He gripped her shoulders. “Arabella—”
She growled and squirmed, half wrestling to try to move him, half attempting to escape. He released her, so she wouldn’t think he was trying to keep her, but then she swung for his face—he caught her hand at the wrist, then found the other before it could attack. Holding both up, he turned to pin her against the wall of the entrance hall. He drew close, exchanging air, the whisper-touch of her disheveled hair on the bare skin of his arms…
“You’re lying to me.” She threw the accusation at him, almost spitting across the short distance between them. Her eyes were wild as she squirmed in his hold. She quickly gave up that fight as useless, and it pained him to feel the energy drain from her arms and see the horror bloom on her face. “You’re never going to let me go.” Her words were a sob.
Of course, that was exactly his intent. And he was vile for it.
He kept her wrists pinned, but he softened his grip, afraid he had already held her too roughly. She was strong, but all humans were delicate compared to his dragon strength. “Could you never love a man like me?” he asked, voice low.
She looked at him like he was crazy. “No.” But her arousal betrayed her. He could scent the rise in heat, the passion those words evoked.
He loosened his hold further and dipped his head to peer in her eyes. “Are you quite certain?”
“No.” It was ambiguous, both in tone and meaning, but the pupils of her eyes were dilating with need. He could feel it pulsing in her wrists.
He leaned in and brushed his lips across her cheek. Her body stiffened as he breathed her scent, drawing a line with the tip of his nose across the softness of her skin. “If I cannot have you for a mate,” he whispered against her temple, “then let me slake this thirst we each have for the other.”
He felt her gasp as much as he heard the sound, the surge of her taut-nippled breasts spanning the gap between them to touch his chest.
“I don’t… what about…” Her mind was struggling, resisting, but her body was already scenting as ready. She was aching with need for him, and it fired a heat low in his belly, a fire he’d been suppressing from the moment he saw her in that alleyway, strong and vibrant and troubled.
He dipped his head to nuzzle her neck. “It was always you, Arabella. Always you.” She responded by tilting her head a fraction of an inch to give him more access. It was almost an instinctual move, and it spoke to something deep inside him—claim your treasure. He skimmed his lips up her neck and along her jaw. Her breaths were rapid and short. “You want me,” he whispered. “I can taste it on you, my treasure. Your need. Don’t deny it.”
She let out a small whimper that ran through him like liquid heat. His heart was already pounding fit for heated, grappling sex, and he hadn’t even kissed her. Another warning. His mind clouded, ignoring it, focused only on the thrumming that pulsed everywhere he touched her.
He released her wrists, finally, sliding his hands where they ached to go—one at the back of her neck, lifting her away from the wall, the other to her waist, bringing her soft body hard against his.
“Let me pleasure you.” He was barely holding himself back, but he needed to hear it from her lips.
“Yes.” It was so soft, it was more air than word.
But it blared through him. The roar rumbled inside his chest as he devoured her lips with his, using his hands to angle her head and her body so he could claim her with his mouth. She whimpered into him, and it fired even more heat straight to his cock. She tasted of berries and musk, sweet arousal and feminine skin. And that was merely his tongue plundering her mouth. His magical tasting of her, this intimately entwined, her hands clawing into his shoulders, spoke of hunger and electric tension, dark need and urgency. He pulled back to see her lips swollen from his bruising kiss. He reveled in the flush of heat in her cheeks, even as his hand skimmed up her body to grasp hold of her breast. It pushed a hardened nipple through the thin fabric of her shirt, and as he filled his hand with the weight of it, his cock throbbed in response. The feel of her was quickly making him drunk. Her hooded eyes fluttered open. Those eyes. Green crystals of beauty and brilliance, no gem could be more treasured or bewitching…
He tore his gaze from hers, squeezing his eyes shut for a pained moment.
Then he opened them and turned her to face the wall. “Put your hands up,” he whispered hoarsely, not waiting for her to understand, just grasping her wrists and planting her hands palm-flat on the cool stone wall of his lair. She didn’t resist, his cock hard against the tight curve of her bottom, making his arousal, his desire for her, insistently known. She kept her hands planted on the wall as he gathered her flowing hair in one hand, holding it tight and using it to open her neck to his tongue and his mouth. He gently nipped at her sweet flesh, pulling her t-shirt off her shoulder and exposing that to his ministrations as well, then he reached around to grab her luscious breast again, kneading it with his hungry hand. He was tasting her, scenting her sweetness as he pressed his body into hers. Her moans and the rhythmic movement of her backside against his cock, pushing against him as she braced herself against the wall… it was a dance so intense, so erotic, it was as if they were already coupled. His mouth ached with the thought of sheathing himself inside her, to feel the quiver of her body around him.