Darkest Before Dawn (A Guardian's Diary Book 1) by Amelia Hutchins

and only he and I remained. When he finally pulled away, his eyes were wide as if he was as shocked as me by the electrical sizzle that had shot through my entire body.
    “You kissed me,” I said in puzzlement. He hadn’t even removed the mask fully, and yet he’d kissed me! “You kissed me!” I said with more anger. How dare he think it was okay to just go around kissing women!
    “I did,” he replied mockingly. He smiled, and I narrowed my eyes behind the mask. “And I’m already making plans to do it again.”
    “You wouldn’t,” I said indignity rampant in my tone.
    “Oh, I would. In fact, watch this,” he replied huskily before he pushed the mask up and kissed me again. This one was in no way soft. This one was fierce and his teeth scraped across mine as he held my face immobile. He growled from deep in his chest, or hell, maybe it had been me. His tongue captured mine and they danced, as if there was a musical beat only they could hear. His hands lowered and cupped my face even with the mask in the way. When he pulled away, I didn’t need to see his lips to know he was smiling. Nope, they were still against my skin, and I felt them move into a smile. “You kissed me back,” he whispered and pulled away from me. “Bjorn, Sven, let the girls go,” he said to the men outside.
    “The guns?” one of the two beefcakes asked.
    “They’re only women and they need them for protection. They won’t use them against us, will you…?”
    I considered saying yes, but ammo was hard to find, and guns was nearly impossible. “I can only promise that if you promise not to kiss me again.”
    “Why would I stop kissing you, when you respond like that?” he asked incredulously as he folded his tattooed arms over his wide chest.
    “Because I told you to, and I wasn’t kissing you back. I was just planning on how best to gut you.”
    “You can lie to yourself, sweet one, but I know when someone is kissing me back and when they’re planning to kill me.”
    “Get that often do ya?” I smiled as I said it.
    “The kissing part? All the time,” he replied casually and I felt something furl in the pit of my stomach at the thought of him kissing someone else as he had just done to me. The door chose that moment to splinter open, and wood shot through the air. I was taken to the floor hard, and the wind was knocked out of me painfully. “Kill!” he shouted, and bullets exploded from guns from outside, as the sound of shells hitting the ground echoed in my ears.
    “Stay still,” he warned, as I looked to the right where a pile of wolves now lay. “It’s almost over,” he assured as his thumb rubbed the soft tissue of my cheek. “I should have known this skin was too pretty to belong to a boy.”
    “Is that so?” I said without lifting my eyes. The wolves were huge, and didn’t look right. I wiggled my hips against the pressure of his body and the hard floor. And froze. “Please tell me you have a banana in your pants?” Because it was large, favored left, and holy friggin’ cat snouts! He was hard and on top of me! I pushed against him struggling to get out from underneath him.
    “A banana? No sweet girl, that’s a cock,” he mused.
    “Get off me!” I shouted and hit panic mode. With the last of the shots fired, he allowed it. He was huge, and I felt seriously uncomfortable with Mr. Happy poking my ass!
    “Hey, it’s okay. I was serious; we don’t mean you any harm,” he cautioned with his hands held up in mock surrender. “For now, anyway.”
    “Is that a threat?” I asked, and then wondered why I was wasting time. There were dead wolves in a pile, my girls were outside with men who looked like they’d been models for muscle magazines…Okay, that part wasn’t that bad, but still, I needed to get out of there. “Don’t answer that,” I supplied and moved to the window. When I got through it, I looked back at him to find him watching me openly.
    “See you around, Sweet Lips,” he