Page 43 of Sniper's Pride

“Then appreciate it quietly. Up in your room.”

He sounded furious. But Mariah was so close to him now, and she couldseehim. And for all his icy fury, he didn’t step back. He didn’t set her away from him. He didn’t do anything but continue to stand there, straight and stiff, his jaw clenched like he was this close to exploding.

Mariah would bet anything that he was.

“You should be careful who you tell to shut up.” Griffin’s voice had grown even darker. More intense. Which meant only that Mariah could feel it in even more places. “You might not like the response you get.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Mariah drawled.

And she didn’t do what she’d been taught, again and again, by her ex. She didn’t wait. She didn’t sit sweetly, a pleasant expression on her face, until such time as he felt she was ladylike enough to deserve an advance.

Somewhere inside, she could hear her mama hooting at the very idea of theladylike behaviorDavid had insisted on.

Mariah didn’t hoot along, but it was now or never.

She held Griffin’s gaze. Then she reached out, entirely too aware of her own breath, and slid her hands over his chest.

It was like sliding her palms over one of the wood-burning stoves that heated the inn. He was as hard as iron and as hot. She could feel the simmering heat and the power of him through the henley he wore, and it made her shudder because it proved what she already believed.

He wasn’t cold at all. He burned the same way she did.

She waited for him to order her to step back. But he didn’t.

His face still seemed carved from stone. But if he imagined that was a barrier, he was mistaken. She liked the stone, particularly when she could feel that all those sculpted marble ridges in his abdomen were hot to the touch.

He made her want to curl up against him and purr.

Instead, Mariah did the next best thing. She surged up onto her tiptoes, tilted her face to his, and then pressed her lips against Griffin’s.

And for a moment, it truly was like kissing some kind of statue.

He didn’t move. She would have thought he didn’t breathe, either, but her hands were on his chest. She could feel the faint movement. And better still, the wild pounding of his heart.

So she kissed him again. She kept her mouth on his, like she was teasing him awake. Like something out of a fairy tale.

Once. Again.

And then he broke.

One second he was motionless and still, the most beautiful sculpture of a man she had ever beheld.

And the next he was... liquid heat.

He angled his head to one side, opening his mouth over hers, and she felt the sound he made—half fury, half need—light her up inside. His hands were on her face, moving her head where he wanted it, and taking control with a swiftness and a certainty that made her toes curl.

And it was better than an explosion. It was deeper. Wilder.

It was greedy. Need and longing, fury and something darker still.

Mariah had never felt anything like this in her life.

She wrapped her arms around the hard column of his neck and arched against him, thrilling to the scrape of her breasts against that iron wall of his chest at last.

The world stopped. Then it spun. And either way, the only thing that mattered to her was Griffin.

He kissed her like a starving man, but she was just as hungry.

She couldn’t get close enough. She couldn’t taste him enough. She couldn’t getenough.

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