Page 64 of Savage Blooms
Adam didn’t like the sound of that at all. He had to steer her out of these bleak, chilly waters towards something warmer, something that might get her back in touch with her will to live.
“Did you have a good time last night?” he asked hopefully.
“I did,” Eileen said with a lupine smile. That was better. That was more like the Eileen he knew. “With you, and with Finley. He and I talked things through. We see no point in any of us denying ourselves, so long as we can all remain civil.”
“Then will you let me kiss you?” Adam asked, glancing down at her mouth, which was reddened from the cold. She had such a lovely, severe mouth. He wondered if she kissed the way she spoke, like she was trying to get one over on him, or if her rough edges would melt away under his lips.
“And what if you regret it?” Eileen said, that taunting smile still fixed firmly in place despite the flash of sadness in her eyes.
“I won’t.”
“And how do you know that, Adam Kirkfoyle?”
She neither pulled away nor drew closer, just leveled her gaze at him in challenge. Adam didn’t want to push her too much, but he knew an invitation when he saw one, and he was emboldened by the sound of his nameand hers mingling in her mouth. With his heart hammering in his chest, he dipped his head and kissed her.
It was tentative, little more than the brush of his lips against her own. She tilted her chin up and let him lavish her with soft, exploratory kisses that warmed her cold skin and made Adam’s chest tighten. He could kiss her for a year and a day and never get tired of it.
Eileen slid her arm around his waist, deepening the kiss, and Adam ran his tongue along the curve of her lower lip. She tasted like a cold north wind and morning dew.
Then, a biochemical warning siren cut through the rosy haze of the kiss.
A strange sensation prickled down Adam’s spine, the sudden intuition of danger, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.
Watched. They were being watched.
Adam released Eileen and threw a glance over his shoulder. They were entirely alone out here, a mile from the house. Who could possibly find them this far into the wilderness, let alone spy on them?
“Getting shy on me?” Eileen said with a crooked smile. “It’s all right if you aren’t up for anything more than kissing. But I had hoped…”
Adam’s attention snapped from the vaguely menacing aura of the woods just beyond the mushroom ring back to Eileen. She was looking at him hungrily, like she was starving, like she might want to devour him and leave nothing left.
A shudder of arousal went down Adam’s spine, tingling in anticipation in the small of his back.
“You hoped for what?” he pressed. She had set him up for that, but he couldn’t help but ask. Even when the outline of her snare on the ground was so glaringly obvious, Adam couldn’t help but step into it.
“I had hoped you had more on your mind when you found me out here than talk of mycology.”
“One minute ago you were acting like you didn’t even want me to kiss you,” Adam scoffed, but he was taking slow steps towards her, as though drawn forward by her rope around his waist.
“Maybe I like making men work for it,” she said, with that heartless haughtiness that made him want to dig his teeth into her skin, just to get a red-blooded rise out of her. “Maybe it excites me. What excites you, Adam Lancaster?”
Adam probably should have played it casual. He should have stuck to something safe, like saying it excited him just to kiss her, which wasn’t exactly a lie. Or he could play it a little more louche, pretend like he was down for anything if she was, which wasn’t exactly the truth.
Adam wasn’t totally sure what he wanted from Eileen, but last night had certainly brought a few things that excited him into sharp relief.
“It excites me to hold you down,” he said. “Maybe even to hurt you. But it also excites me when you tell me what to do. Especially when you’re mean about it. Iguess those two things don’t really go together though, do they?”
Eileen studied him with those black eyes, hard and glittering, like he was a stallion she was deciding whether to take for a ride or not.
“You’d be surprised,” she said, and something about the weight in her voice took him from half hard to so painfully hard he could barely see straight.
What the hell was happening to him out here, with the memory of society’s rules and morality so far away?
“I’m a hard guy to surprise,” Adam blustered.
Eileen laughed at him.Laughed, like she could see all the way through him and out the other side. A gust of wind rippled through her dark hair, laughing along with her. Genuine frustration grew inside Adam alongside his sexual angst. Is this why Finley always seemed at the end of his rope with Eileen? Always on the verge of some outburst of intimate violence that left Eileen grinning and triumphant and Finley debased, even with his hand around her throat?
“You don’t want me to tell you what to do. It would frighten you.”
