burned. The contact burned, and he looked up, wondering if she felt the same hot fusion.
Mesmerizing blue eyes stared back at him, unwavering. “You haven’t won the bet…yet.”
A delicious tingle traced through Ali’s veins, licking a burning path from the soft contact of Jack’s finger to the very centre of her being. The tumultuous reaction sent a shudder into her very centre, and she took a step back, her stare locked on Jack’s face.
Oh Lord, he’d touched her.
A light she hadn’t expected to see shone in his green eyes. Hunger. Desire. She pulled in a swift breath, heat stripping through her veins. What was going on? This wasn’t what she’d planned? Was it?
“Go home, Ali.” His murmur caressed her senses, making her pulse quicken. “Before something happens that we’ll both regret.”
Ali’s heart beat faster. “Like the last time, Jack?” The words were barely a whisper. “You regretted it then. I know you did. It wasn’t enough to just leave the yacht club. You had to leave Sydney.”
Jack shook his head, never letting her gaze go. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
His eyes blazed with a scalding desire Ali couldn’t miss. Her mouth went dry. She raised a hand to her neck, placing her fingertips against the frantic beat there. This wasn’t what she’d planned. She was over him. She was. He’d broken her heart. He’d stolen her business and yacht away from her. He had no power over her anymore.
So why did you just offer him your body if you lose?
She swallowed the lump in her throat. Because she wouldn’t.
Really? And if you do? You can see the lust in Jack’s eyes. It’s making your head spin even now. If you lose, you know you won’t say no if he asks you to sleep with—
“I’m not going anywhere, Jack,” she glared up at him, killing the unnerving thought, “until you agree to the race. When I win, you give me another month.”
“And when I win?” With a deliberate slowness, Jack closed the small space between them, the right corner of his mouth curling into a small grin. He removed his glasses, throwing them onto the sofa as he dipped his head until he was barely a breath away from hers. His fingers found her neck again, stroking down the smooth column with feather-light contact. A wave of sensations shivered across her skin and she swallowed again, helpless to do anything else. “When I win, is this what I get?”
His mouth claimed hers. Hard. Brutal. His hands snared in the hair at her nape and he pulled her to him, plundering her mouth with an invasion that sent wave after crashing wave of burning heat through her body. A heat that burnt away any thought or awareness of the world. Nothing existed except Jack. Like a seasoned explorer, his lips moved over hers, reacquainting themselves with her mouth. He traced his tongue along the edge of her teeth with erotic purpose, turning her legs to jelly and her stomach to a rolling pit of flooding heat. He slid his hands down her back to cup the curve of her bottom and meld her hips against his. A molten hardness pressed against the flatness of her belly, long and undeniable.
Ali dropped her head, her breasts growing full and heavy with need. Her nipples turned rock hard with want. A soft groan escaped her as Jack’s hot lips moved to the wild pulse below her jaw, his teeth nibbling at her fevered flesh. She sucked in a ragged breath. And the air tasted of Jack.
God, she never wanted it to stop. It was everything she remembered and all sorts of new. Her heart hammered and ached and swelled. Even the air seemed to blister with the blazing intensity of his kiss, pouring scalding ribbons of heat into her body with every breath she drew. It had been like this before, but it had been nothing like this. There was a raw urgency to the kiss that sent Ali reeling, plummeting towards the edge of burning madness and hunger so swiftly she lost all thought and became a creature of blind desire.
His hands
Learning to Kill: Stories