Rhyannon Byrd - Last Wolf Hunting

“Why?” she asked, her confusion genuine, not coy.

“Why? Why? Why?” Jeremy laughed, the rough sound lacking any real humor. “Can’t you ever say anything else, woman?”

“I just don’t understand why you want to help me. I really think it’d be best for both of us if you just…kept your distance and stayed away from me.”

“That’s going to be pretty hard to manage,” he said with another one of those slow, easy smiles, “considering I’m going to be inside of you.”

Panic clawed at her now, biting and sharp, her mind too aware of the fact that her body wanted nothing more than to take him. All of him. Every hot, hard, incredibly thick inch—and never let him go. Her voice shivered when she spoke. “Not in a million years, Jeremy.”

“Don’t,” he rasped softly, lifting his hand to touch his thumb to the corner of her mouth. Her lips trembled from the light, calloused touch, making her want to turn away at the same time she wanted to turn her head and nuzzle the warmth of his palm. “Don’t say something that’s going to embarrass you later on, after I prove you wrong.”

His words slapped her in the face like a dousing of ice water. “You arrogant bastard,” she choked out, jerking her mouth away from his touch. “It’s amazing one man can have such a high opinion of himself. I wouldn’t tou—”

“Stop,” he grunted, cutting her off. His eyes narrowed, holding her, making it impossible to look away. “We have a connection, Jillian. You can pretend all you want that it doesn’t exist, but it isn’t going to just disappear.”

“No. You’re wrong, Jeremy. There is no connection. Whatever we had,” she said coldly, “you killed it a long time ago. I’m not a naive little girl anymore. I’ve learned how to take care of myself. I don’t need you. Not now. Not ever.”

He leaned close, curling his rough hands over her shoulders, and she turned her face away…but he merely whispered into the sensitive shell of her ear, as if he was telling a secret. “You just keep saying it enough times, and maybe you’ll start believing it. But we both know the truth. I’ll hunt you down if I have to, Jillian, but we both know how badly you’ll want me to catch you in the end.”

“You can hunt me,” she gasped, struggling to jerk out of his hold, away from the dangerous, evocative heat of his mouth, “but you’ll have to chase me to hell and back before you ever catch me.”

With the touch of his calloused fingertips upon her chin, Jeremy slowly pulled her face back to him, staring down at her through thick, honey-colored lashes. The intensity of his gaze made her heart lurch, his hazel eyes dark and heavy with possession, as if he owned her.

“I know what hell’s like,” he told her, the huskiness of his voice like an intimate caress, shivering across her skin. “The threat of it won’t scare me off.”

His soft breath felt warm and sweet and wonderful against her trembling mouth, teasing her with the heady, erotic promise of a kiss that Jillian knew she shouldn’t want—but did. Badly. And the slow, crooked grin kicking up the corner of his mouth said he knew it, knew just how sharply the keen edge of anticipation was cutting into her.

“So I’m afraid you’ll have to do better than that.”

“Do better than what? What are you talking about?” she asked thickly. She was stalling, because she knew very well where he was going with his seduction routine.

“You’re gonna have to convince me, little witch.” Jeremy laughed softly, kissing the corner of one eye, trailing the rough-silk texture of his lips across her cheek, before nipping playfully at her tender lobe.

“C-convince you of wh-what?” she stammered. “That you’re crazy?”

“Feels like it. Feels like I’ve been crazy since the day I set eyes on you.” He shifted a fraction closer, overwhelming her with his heat, his scent—with the intense, rugged masculinity that was so much a part of him. “You’re going to have to convince me of the one thing that we both know you don’t have a damn chance in hell of doing.”

She breathed in too sharply, trapped by the possessive power of his gaze.

“You’re going to have to convince me that you don’t crave me the same way that I crave you—and you’re going to have to make it good, Jillian, because I can promise that I won’t make it easy on you.”

She shivered. He smiled in response. And before she could draw her next breath, his mouth claimed hard, deliberate possession of her own.

Chapter 4

The seeking touch of his lips against hers was a provocative answer to the churning want that had raged through Jillian’s body for so long. Through so many sleepless nights, and so many frustratingly empty days, when she’d found herself surrounded by people…and yet, utterly alone.

“Jeremy, please,” she whispered, tearing her mouth away. “Don’t do this.”

He kissed the fragile skin beneath her eye, the sharp edge of her jaw. “Do what?”

“I won’t give in,” she gasped, feeling him nip the sensitive tendon at the side of her throat. “ I can’t .” She could hear the desperation in her voice, and knew he could, as well.

His lips moved in a soft, deliciously erotic caress against her skin as he spoke. “You’re letting your fear control you, Jillian.”

“What do you know about fear?” she demanded, her voice cracking, bleak with emotion.

“I know it scares the hell out of me,” he confessed in a gritty rasp, his breath warm and damp, “thinking that I might have lost you during one of those challenges.”

“Damn you, Jeremy.” She tried to stumble back, but was caged in by the thick trunk of the tree, his hard body pressed against her front. He was a dark, raging presence before her, trapping her.

“I’m going to make it hard as hell for you to deny me,” he warned in a ragged tumble of words. Then his mouth claimed hers again, angry and hot and hungry.

Sweet Jesus . She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. But who cared? He made it so much more than a mere kiss. It felt too intimate, too carnal, like the decadent, provocative things he did to her in her dreams.

Jillian knew she should push him away, but more than that, she wanted to pull him closer. The details, so shocking and electric, overwhelmed her. The sexy, slightly rough texture of his lips. The silken stroke of his talented tongue. She could taste his hunger, his heat, and it was like going under…falling into him. Everything pulsed through her with a sharp, shattering awareness. And yet, she was lost, floating, her head fuzzy with the rioting sensations as his tongue claimed her mouth more deeply, the kiss slow and eating and deliciously sweet, like warm, melting honey.

She moaned, giving up, rubbing her tongue against his, and everything changed.

With a low, hoarse curse, Jeremy crushed her breasts with the muscular wall of his chest, while taking deeper possession of her mouth. It was something decadent, hungry and invasive, the way he penetrated her, shoving past any resistance, smashing it beneath his dark, persuasive need… Only, she wasn’t resisting. Not anymore.

Jillian trembled, gasping. He growled low in his throat, moving against her, and she could feel the hard proof of his erection, long and thick enough to make her breath catch. Her hands lifted, the cool tips of her fingers touching in a butterfly caress against the scorching heat of his cheekbones, and she flinched from the warmth of his skin.

“Touch me,” Jeremy groaned against the corner of her mouth, nipping at her bottom lip, then diving back into the kiss with a breathtaking intensity that made her toes curl. “Put your goddamn hands on me, Jillian.”

The shaken, guttural words slipped through her system like a dizzying rush of pleasure, all but making her purr. God, yes, she wanted to. Wanted to put her hands on the hard, lean lines of his magnificent body and learn him by touch, taking him in the way someone who’d lost their sight could lose themselves in another world through Braille. He was an unknown landscape she wanted to explore until she was privy to all its secrets, until it was so much a part of her she knew it better than she knew herself.