Page 48 of Covert Temptation

“I can’t hold back.” His jaw flexed with the effort of grunting the words.

She didn’t want him to hold back. She wanted him to give her all of himself.

Hitching one calf higher on his hip, she opened to him.

And he slid a fraction deeper.

Pleasure clamped down like a vise.

Waves of ecstasy struck her, and she tumbled through the dark waters, aware she was crying out Dante’s name in a rasp.

In the tumultuous storm, his mouth found hers, towing her down, down. She burst on a cry of bliss, her pussy contracting and releasing around his cock as he issued a guttural growl. Hot cum jetted inside her, more intimate than anything she’d ever experienced in her life.

She came back to her senses slowly, first aware of the afterglow of bliss, then the pounding of her own heart.

When she opened her eyes, she found Dante watching her with that same intensity, as if he could see too much.

This time…she wasn’t going to hide. The fire between them was barely banked. Any second it could burst into another inferno that would swallow them both. Every ounce of fight had been burned out of her in their wild coupling.

He stayed buried inside her. She didn’t want him to leave.

Sliding her fingers over his back, she felt shivers riding just under the velvety surface of his skin.

She wanted to say something, to tell him how she felt right this second, but nothing would make sense. How to express that, in the course of being enemies, they’d become…more?

She worked her fingers down his spine, then back up, memorizing every inch of his steely body. She paused on a raised mark, a scar, tracing the healed wound and wondering if he’d ever share with her how he received it.

Her fingers found another, high on his shoulder. He started to push off her, to leave her body, but she locked her arms tighter around him.

“Stay,” she whispered. “Just another minute.”

He stilled. Their breaths mingled. Their hearts slowed to an easy rhythm.

He let her cling to him, and she let his presence ease some of the fear she’d been carrying for weeks. It washed away in a slow trickle that left her feeling boneless and satisfied and much more human than she had since this whole mess went down.

After long minutes, she let her head fall to the side. Her gaze settled on the splintered remnants of the coffee table.

“I guess using the table for that midnight snack is out of the question.”

He braced his weight on one elbow and followed her line of sight. “That thing was ugly anyway.”

She giggled. It was so unexpected, so freeing that it made her eyes sting. In the course of her life, she’d gone from closed off in childhood, the daughter of alcoholics who fought and scared her all the time—

To someone who’d stood in the center of the world’s power, confident and full of purpose. That version of herself had bloomed under the pressure of embassy offices and state dinners. There, at least, everything followed protocol. There were no screaming matches. No broken glass. Just a place where what she did had importance and helped to change lives.

Then it all fell apart, as splintered as the cheap wood of the old table.

Kennedy blinked and looked away from the smashed furniture, swallowing the lump rising in her throat. She would not cry over what her life had become—those days were behind her.

When she turned her head, she locked eyes with Dante. Her lover.

There were a hundred reasons why they shouldn’t be tangled up in the wake of the bliss they shared. Yet, none of them mattered.

In her past, she protected herself with a tough shell. She didn’t let anybody in. Everybody was an enemy. Over the last few weeks, she had adopted that again.

Butthisversion of her…felt different.

Maybe, just maybe, she could find herself again.

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