Eden Burning by Elizabeth Lowell Page B

ravenous.
    Dimly Chase heard Bobby’s hissed warning. Only the knowledge that the stage lights would be coming back on at any moment gave Chase enough control to end the wild kiss.
    Nicole must have heard the warning, because her long legs shifted and she slid down him in a motion that came within a breath of putting him over the edge and taking the fire she offered.
    He managed not to lose control. But it was close.
    Too close. His heart beat like a drum beneath flying hands. His blood was a hammering rush through his hard, fully aroused body. He couldn’t force himself to let go of her completely. With one arm he held her against his side, letting the sensuous perfume of crushed flowers and hot woman mingle with the heady taste of her on his tongue.
    Never had he wanted anything the way he wanted Nicole right now. He could barely believe such need was possible. It was all he could do not to pull her down onto the dark stage and bury every hard, aching inch of his erection deep inside her untamed body.
    Chase forced himself to move away from Nicole.
    He wasn’t an instant too soon. Though the curtains stayed closed, the lights came up.
    Even under the slicing spotlights, he couldn’t force himself to step completely back from her. Hidden from the lights underneath the flaming veil of her hair, his fingers held her wrist so hard he could feel the bones move beneath her flesh.
    When he realized the strength of his grip, he told himself to let go of her. His fingers stayed locked around her wrist. The same primitive part of him that had almost taken her and to hell with the rest of the world simply refused to let go of her. He was afraid she would flick her hips tauntingly at him and disappear into the island’s volcano like the legendary goddess of fire, leaving him to burn alone.
    The curtains whipped apart. The audience was on its feet shouting, stamping, clapping, and whistling.
    Sanity returned to Nicole like a bucket of ice water. For the space of one breath, then two, she couldn’t believe what had just happened. She couldn’t have wrapped herself around a stranger and done her best to crawl inside his skin while their mouths mated in a frenzy that was still racing through her in wave after wave of heat.
    But she had done just that. She could still taste him.
    She wanted to taste even more.
    As they bowed together to the cheering audience, she felt the stranger’s vitality and power burning through her skin. She shivered in elemental awareness of a woman who has found her mate.
    When Nicole understood what her body was trying to tell her, she froze. She wouldn’t be vulnerable like that again. She simply would not.
    If she could have bolted in that instant, she would have.
    She couldn’t. The man’s determination to hold on to her was as plain as the callused fingers locked around her wrist. She was a tall woman, and her body was conditioned by the demands of dance and of hiking through Hawaii’s wild countryside; yet she knew if she fought his grasp, she would lose. She couldn’t free herself unless he let her go.
    It should have frightened her. And it did.
    But not as much as it intrigued her.
    Reluctantly she understood that she was fighting against herself more than against him. She didn’t really want to escape. Not yet. The core of her was still in thrall to the siren cry of the dance and to the dark stranger who had matched her as no man ever had. She remembered the silky caress of his mustache against her skin, remembered tasting him on her lips, on her tongue, remembered how it had felt to want and be wanted in return.
    Waves of sensation surged through her, loosening her knees. She had loved being bent like a bow beneath the power of his sensual demands. She had loved feeling him shudder in return when her nails tested the strength of his naked back. Despite all common sense, despite all the sexual humiliations in the past, this stranger had responded to her with a male hunger that couldn’t be