Page 27 of The Hellion is Tamed

But when he loosened his hold, letting her slide down his broad chest, retreating, she went up on her toes, hand snaking around to circle the back of his neck, mouth opening beneath his. She touched her tongue to his bottom lip because he’d done the same to her, and he groaned low in his throat, pulling her so tightly against him, two bodies became one.

She met his every thrust until they established a mindless rhythm, animalistic and raw, a rhythm that tilted her world on its axis.

A battle for control, a battle for breath.

A battle for sanity.

A kiss unlike any she’d imagined existed.

And with this man, she’d imagined many.

“So this is you,” he whispered against her lips, his voice rough, fevered. “Ferocious, uninhibited.” He walked her back, stumbling over coats until she was pressed against the wall. Taking a halting inhalation, he braced his forearms on either side of her, caging her in. Pinning her between his hard, hot body and cool plaster. His gaze met hers, his eyes the color of deep twilight, a murky, beautiful spill. His lashes lowered as his focus did the same, following a trail from her neck to her toes and back that felt like he’d set her on fire. Her gown gaped, her breasts unbound behind the fragile structure of a ruined corset that was close to slipping from her body. Trailing a finger down the middle of her chest, he halted at her belly. Then trailed the finger back to her collarbone, a sluggish crawl setting goosebumps racing across her skin. Her nipples pebbled, aching, begging for attention they’d never received and were unlikely to be given.

The punch of pleasure from his languid caress weakened her knees, her determination, her ire. Her ragged sigh was not lost on either of them. He was changing her, changingthem, right before her eyes. As if he spun their future like a coin between his talented fingers.

“Are you going to kiss me again?” she asked, appalled but too eager for his touch to care.

A worrying fold crept between his brows as she studied her.

Her hand rose without invitation, her thumb smoothing the line with a tender touch. In response, Simon turned his head, caught her palm between his teeth, his tongue following to appease. The bite was pain. The lick pleasure.

She groaned through open lips as her heartbeat erupted, aggravated and aroused beyond measure.

If she waged war, it was easier than she’d imagined winning the subsequent encounter.

She followed instinct, hand sliding from his cheek to his chest, ribs to his belly, heading lower, to the hard length pressed against her thigh. He whispered an oath and captured her wrist before she reached her destination, wrenching her arm high above her head. “You incorrigible minx,” he murmured and collapsed into her, seizing her lips and every thought in her head and tossing them into the wind.

Frenzied, his hands were all over her. In her hair, cradling her cheeks, gliding down her ribs, grasping her waist and drawing her in until they were joined hip to hip, thigh to thigh, his incredibly hard shaft a powerful presence between them. She followed his savage lead, nipping his bottom lip while struggling to remove her arm from his hold. Though she wasn’t sure she wanted him to release her.

And he didn’t. Not for one second.

This unknown facet, that she’d given a man control andlikedit, sent her pulse in a dizzying spin. Sent heat—pure, primalheat—flooding to her core.

It was madness, the blaze they created. The Soul Catcher smoldered like an ember from its spot deep in his coat pocket, a more forceful glow than she’d alone caused it to emit. Even in her innocence, she imagined he hadn’t created this combustion often.

But the image of him with another woman wouldn’t let her go.

That he’d experiencedthis, in part, with some random actress or opera singer or widowed hag—and the memory of what she’d seen in the countess’s bedchamber when she’d tried to return to him—sent a bolt of fury through her.

He’s not yours, Emma. And he never will be.

Shoving him back a step, Emma heaved a gasp into the leaden air and yanked her arm from his grasp. This time, his dark gaze full of fire and fury, he let her go. However, with his chest heaving, he didn’t step away.

And he didn’t try to hide how her kiss had affected him.

Scowling, he dragged his thumb across his bottom lip, his lids fluttering. “I don’t know why you’re vexed. I gave you every opportunity to slap my face and walk away.” His gaze fixed on her for a long moment, then drifted off. “When you ask a man if he’s going to kiss you again, expect the answer to be yes.”

Everything changed in that moment.

Fury turning to love, ire to uncertainty. She would never look upon Simon again without knowing exactly how he tasted. How he gently stroked his tongue against hers, increasing the intensity only after she let him know she was ready. How his biceps flexed as he held himself back from crushing her to the wall, when she knew hewantedto crush her. His hot breath in her ear, his teeth sinking into her skin. His rigid length pressed to her thigh. His hips intimating a dance she wanted more than any waltz on earth—a dance that would lead to doom.

So intimate, every piece of it. Yet, he’d never thought to wait for her.

But such was a man’s desire.

Insatiable, or so she’d heard.

She waited until his gaze met hers, his jaw ticking from suppressing emotion and speech. He crushed his feelings something awful inside until he looked like he was ready to crack. “I came back, Simon. Five years after I left. My ma”—she expelled a sigh, started again—“mymotherwas ill. And the tracer trackin’ me, every step. He’s like one of your haunts. His existence unending, ageless. His duty, or so he says, to keep travelers in their own time. To curb the disorders made by going back and changing. Traveling forward and seeing.” She frowned, her hand going to her bodice when her gown and the corset beneath it started to buckle. “Like today, saving Mollie’s sister. Things I can do, use my gift, you see. Ways I can help, something good from this mess of a life I’ve found myself mired in. God, that mongrel would have hated it. That I helped someone. I’ve done it before, modest interference. Traveling back and keeping someone from a grievous injury, say. It’s not the first time I came to someone’s rescue, is all I’m telling you.”