Christine Feehan - Predatory Game

“The Fetterman Battle.” Saber sent him a quick, almost desperate smile.

“How did I know you’d say that?”

Saber shrugged. “We could talk about cooking or restaurants.”

“I could shake you.”

“Restrain yourself.”

“Family, baby,” he suggested. “Let’s talk about family. Are your parents alive? You’ve never mentioned them.”

Saber scratched at the ground sheet, avoiding his probing gaze. “I grew up in an orphanage,” she said abruptly. “There’s not much to say, is there?” It was almost a challenge, as if she were daring him to push the issue.

She was going to run if he pushed; he could see the wariness in her eyes. Jess allowed the subject to pass, leaning with deceptive laziness against the tree, staring up at the clouds in the sky and then allowing his gaze to search every square inch around him that he could see. The ground. Brush. Even the trees.

Saber yawned, quickly covering it with her hand. “It was a good idea to come here, dragon king. It’s peaceful.”

Jess’s hand snaked out and tugged at Saber, unbalancing her. With a little squeak, she fell over against him, her head pillowed in his lap. His hand came up to caress her silky hair, lingering in the abundance of curls.

“Take a nap, angel face,” he coaxed. “I’ll watch over you.”

She relaxed against him, smiling as he tucked a blanket around the two of them. “You know, Jess, I love your house. If I haven’t told you that before, thank you for all the remodeling you did to make it perfect for me to live there. It was thoughtful of you and not at all necessary, but I’m so glad you did.”

“I thought it was our house now,” he replied mildly, intrigued by the blue highlights the sun was putting in the black of her hair. “It feels like our house.”

Her soft mouth curved. “It does, doesn’t it? I’ve been happy these last months, happier than I’ve ever been. You’re a good friend.”

His fingertip traced the velvet outline of her lip. “Is that what I am, honey?” Amusement colored the deep timbre of his voice. “A good friend? You’re beginning to sound as if you’re delivering a eulogy. ‘It’s been great, Jess, but I’m out of here.’”

Her teeth nipped his finger. “It’s not at all like that and you know it.”

“So tell me what it’s like.” He was careful to keep his voice quietly bland.

Her lashes swept down to lay like two thick crescents over her eyes. A jolt of electricity hit him hard in the stomach. For one moment his hand trembled badly as he forced his body under rigid control, then he was caressing her hair and earlobe with gentle fingers.

“I move around a lot, Jesse. You know that. I’ve been in New York, Florida, and several other states before here, not to mention different cities in each state.”

“Why?”

“Why?” she echoed. The tip of her tongue touched her full lower lip.

“Why,” he insisted, suppressing the groan threatening to rise in his chest.

There was a long silence, so long he was afraid she might not answer. “This is the most time I’ve ever spent in any one place. I’m getting far too attached to everyone. The people in this town are the nicest I’ve met anywhere. And if I stay much longer with you…” She trailed off with a sigh.

His hands moved over her face, tracing delicate bone structure as if committing it to memory. “It’s already too late, baby,” he said.

The long black lashes fluttered, lifted, and beautiful violet-blue eyes touched his burning gaze and then skittered away quickly. Her throat rippled. As she made a slight movement of withdrawal, Jess tightened his hold possessively and waited for the resistance to drain out of her.

“I thought you wanted to talk seriously.” He ruffled her hair because he couldn’t resist the corkscrew curls springing everywhere over her head.

“That was you.”

“Little coward.”

She caught his hand in both of hers, held it against her cheek, wild emotions racing chaotically. “I am, I’m sorry.” She choked the words out, sudden tears burning far too close. It was going to tear her heart out to leave him.

His hand cupped her cheek, thumb sliding firmly along her jaw. He bent his dark head slowly to hers, blotting out the sky, the light, until finally there was only Jess.

His mouth hovered inches from hers. “I won’t let you leave.” He said the words so quietly she barely caught them.

Her breath caught in her throat, mind and body at war. Everything in her yearned for this, craved him, while the sane part of her shrieked for self-preservation, screamed for her to jump up, save herself. His hand spanned her throat, felt the pulse fluttering wildly against his palm like the wings of a captured bird. He murmured something in an aching voice, his breath warm against her skin.

His lips slanted over hers, feather light, velvet soft, yet firm. At the first touch of his mouth her heart slammed in alarm against her breast, and her blood took fire. His teeth nipped at her lower lip. It was her startled gasp that gave him access to the warm, silky, moist interior of her mouth.

Everything changed. Everything .

His arms tightened around her, dragging her closer, the hand around her throat forcing her head to remain still, giving him exactly what he wanted. Pure black magic. He was everything male, sweeping her token resistance away, drinking her sweetness, exploring every inch of her mouth.

Pure feeling. The ground seemed to shift beneath her, colors whirled and blended. Her body was no longer her own, familiar, under control. It flamed into life, craving, crawling with the need to be touched, caressed. If any man in her life had ever kissed her before, Jess wiped him from her mind for all eternity. His mouth was on hers, hot and hard, so that her brain melted into mindless compliance, branding her as irrevocably his.

Saber moaned softly in despair. She was losing herself, clutching desperately at his heavily muscled shoulders to anchor herself to some reality.

Jess lifted his head reluctantly. She was so beautiful, staring up at him with such sensuous confusion he nearly ignored her distress. Saber pushed at the wall of his chest with her small hands, her strength easily overcome, but he obediently straightened, leaning back against the solid tree trunk. She sat up hastily, scrambled what she thought was a safe distance away, and kneeling, faced him.

“Lord, Jesse.” She breathed his name in awe. “We can never do that again. We don’t dare. We nearly set the world on fire.”

A slow smile curved his mouth. “Personally, I was thinking it would be a good idea to repeat the experience. Often.”

She touched her full lower lip with a cautious fingertip. “You should be outlawed, a woman isn’t safe around you.”

He resisted the urge to caress her face with his hand, not wanting to destroy her illusion of safety. “It wasn’t just me, angel face.”

She shook her head in adamant denial. Jess ignored the gesture, intrigued by the play of light in her shining hair. God, he wanted her. It was far more than a relentless physical craving. It was everything wrapped into one. He’d had beautiful women and flash affairs, but he’d never felt like this. Not where love and lust met, intertwined, and became so tightly woven together they were one and the same.

“This can’t be,” Saber said. “I have to go, Jess. Things are getting out of hand and I can’t control them. I don’t want to control them.”

As she started her retreating move, Jess’s hand snaked out with lightening speed and shackled her wrist. “Oh, no you don’t, baby, you’re not getting away from me.” His grip was immensely strong, but he didn’t hurt her-he never did.