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“Then why are you trying to take a bottle to bed instead ofa wild flush into her cheeks She had the gall to charge close enough to stand toe to toe with hi as the rest of her “You could be sugarcoating your past and trying to seduce ht now You know you don’t have to try very hard, so why don’t you?”

His skin tightened and her upper ar hands before he could stop hih him Take care The protective instinct couldn’t be overridden even when he was feeling so threatened he wanted to shake the daylights out of her

“Don’t think I won’t give it a shot,” he growled “I’m not in a frame of mind to stop either”

She only dared him with a tiny hitch of her chin

He searched for vestiges of fear in her expression but wound up hoh her as temptation crackled in the air

The weight of his head weakened his neck “Stop ainst the damp, ripe plum of her mouth

He alin to shape the word, sensed her tongue tucking behind her teeth If she’d said no, for any reason, he would have made himself stop

Her eyes fluttered closed and she pressed her open mouth to his

She smelled of snow and chocolate and vodka, sweet and hot And he was hurting His deepest shame was never meant to be on display like this He felt flayed to pieces by today’s revelations By her reaction But when he drew her into hiether and began to mend

She ainst the wall, her neck and the curve of her hip filling his hands, her delicate softness cushioning all his hard angles Her fingers wove into his hair, pulling him into a kiss he couldn’t have ended if the house had fallen down around the as she reached for the sarowl, he fu her as she kicked free and bracing her against the wall so she could lace her legs around him He needed to be inside her Needed her

As he tried to free hiht as she dragged hiasp, “Condom?”

It wasn’t no, but it ether that he was about to risk a pregnancy He couldn’t put a baby in her Him, with his tainted soul

The deepest agony filled his off hih her flush of arousal “What’s wrong?”

“Leavedarkness, frozen and harsh, matched as inside him

His rejection devastated her, but, Clair realized, she’d hurt him first

The knowledge stunned her, hovering like a dark cloud as she took a long bath and tried to sleep She’d always been the one hurt, always taking it to heart when she was overlooked or e she’d never delivered anything but mild disappointment when she declined a date The fact that she’d penetrated Aleksy’s hard shell was as shocking to her as how deeply she’d stabbed him behind it

She stared into the dark, herthose few minutes in Moscohen she’d learned about his past I sa you looked I knohat you think ofhu of his deepest pain before the entire world

Maybe she should have read h he was formidable and ruthless, she’d only ever seen that blaze as an injury, never a warning of cruelty or aggression She’d instinctively understood it was the result of deep pain

And ht have hadto hih He’dher little exercise in proving he had honor