Demon Rumm by Sandra Brown

frustrated when all our spats in the Persian Gulf were peaceably resolved. Not that he wanted to kill people. It was just that flying fast airplanes was what he felt destined to do. That’s why he didn’t extend his time in the Navy or become a commercial airline pilot as most of his friends did when their stints were up.”
    This was a facet of the man’s character that Rylan wanted to explore further, but not just yet. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” he said. “Back to that night, did he come on to you?”
    “Naturally.”
    “I’d have thought he was crazy if he hadn’t. What was his line?”
    “What do you think?”
    She was challenging him. How well
did
he know his character? He squinted and tilted his head to one side. “Will you go to bed with me?”
    She sucked in her breath quickly. “No.”
    “Is that what you’re telling me or what you told him?”
    The room grew very quiet, with only the logs in the fireplace crackling.
    “You weren’t asking for yourself,” she said finally. “You were asking for him, weren’t you?”
    He grinned obliquely and was pleased to see that she was unnerved.
    Without pursuing it, she rushed on. “He said I didn’t look like the one-night-stand type and I assured him that I wasn’t.”
    Rylan supplied the next line. “ ‘Good. Because I have something much more permanent in mind.’ ”
    “You got that from the script.”
    He nodded. “He was a smooth operator. Seduction through the commitment angle.”
    “Maybe. Whatever it was, I fell for it.”
    “He swept you off your feet?”
    “He made me feel giddy and breathless. After being around campus types who wore musty tweeds, affected Ivy League accents, and smoked pipes, Charlie was refreshing, with his rakish leather jacket, his South-western twang, and his dashing smile.” Her blue eyes were glowing. Her lips were slightly parted and moist from frequent licking. Through them her breath rushed, lightly and thinly. “It was exciting just to be near him.”
    “I can imagine,” he remarked wryly.
    It was a new emotion for him, jealousy. He’d been struck. The fangs of the green-eyed monster had sunk in deep. Jealousy was pumping like poisonous venom through his system with each heartbeat.
    He could imagine the effervescence she felt in her chest because it matched his own, that sexual awareness that made one tingle all over, that unspoken knowledge that something good was going on and that, given liberty, it would get even better. It wreaked havoc on one’s erogenous zones and played Russian roulette with one’s judgment. It was hell. And it was heaven. Poets and lyricists, try though they might, couldn’t pen words to describe that twisting tightness in one’s chest, that delicious pressure in one’s loins, that fizzy fever in one’s blood.
    But, dammit, he wondered if Kirsten was feeling it vicariously through her recollections of another man, or was it for him? Was Demon Rumm responsible for that turbulence in her blue eyes? Or was Rylan North?
    Apparently his eyes were as hot as his blood. His piercing stare must have frightened her. She moved quickly, swinging her feet to the floor.
    “It’s getting late and I’ve got five pages to rewrite tomorrow.”
    With one lithe movement, he was on his feet, facing her and bracketing her shoulders between his hands. “It’s not that late. I’m not finished.”
    “Well, I am.” She tried to squirm free, but he wouldn’t let her go. He wasn’t hurting her; his eyes exercised far more force than his hands. He could have compelled her to stay even without touching her.
    “He asked you to dance, didn’t he?”
    “Yes.”
    “What did you dance to?”
    “I don’t remember.”
    “Like hell you don’t. You remember everything else. What did you dance to?”
    “What does it matter?”
    “Precisely. What does it matter?”
    Resigned, she said, “The crowd had mellowed out. They were playing a lot of slow dances on the jukebox. Neil