Dark, Devastating & Delicious!: The Marriage Medallion / Between Duty and Desire / Driven to Distraction

The problem was, she did like it. When he touched her. She gloried in the shivery feelings he aroused, though she kept trying to tell herself she shouldn’t, that her obvious response to him only egged him on when it was absolutely paramount that she keep him at a distance.

Carefully, so as not to spill them, he laid a pile of peanut M&Ms in her cupped hand.

She looked down at them and back up at him. He was smiling again. And so was she—now. It was just too rich. “Pretty good, huh?”

“You are a woman of greatest resourcefulness.”

“That I am.”

“Not that I wouldn’t have found you without the bright-colored trail you left for me. I would find you anywhere.”

“Oh, I’ll bet.”

The fire behind him crackled cheerily. Thin gray curls of smoke drifted up through the tent hole above. Outside, faintly, she could hear the sounds of the women of the camp as they prepared to settle in for the night. A woman called for a child and a thin voice answered, “Coming, Mama!” Brit stared at Eric and he stared back at her and they smiled at each other like a couple of fools.

“I was curious,” he said. “I ate one.”

“Did you like it?”

“It was excellent. That smooth outer shell, the silky, melting ball of chocolate, the crunch of the nut within…”

He had it exactly. She confessed, though it was the last thing she ought to be telling him, “I like to suck them. Slowly.”

He whispered, his voice rubbing, velvet soft, along her every nerve, “Show me.”

She made herself frown. “Oh, puh-lease. They’ve been on the ground.”

“So fastidious…”

“That’s me.” She was thinking of that big plate of night crawlers in blood balls she’d lapped up that time on Fear Factor. Fastidious. Oh, yeah. Fershure. At least when she could afford to be.

She noticed that he was bending his head.

And yes, it was true. She was lifting hers.

Their lips met.

Well, what do you know?

She was doing it. Kissing Eric, though she knew she shouldn’t.

Okay, all right. It was a problem she had. Just ask her mother. There was always what she should be doing: college, finishing one of her novels, stuff like that. And the various dangerous activities that tempted her: to learn to fly, to earn a black belt, to explore what was left of the world’s wildernesses, the kinds of places where if you didn’t know what you were doing, you could end up dead.

Oscar Wilde had said it best: “I can resist everything except temptation…”

You go, Oscar!

His mouth to hers… so lightly. Just brushing. And what a mouth it was. Exactly as she’d imagined it, velvety soft as his voice could be.

He spoke between those brushing kisses. “My dreams. At last. Coming true.”

She pulled back. “Don’t get your hopes up. It was only a—”

He silenced her by taking her mouth again. She let him do it.

Only a kiss, she promised herself. It’s only a bone-melting, sweet, tender kiss….

Oh, and it was… all that.

Really, she had to be honest—at least, with herself.

He was… all that.

His lips settled in, covering the whole of her mouth. She heard an eager, needful sound—a sound that came from her own throat. And her mouth was opening—just a little, she promised herself. Only enough to let in the wonderful moist heat of his breath.

But then, what do you know? His tongue came in, too. And she didn’t close her lips against it.

In fact, she slid her own tongue beneath his.

Oh, my, yes.

Their tongues sparred and slid, up and over each other. His retreated.

Hers followed. Into the wet cave beyond those beautiful, tempting, velvet-soft lips.

Chaka-boom, she was going.

Going, going…

Gone.

With a hungry cry, she grabbed for him, wincing a little as her hurt shoulder complained. She slid her eager hands up over his hard chest, his strong shoulders, until she had him around the neck, until her body was pressed to his, her breasts to his chest, her hips just below his. Against her belly she could feel his desire. Heaven, that hard ridge. At the center of herself, she was warming, softening, hollowing out. Melting like the chocolate beneath the outer shell of an M&M, the sweetness spreading…

She opened her hand. The candies rolled down his back and hit the dirt floor with soft plopping sounds.

He chuckled at that.

She pulled back enough to grant him a mock scowl. “You know we shouldn’t be doing this.”

He laid a finger against her mouth. “No. You have it wrong. We must do this. I must please you. Or you’ll have to kill me.”

She stuck out her tongue and licked that finger of his—it tasted salty and a little bit dusty. Altogether lovely.

Fastidious? Brit Thorson? Not right this minute…

She felt his low groan as it rose from his chest. Delicious. Perfect.

No, she would not marry him, no matter what the fates predicted. But this…