything else right then.

“Please.” My eyes squeezed closed as I begged it, then I gasped and my eyes flew open when I was suddenly swept off the couch and planted on the desk in front of him.

He hadn’t even stood.

He wound my purse off my shoulder before his big hands were gripping me by the outside of my hips, up high under the skirt of my dress, and he angled in so close that I thought he was going to kiss me.

Only he raked out an inch from my lips, “You want me to touch you, Little Warrior?”

And maybe I had fully lost it.

Had gone mad with grief.

But I didn’t care.

My fingers sank into his hair, and I murmured, “Yes.”

THREE

KANE

I grippedher by the outside of the thighs, hands trembling as I peered at her stunning face. That face that kept ripping the air from my lungs every time I looked at her. There was something about her that had me drawn.

I searched for anoin her expression because I sure as hell hadn’t anticipated the night to come to this.

There wasn’t a single speck.

She wanted it.

To be touched.

Adored.

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