Page 7 of The One Night Match

The hand around my throat tightens, and my entire body trembles beneath the show of dominance.

Yep. He could definitely ruin me. I just don’t think I care.

“You’re driving me insane, Kitten,” he murmurs between kisses.

“The feeling is mutual,” I moan, unable to tamp the desire he’s pulled to the surface.

He considers me for a moment, his eyes locked with mine with an intensity that makes it difficult to remember to breathe.

“Come home with me,” he says.

“I can’t.” God, I wish I could. But I can’t risk missing meeting Mom and my sisters at the church.

“Can’t or won’t?” he challenges.

“Can’t.”

He stares down at me, and I think he might ask more questions, but instead, he drops his hand from my throat and takes my hand in his much larger one.

Before I have a chance to ask what he’s doing, he drags me through the throes of dancers toward a back hallway I didn’t notice before.

I swallow heavily and tug on his hand.

This is a bad idea. If there’s one thing my father and his men always drilled into me, it’s that going somewhere alone with a strange man is a recipe for disaster.

Even if that strange man is a hot as fuck, tattooed god in a suit.

For all I know, he could be leading me to a dark alley to kill me, and here I am, trailing after him like a lamb being led to her own slaughter.

The music begins to fade the further we get from the main floor, and anxiety claws at my chest.

I guess one way to get out of an arranged marriage to a stranger is to get myself killed.

He squeezes my hand, his brow furrowed as he looks back at me. “You okay?”

“You’re not planning on killing me, right?”

His laugh startles me, his head shaking from side to side. “No, baby. If I were planning on killing you, you’d know about it.”

I don’t get a chance to question whether he’s speaking from experience before I’m tugged through a door and pressed against the wall beside it, his body blanketing mine.

His lips crash down on mine, and the taste of sin and whiskey fills my senses.

I guess if I’m going to die, this is an okay way to go out.

FOUR

CRUZ

It figures that the first woman who has even slightly piqued my interest in years comes into my life the night before I marry a stranger.

I don’t know what it is about her, but she’s driving me crazy, cutting through every ounce of restraint I’ve built like it never existed in the first place.

Logically, I should walk away. It’s the smart thing to do, but I don’t think I could, even if I wanted to.

Her lips are impossibly soft as she takes everything I give her, grinding her hot little body against me the same way I do her.

Fuck.