Vows They Can't Escape

‘Don’t stop.’

He buried his face against her neck, the harsh pants of his breathing as tortured as her own. ‘Have to,’ he grunted.

‘Why?’

Her dazed mind reeled, her flesh clenching painfully on emptiness. Desire clawed at her insides like a ravenous beast as he left her balanced brutally on the sharp edge between pleasure and pain.

‘No way am I taking you without a condom.’

As the sex fog finally released its stranglehold on her brain the comment registered and horrifying reality smacked into her with the force and fury of an eighteen-wheeler. The nuclear blush mushroomed up to her hairline.

Did you actually just beg him to make love to you? Without protection?

If only there was such a thing as death by mortification.

This was now officially the most humiliating moment of her life. The trashy novel swoon had merely been a dress rehearsal.

She scooped her breast back into her bra, its reddened nipple mocking her.

She had to get away from here. Sod the divorce papers. She’d deal with them later. Right now saving herself and her sanity was more important than saving Carmichael’s.

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_8e22e03b-f957-5720-a5d5-01b730da108e)

DANE BREATHED IN the sultry scent of Xanthe’s arousal, still holding on to her butt as if she were the only solid object in the middle of a tornado.

How could it be exactly the same between them? The heat, the hunger, the insanity?

He felt as if he’d just been in a war. And he was fairly sure it was a war he hadn’t won.

What were you thinking, hitting on her like that?

He’d been mad. Mad that he’d shouted at her, mad that she’d collapsed in front of him, and madder still that he cared enough about her to be sorry. But most of all he’d been mad that he could still want her so much, despite everything.

The come-on had been a ploy to intimidate her, to make her fold and do as she was told. But she hadn’t. She’d met his demands with demands of her own. And suddenly they’d been racing to the point of no return like a couple of sex-mad teenagers—as if the last ten years had never happened.

‘Dane, put me down. You’re crushing me.’

The furious whisper brought him crashing the rest of the way back to reality.

He drew in an agonising breath of her scent. Light floral perfume and subtle sin. And lifted his head to survey the full extent of the damage.

Her hair had tumbled down, sticking in damp strands to the line of her throat. A smudge of mascara added to the bluish tinge under her eyes, the reddened skin on her chin and cheek suggesting she was going to have some serious beard-burn in the morning.

He should have shaved. Then again, he should have done a lot of things.

She looked shell-shocked.

He had the weird urge to laugh. At least he wasn’t the only one.

She pushed against his chest, struggling to get out of his arms in earnest.

‘Stop staring at me like that. I have to leave.’

He let her go and watched her scramble away, trying to be grateful that he’d at least managed to stop himself from leaping off the deep end this time. The painful erection made sure he didn’t feel nearly as great about that last-minute bout of sanity as he should.

She swept her hair back and bent to slip on the heels which must have fallen off at some point during their sex apocalypse, making it impossible for him not to notice how the slim skirt highlighted the generous contours of her butt. He tore his gaze away.

Haven’t you tortured yourself enough already?

She pressed a hand to her forehead, glancing round—still struggling to calm down, to take stock and figure out what the heck had just happened was his guess.

Good luck with that.

‘I should go.’ She smoothed her clothing with unsteady hands and brushed a wayward curl behind her ear. It sprang straight back.

He planted his hands in his pants pockets and resisted the urge to hook it back round her ear a second time. Because look how that had ended the first time.

She was right. She should go. Before the urge to follow through on what they’d just started got the better of them.

Hitting on her had been a dumb move. What exactly had he been trying to prove? That she still wanted him? That he was the one in charge? Or just that he was the biggest dumbass on the planet?

Because, whatever way you looked at it, that dumb move had stirred up stuff neither one of them was ready to deal with. Yet.

‘You think?’ he sneered, because their sex apocalypse wasn’t just on him.

She’d made the decision to sneak back into his life and poke at something that had died a long time ago. And when he’d made that first dumb move, instead of telling him no she’d gone off like a rocket—giving him a taste of the girl he remembered which he wasn’t going to be able to forget any time soon.

She glared at him, picking up on his pissy tone.

Yeah, that’s right, sweetheart. I’m the guy you decided wasn’t good enough for you. The guy you still can’t get enough of.

‘Don’t you dare try to put this insanity on me,’ she said. ‘I didn’t start it. And, anyway, we finished it before things got totally out of hand. So it’s not important.’

Hell, yeah, it is. If I say it is.

‘We didn’t finish it,’ he pointed out, because scoring a direct hit seemed vitally important. ‘I did.’

The flush scorched her skin and she blew out a staggered breath. ‘So what? I got a little carried away in the heat of the moment. That’s all.’

‘A little?’ Talk about an understatement.

Her lips set in a mulish line, the blush still beaming on those beard-scorched cheeks.

‘It was a mistake, okay? Brought on by stress and fatigue and...’ She paused, her gaze darting pretty much everywhere but his face. ‘And sexual deprivation.’

‘Sexual deprivation?’ He scoffed. ‘How do you figure that?’

She was going to have to spell that one out for him.