Feral Hearts

42

It was odd kissing a man upside down—odd, but also oddly erotic. Victoria could feel Lukas’s lips slanted across hers. In this position, their lips didn’t quite fit together properly, so he put so much effort to make her open her mouth wide, as did he. It wasn’t elegant, this strange twisting of tongues, this driven mingling of mouths. This was passion made elemental, even though there was no hurry at all.

She felt his hand reach up, grasping her head to hold her in place for the ravishment of her mouth. He broke away for a second and she saw a flash of determined blue eyes, then he twisted his torso to face her. He leaned into her widespread legs and wrapped one arm about her waist as the other brought her face back to his. She thought she heard him murmur,

“Victoria,” and then he was kissing her again.

Slowly, thoroughly.

She let her lips fall apart on a gasp and felt the sure thrust of his tongue into her mouth. He didn’t hurry, as if he had all the time in the world to hold her thus and explore her inner depths. She made a sound, a sort of low groan that in any other circumstances would’ve caused her embarrassment, but she was so drugged, so heady with the wine of his kiss, that she didn’t even think about it. Nothing existed but his mouth, his lips, the thick intrusion of his tongue. She couldn’t imagine wanting anything else ever.

But he broke from her, withdrawing his tongue, his lips, though she whimpered and made an aborted move to follow him.

She opened her eyes to find him watching her like a predator.

Calculating, waiting.

He held her gaze, and she saw a faint smirk curl one corner of his mouth and then she felt her consciousness returning to her.

She went insane. Men! All telling her what to do, all unable to give her the simple courtesy of treating her like she mattered.

She writhed, trying to elbow him, or trying to kick him. She twisted, small sounds of frustration and rage pushing against his damned hand. He grunted yet his body won't moved away from her.

She tucked her chin into her neck and slammed the top of her head against him, missing his jaw and connecting painfully with his chest, shaking with fury.

“Damn it—” His growl was low.

He didn’t seem affected at all, this murderer, this killer of all she’d ever held dear. She raised her head and glared at him over the top of his hand, daring him to do what he might.

He met her look behind her covered eyes and his eyes narrowed, and then his hand was moving from her mouth, but before she could draw breath, he was slamming his lips over hers and he was …

Kissing her again!

Her world whirled sickeningly because he was angry and she was angry and his mouth wasn’t at all gentle, but somehow, despite all of that, or maybe because all of that, she felt it: a stirring. A warmth down below where—

No! This wasn’t right; this wasn’t going to happen, not for this man of all men. She tried to arch her head away, but he had a hand on the back of her neck, holding her there as he opened his mouth against hers, sweetly hot, wrongly enticing, and she bit him. She clamped down on his lower lip, tasting blood, whimpering.

She couldn’t take much more of this, couldn’t hold out, but he didn’t pull away. He still held her close against his large, warm, masculine frame and she could feel that part of him now, hard and erect, pushing into her, and the feeling was supposed to repulse and scare her. Instead, it made her wet.

She gasped and he surged into her mouth in triumphant possession.

No. Nonono. She wasn’t this person. She refused to be.