First You Run by Roxanne St. Claire

him. He wanted something from Miranda so fiercely that Taliña could practically taste it.
    Something that would hurt Miranda, she knew . But she also knew his energy was unstoppable, and so was his sexual hold on Miranda.
    “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.
    She closed her eyes. “You can leave now, Miranda. He’ll help you find your way.” Then she looked accusingly at him. “Won’t you?”
    “Damn right I will.” He reached for Miranda, who threw an unsure look at Taliña. “Let’s go.”
    They left her alone in the crypt, where the light had gone out completely.
    Furious and punched by disappointment, Taliña picked up the toli and threw it against the angled wall of the crypt, watching the jewels crash to the lid of the sarcophagus.
    He’d won this round. She’d win the next.
     
    Maybe she was a total fake, and maybe she was as real as the dawn, but Taliña had done something in that crypt. Miranda felt bathed in energy, in a high-voltage arc of desire that made her whole body vibrate with need. She held tight to Adrien as he maneuvered them through branches and palm fronds, her body warring with her head.
    Her body wanted to pull Adrien to her for a long, heated kiss the minute they were outside.
    Her head wanted to know what the hell had just happened back in that crypt.
    He stopped to let her get her breath, his hands squeezing shoulders. “Don’t ever do that again,” he growled. “I mean it.”
    “Kiss me.” The words were out before she even realized she’d spoken. “Kiss me.” She yanked him closer. “Now.”
    He refused. “What is wrong with you?”
    “I don’t know.” It was the God’s truth. “I just…she just…” How could she explain that the force of her desire for him rocked her? All she could hear was the drum beat of her blood and her heart. She didn’t want love or friendship or protection. She wanted sex . Now.
    The kind of sex that shook a woman to her core. The kind that made you dizzy and desperate. The kind she’d never had in her life. The kind she knew she’d have with him.
    She took his hand and tried to pull him, but he didn’t move. “Where are you going?” he demanded.
    “I don’t care where. Somewhere private. Somewhere…” She grabbed his neck and crushed him to her, then kissed him.
    Craving and hunger and need mixed with blood-boiling desire, jolting fiery impulses through Miranda’s body, melting her brain, frying her flesh, hardening her nipples, and oozing sweet feminine moisture between her legs.
    She could hear only her insane heartbeat, and the edgy, desperate, strangled breaths she managed to take in the milliseconds between kisses. Unwilling to break the contact, she pushed him deeper into the jungle, into the darkest place she could find, and dragged him down to the ground with all her strength.
    She slid her tongue deeper into his mouth. He groaned her name in warning. She closed her hand over the tent in his pants. With a low moan of surrender, he blissfully, deliciously took control of the kiss, buried her breast in the palm of his hand, and pulled her against an erection so shockingly hard it could easily burst seams and zippers.
    Which was exactly what she wanted it to do.
    She sucked the tongue he offered as they knelt, then tumbled over the ground, locking one arm around his neck to control the position of his head and using her other hand to explore the incredible planes of muscle and sinew on his chest. She smelled wet earth mixed with hot man, and reason evaporated.
    Desperate, she shoved her hand into his pants and grasped him, earning a helpless hiss from his mouth, the thrill of power surging within her.
    “Miranda.”
    It did tickle her, that lovely tuft of hair under his lips. She licked it, stabbing her tongue into the coarse triangle while rolling her palm over the hard arousal that strained his pants.
    He’d inched away, ended the kiss, moved his hand from her breast, leaving her bursting with need. She laid