Heart of Obsidian

When she began to struggle under his weight, he tightened his hold on the delicate bones of her wrists before he could rein in the violently possessive response. Opening his hand a second later, he waited for her next move. Should it be a rejection, he’d give every indication of accepting it, then strategize his next play—Sahara was as physically susceptible to him as he was to her, and it was an advantage he’d use without hesitation.

“I’m too hot.” With that complaint, she reached between them to unzip her sweatshirt and twisted to get it off. It left her dressed only in a warm but thin white top that hugged the mounds of her breasts, the curve of her waist.

“Don’t,” he said, when she would’ve put her hands on him. “We don’t want that rock face coming down over us.”

Dropping her arms to the lush green grass, Sahara’s eyes went to the huge slab of rock at his back. “You’re not exaggerating, are you?”

“No.” He had no need to exaggerate.

A subtle movement of her throat as she swallowed. He followed it with his gaze, aware of her pulse gaining in speed, her breath hitching. “I’ll keep my hands to myself,” she promised, voice rough. “But you can’t look at me like that.”

Gripping her jaw in silent answer, he braced himself with his free arm beside her head, and then he branded her mouth with his own. You are mine. It was a statement telepathed along the private pathway that had formed years ago. Mine to touch. Mine to look at. Mine. Releasing her jaw, he stroked his hand down her throat to close over her breast.

Sahara shuddered.

Able to feel the pebbled hardness of her nipple under his palm, he took care in learning the shape of her. A gasp, her body attempting to shift restlessly under his. Sensitive, extremely so. Filing away the piece of knowledge, he rubbed his thumb over her nipple and she almost twisted out from under him, breaking the kiss to sob out a breath. “Please, please. More.”

Kaleb felt his closest PsyNet shield fall in a crash that almost took out the second. But he wasn’t dangerous to her. Not yet. “I’ll give you anything you want.” Holding her gaze, he slipped his hand under the bottom of her top to spread it on her abdomen. It quivered under his touch, her teeth sinking into her lower lip.

“That’s for me to do,” he said in a quiet rebuke that had her sucking in a breath.

His mouth was on hers an instant later, his teeth biting down on her lower lip a fraction too hard. Back arching up from the ground, she broke the kiss . . . only to return for another, her tongue stroking against his with an intimacy that went straight to the rock-hard erection pressing against the zipper of his pants. As if she were licking her tongue along the rigid length of his penis and not inside his mouth.

This time, it was Kaleb who broke the kiss. “No,” he said when she would’ve initiated another kiss.

Chest heaving, Sahara licked her lips, and he had to look away before he broke his own rules and asked her to put her hands on the painful hardness between his thighs, to squeeze and stroke his naked flesh. He focused instead on his exploration of her body. Her pulse fluttered under his hand when he moved it to lie over her ribs, the moonlight shimmering on her skin. A little further up, he found lace, fine and silky.

“It was in the box,” Sahara whispered on a hitched breath. “Thank you.”

The fact she wore his gift against her skin pleased him, but it wasn’t enough.

Removing his hand, to her frustrated “No,” he pushed up her top to bare her breasts to the night . . . to him.

Her body went utterly motionless.

Do you want me to stop? he forced himself to ask, the fury to possess a turbulent storm inside him. Below that was an old and vicious rage, incited by the sight of the fine silvery scars that marked her flesh and that she likely no longer noticed. He did. He’d been there when each and every cut was made, remembered exactly how deep each wound had been, knew how much medical attention she must’ve needed to heal.

“No.” Her skin gleaming with the finest layer of perspiration, her breasts rising and falling as if in invitation, Sahara’s voice pulled him out of the blood-soaked past. “No, don’t stop, Kaleb.”

Wrenching his anger under control, and slamming down ice-cold shields around the violent surge of arousal provoked by the sound of his name on her lips, he concentrated on the creamy flesh cupped in delicate pink lace. It wasn’t what he wanted. Pulling first at one cup, then the other, he pushed the lace down until the heavy weight of her breasts spilled free, the soft pink providing a frame for the lush curves that melted the black ice around his pounding erection as if it didn’t exist.



*



SAHARA dug her nails into the earth in an effort to fight the urge to beg for Kaleb’s touch as he watched her with those eyes of madness. It should’ve scared her, the possessive darkness she saw in them, and perhaps part of her was terrified, but not enough to back away, not enough to end this raw wave of sensation, vivid and wild and alive.