Shield's Lady by Jayne Ann Krentz

survived at all. Things were hard enough as it was from all accounts."
        "You think you've got an answer for everything, don't you?" Gryph asked.
        "Not for everything. Not yet. But just give me a little time," she tossed back smoothly.
        "Time? Why should I give you time?"
        Without any warning Gryph got to his feet and crossed the white marble floor with long, sure strides until he was standing on the opposite side of the desk. He planted both hands, palms flat, on top of the polished surface and leaned forward to confront her.
        "I don't owe you time or anything else, Lady Sariana Dayne. Just the opposite. Because of that trick you played last night, you owe me. I'll give you a word of warning because I know for a fact you won't listen."
        "What word of warning is that?" she retorted tightly.
        "I always collect what's owed to me."
        Adrenalin and awareness coursed through Sariana's system. She shot to her feet and opened her mouth to tell Gryph Chassyn what he could do with his warnings.
        But her words were never vocalized. Instead Sariana felt herself trapped as Gryph caught her face between two surprisingly rough, strong palms. An instant later his mouth covered hers in a kiss that shocked her to the toes of her soft leather slippers.
        Sariana had rarely been kissed and certainly never like that. For all her education and worldly upbringing, she had been a protected clan lady. In addition, the unrelenting pressures of the educational system back in Rendezvous had ensured that there was very little time left to students for such frivolities as sexual experimentation.
        The one year of her life that might have been considered free was this past year. But during the whole time she had been in Serendipity Sariana had felt like a stranger in a strange land. She had preferred to feel that way. The last thing she had wanted to do was engage in a sexual relationship with one of the locals. She wanted nothing that would tie her to the west, even temporarily. Besides, she had her standards.
        The only man she had even begun to consider in a faintly romantic light was halfway across town waiting for her to join him for lunch. And it was a fact that Etion Rakken had never had the unmitigated gall to kiss her in this manner.
        Gryph's embrace was rough, hungry and passionate. It was also astonishingly arrogant and forceful, as if he were stealing something he was fairly certain he wouldn't be able to get by asking.
        It was as if he were staking a claim.
        The kiss, Sariana knew somewhere in the depths of her being, was meant to be a small, symbolic act of masculine aggression. And when Gryph boldly parted her lips and thrust his tongue briefly and forcefully into the soft, intimate warmth of her mouth, she knew it was symbolic of the more intimate act of sex as well. Lack of personal experience in such matters did not imply lack of knowledge.
        Sariana tried to jerk free of the embrace but something was happening to her, something she did not understand.
        A waterfall of sensation was suddenly pouring over her, leaving her dazed and vaguely frantic. She did not recognize some of these emotions. They were oddly alien, as if they came from someone else. Then she realized abruptly why they seemed so strange. These emotions were masculine, not feminine.
        There was hunger, irritation, need, aggression, passion, arrogance and, swamping all the others, sheer, unadulterated male possessiveness.
        It was impossible, Sariana thought desperately. She was imagining things. Nevertheless she had the disorienting feeling that she was actually tapping into some of Gryph's feelings. She raised her hands and pushed futilely against his shoulders. He held the kiss a few seconds longer, just long enough to let her know that she could not force him to halt the embrace. It would end when he wanted it to end.
        And