Page 35 of Edge of Oblivion (Night Prowler 2)
“He’s here.” As she said the words, her brows furrowed and she gasped, a little startled intake through parted lips. “Somewhere—nearby—” She choked off with another gasp. When Xander stepped closer she shuddered and moaned, arching against the column as if she were in pain.
“That’s it. We’re getting you out of here.” He made a move toward her, and she shook her head, vehement, hissing like a snake.
“No! Please! I’m trying to get him out! I have to get him out!”
He looked around again, wildly, searching and scanning, but detected nothing of that dark, violent scent and feel of the Alpha he’d detected yesterday. That greed.
“What the hell is he doing to you?”
She inhaled, long and shuddering, and looked up at him from beneath dark lashes, a concentrated look, full of heat and need and longing. “Everything,” she whispered. Her cheeks went a deep, flaming red.
With a cold shock of recognition that felt like ice water down his neck, Xander understood.
His capoeira master had once told him that the best way to win a war was to break the enemy’s resistance without ever fighting. There were better ways than direct attacks, ways to outthink and outmaneuver and outplan that were superior to engaging in a bloody, costly battle.
And a Gift like that of Telepathy—where you could insert yourself right into your enemy’s mind—might even make resistance impossible.
It might even make your enemy feel something so unthinkable as desire.
“What can I do?” he said, helpless, wanting to pick her up and carry her away to somewhere safer but not wanting to do anything to make matters worse. “I don’t feel him anywhere, Morgan. I can’t sense him—” She gasped and arched hard against the column. With her eyes closed and her head back, she bit her lip and made a low sound deep in her throat. His heart stopped. Then she put her hands into her hair and stretched back like a cat, thrusting her chest out so he saw with perfect clarity the outline of her full breasts, her nipples straining taut against the red silk.
He stopped breathing. Instantly, he got hard.
“Do something!” she pleaded, hoarse.
He told himself in the next moment that he was only helping her, that this was the best, most effective way to distract her and break the mind link, but even as he was telling himself these things he didn’t really believe it. He knew himself far too well.
In two quick steps he closed the distance between them, wrapped his arms hard around her body, put his mouth over hers, and kissed her.
And, unexpectedly, with heat and fervor and a passion that unlocked something deep within him he’d put away long ago, she kissed him back.
Time spun away, sound faded out, everything ground to a standstill. Her hands were in his hair and his were on her soft curves, her jaw, the dip of her waist. She arched into him, soft and lush, and he thought he’d never felt anything so fine as her and this and the sweet warmth of her mouth, of her tongue on his, gliding and sensual and wantonly demanding.
More, her body said, straining against him. More, her soft mouth said, hungry. More! that little mewling noise in her throat demanded when he pressed his pelvis to hers and she felt the full length of his arousal, throbbing hot.
And he wanted to give her more. In that moment he wanted to give her anything and everything —whatever she asked for, whatever would quench this aching burn in his chest and the roaring in his ears and the poison eating through his blood, poison he’d had his first taste of the moment they’d met.
He wanted to be inside her. He wanted to hear her moan his name. He wanted—
Suddenly she broke away.
She stood there staring at him, blank, panting, her arms still tight around his neck. Then, with a horrified cry, she skipped back and slapped him hard across the face.
“Son of a bitch!” she cried, distraught.
He worked his jaw where she’d hit him and tried very hard to concentrate on the fact that she no longer seemed to be happy about the kiss. Inside him, his desire for her pounded.
“You do realize that’s not my name,” he said drily.
“What the hell do you—how could you—what the hell were you thinking?”
That last bit was shrieked, and the cathedral’s vaulted marble ceiling conducted it, splintering it into an echoing symphony that shattered the silence in the vast halls all around them. Startled exclamations and muttered reprovals came from various angles, but he ignored them.
In spite of the uncomfortable strain against the front of his pants and the horrifying realization that perhaps it wasn’t him she’d been thinking of when they shared that passionate kiss, Xander kept his voice carefully neutral and businesslike when he answered.
“You asked me to help—”
“I didn’t mean like that!”
