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Watching him fold his six-foot-plus frame before me, a cross-legged position that placed him at my
feet, punched a deep longing that made my breath catch.
Perhaps he was aware of what he’d just done—that right up there on a Dominant’s most cherished
wish was a willing submissive at their feet—because he froze too, his eyes holding mine for a
charged moment before returning to his bowl.
We ate in silence, eerie white darkness gathering around us as night fell and the moon rose.
‘Her name is Stephanie,’ he volunteered grudgingly.
I nodded, torn between satisfaction that he’d answered of his own free will and a peculiar dart of
jealousy that I now had the name of the person who’d contributed to Jensen’s wary reserve. I
concentrated on eating, attempting to ignore the latter emotion.
‘Not going to push for more?’ he asked after a long stretch. ‘Now you know, you’re no longer
interested?’ he added with a trace of snark.
‘You used the present tense just now. I may be many things, but I’m not a woman who encroaches
on another woman’s territory. Not even to satisfy simple curiosity.’ I was lying, of course. I was way more interested than simple curiosity dictated.
‘She’s no longer in my life. Feel free to encroach away.’
Why did that invitation make my heart jump? Make temptation surge high? ‘Are you sure?’
He shrugged.
‘Maybe I won’t encroach. Maybe I’ll simply sit back and savour the mystery of you, like a fine
wine.’
The lamps he’d set outside the tent illuminated enough for me to catch the slight flare of his nostrils at my words. The strong movement of his throat as he swallowed.
He wasn’t unaffected by me. Far from it. And the longer we stayed out here under the star-dappled
sky, for all the world the only two people left on this planet, the more I was tempted to discard the vow I’d made to myself.
The vow of no more relationships.
The vow to focus on the things I could control, like my charity work. So why the next words
tripped from my lips, I would never fathom. ‘Do you like the idea of being savoured, Jensen?’
He tensed at my use of his name, but it wasn’t affront that bristled from him. It was something far more potent. Hot and wicked and carnal, it reached out in the space between us, wrapping itself
around us the way only two people dangerously attracted to each other could be affected.
In the silent landscape disturbed only by intermittent faint cracking ice, he stared at me, want and need and lust building in his eyes until his chest rose and fell with rapid rhythms.
Beneath the thermal layers, my skin tightened, heat pooling as my body answered with equal
fervour.