Alyssa flinched at the conviction in his tone.
He set his forehead against hers. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to yell.”
Again, when she thought she should be pulling back from the man’s insistence, Alyssa instead experienced a renewed surge of blood pumping through her. Michael wanted her, and he didn’t want to share. She loved his commanding presence. Was that wrong of her?
“I don’t know what happened last week. I’m secretly hoping you were mistaken?” His eyelids, so close to hers, rose as he finished.
Alyssa shook her head slightly and sucked in her bottom lip to bite down. She may have had a lot of unknown factors in her life up until now, but that wasn’t one of them. In fact, when she recalled her body’s reaction to whoever had fled the rodeo without confronting her last week, she grew even more certain. She’d experienced the same heightened level of arousal in the same parts of her body as she did now.
Ignoring her response, Michael took her hand and set it against his chest. His heart pounded beneath his shirt. His muscles rippled and flexed as she pressed her palm into his pecs.
“See what you do to me? I can’t even breathe,” he murmured, never breaking eye contact.
Good. At least she wasn’t the only one.
“I remember that kiss like it was yesterday.” His eyes lowered to her lips, and he pulled away a few inches to stare at them. With one thumb, he brushed gently across the upper one and then tugged on her chin to free the lower one from her teeth. “I’ve relived it over and over again in my mind.”
Alyssa breathed heavily, short pants that wouldn’t subside, as though she were running.
“Would you mind if I refresh my memory?” He glanced at her eyes again and cupped her chin with one hand. “I can’t stand the suspense,” he added with a grin.
What? What was he asking? She stared at him but couldn’t make sense of his syllables. They fled from her consciousness as soon as he spoke them.
And then she looked at his mouth and wanted him to kiss her. More than anything she’d ever wanted in the world, she needed Michael to kiss her silly right now.
“Alyssa?”
She didn’t have any idea what he was asking, but she had a demand of her own. “Kiss me, please.”
The words had barely left her mouth before he descended and pressed his lips to hers. Soft, gentle at first. A series of small nips around her mouth, exploring the outside while she melted into his embrace.
Michael teased her mouth until she relaxed into him, and then he licked the seam of her lips just like she remembered from so long ago. Only this time, he let his tongue dip inside, and she opened for him. She couldn’t stop if she wanted to. She needed his breath mingling with her own, needed to taste him, devour him. She felt wanton.
The taste of mint mingled with Michael’s own personal flavor to entice Alyssa into leaning into him. The kiss lingered, and Alyssa grasped the front of Michael’s shirt with both hands. If she gripped tight enough, maybe she wouldn’t fall through the crack in the universe threatening to swallow her whole.
In that moment, Alyssa might have let Michael claim her right there on the couch in the middle of the day. Lost completely in the feel of his hard frame around her, his lips pressed against hers, she didn’t care about anything in the world except ensuring that feeling never ended.
*
It took every ounce of strength Michael possessed to remove himself from the lip-locked position. He didn’t want to frighten her.
When he did, he only released her soft, sexy mouth, not the grip he had on her shoulders. A grip he’d purposefully maintained in an effort to avoid letting his hands roam all over her curves.
She was tiny, not much bigger than she’d been two years ago. Her frame was small, probably five-two compared to his almost six feet. However, she was not fragile. She had an inner strength that had pushed her to escape an arranged marriage to a man she had no interest in. She’d fled in the middle of the night to an unknown future. She was small, but she was not delicate.
Alyssa Franklin was tough, even if she didn’t have the total confidence yet to realize that fact.
Suddenly she jumped up and backed away from the couch, her chest heaving. Michael was left almost cold where she’d been touching him. He leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees to catch his own breath and keep his mate from noticing the effects of that kiss between his legs.
He didn’t want to scare her. He wanted to pull her in at her own pace … as long as it didn’t take too long. He didn’t know how long he could keep himself from taking her.
“Wow,” she finally muttered. “Yeah, that’s how I remembered it. Only better.”