Solstice Surrender Read Free Page B

titles. Her heart still skittered and her hand shook as she lifted volumes from the shelves. She had absorbed a lot in fifteen minutes and a million questions were still lined up to be asked. Despite that, all she could focus on was his kiss.
    She noticed his sudden stillness as he stared at the window and her heart gave another small sharp leap.
    He moved a pace sideways so the book stack partially hid him and kept watch for a minute more, his jaw taut.   His dark gaze was steady upon the window, the heavy brows over his black eyes pulled slightly together. It was a very long minute.
    Finally, his shoulders relaxed and he walked back to where she stood at the closed-off end of the stack.
    She replaced the book. “They were here?”
    “They have moved on.” He stopped next to her, making her heart skitter even more. He was studying her face again.
    “What?” Why did he examine her so carefully? He stood very close. The corridor between the stacks was blocked from her view by his shoulders. She had noticed his height almost immediately but his mass, the solidness of him, had not registered until now when he stood before her.
    His hand lifted to cup her cheek and he gave a slow smile.   His smile was astonishing. It made all the dark brooding qualities in his face and eyes disappear.   It was like watching the sun come out on a blustery day, after the clouds passed by.   His eyes grew warm and rich with cheer and promise.   The change in him stole her breath once more.
    “I am pleased…very pleased to find you are also beautiful,” he told her.
    “Excuse me?”
    Then he kissed her again. This time it was not a simple kiss to calm fluttering observers. This kiss was his alone.
    For a moment she struggled with surprise that he should kiss her at all, but the mental protest died unspoken. She responded to the kiss anyway and that was its own novelty. This was no featherweight touch of his lips to hers.   He was kissing her like…
    … a lover , her mind whispered.
    His lips played against hers, teasing and tasting.   He stroked her face and throat before slipping his hands inside the coat to explore the shape of her shoulders, her chest, then down to her waist.   His long fingers tried to circle her body, the thumbs smoothing a warm, tingling path over her skin above the band of her jeans.
    Coherent thought faded under the assault of his hands and mouth.
    His lips crushed hard against hers, demanding. As her lips parted, his tongue slid inside her mouth and explored, stroking.
    Hot need spread through her, frightening her with the strength of it. She had not felt something this strongly since…she had not felt it, ever. Not like this, not with this utter certainty of rightness, of symmetry.
    “I know you,” she murmured against his lips.
    “Yes.” His voice rumbled through her senses.
    “Who are you?”
    “Yours.” His big hot hands inside her coat drew her up hard against him. The strength of his arms around her felt possessive. His lips moved over her face, her throat, his movements hurried.
    His urgency affected her, made her need surge with a rushing demand of its own. She thrust her hands inside his coat. Her fingers felt the softness of cotton, warmed to body temperature. Behind it lay the yielding firmness of flesh. Each breath he took lifted his chest. Her spread fingers moved restlessly against his back, feeling the width there, the play of muscles under the skin and the heat.
    His scent washed over her, wholly masculine and delicious, a goad of its own.
    Her need became sharp, ravening. Her need to have him…no, to have him take her overwhelmed her. Even though a small corner of her mind marvelled at this uninhibited abandonment of good sense and reason, a more primitive part of her revelled in the freedom to express herself. She gripped his ass beneath the denim, hard under her fingers and urged him to press himself against her. The delightful answering pressure against her mons and the deep