One Night With Morelli by Kim Lawrence

react to insults, it was a mindset and usually it was not a struggle for him to keep his cool, but Eve’s lip-curling contempt touched an exposed nerve and his temper spiked.
    ‘Oh, I think we might find we have some common ground,
cara
.’ He opened the mental door he had shut them behind and allowed the memories to come flooding in. Her small, eager hands skating over his skin, her nails digging in, the frantic little moans as she had kissed him sent a hard throb of lust slamming through his body, the strength of it making him catch his breath.
    A threat disguised as an invitation or an invitation disguised as a threat? It didn’t really matter to Eve. What mattered was her body’s response.
    It was sheer bloody-minded defiance that stopped her retreating as he took a step towards her radiating anger and arrogance and sheer
maleness
. Such a suggestion a short time ago would have evoked a scornful response; now it sent an illicit thrill surging through Eve’s body. She licked her lips and tasted brandy, but the buzz in her head had nothing to do with the alcohol. His dark, predatory stare was more potent and more mind-destroying than an entire bottle of liquor!
    He saw her pupils dilate, the dark centre swallowing up all but a thin rim of green, and gave a hard smile of satisfaction.
    Common sense, she called it. He called it pragmatism and he could do with some now to counteract the lust throbbing through his body. There were warning bells—there had been warning bells since the moment he first saw her.
    He’d spent the day ignoring them and as he reached out to curve a hand around the back of her head he carried on doing so, thinking instead about her lush mouth. He couldn’t remember the last time he had wanted a woman this much…the last time he had burned this way.
    It was a kind of insanity… He thought he would go insane if he didn’t have her, but she wanted him too; he could see it in the flush on her skin, the tremor in the hand she raised in a fluttery gesture to her lips and then let drop.
    But most of all it was in her eyes, her
hungry
eyes, so deep he could have drowned in them.
    He slid his fingers into her silky hair meeting a barrier of pins. He removed one and let it fall to the floor, and then another.
    Her eyes widened in alarm then half closed. A silent sigh left her parted lips as she breathed in and out fast and shallow, focusing on the mechanics of it, as if drawing air into her lungs and releasing it and not the fact she was floating on a sensual cloud several inches above the floor was the most important thing.
    ‘I’m not having sex with you.’ It was hard to force the words out with her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, but it needed saying as much for her benefit as his. When she did finally have sex it would be with a man she felt comfortable with, a man she could—
    ‘Good to know,’ he slurred thickly. ‘But this is okay…’ He stroked a finger softly over the skin around her ear. ‘Right?’
    It felt so right it hurt.
    She struggled to retrieve her previous thought: a man she could…?
Control.
She shook her head slightly and found her cheek against his palm as she thought, That sounds wrong.
    She genuinely didn’t want to control this future lover; no, she just wanted to be
in
control… Draco found another pin and a deep visceral shudder stronger than the rest shook her, making her body vibrate like a tuning fork.
    In control like now, mocked the voice in her head.
    She squeezed her eyes closed in an effort to close down the thoughts and felt the touch of his lips on her eyelids light as a breeze.
    Hands framing her face, he lifted his eyes and watched as her hair succumbed to gravity and the weight of the shiny coils slid downwards in slow motion to settle against her narrow back.
    His hissing breath caused her eyes to open. Her eyelids felt heavy, but she felt light, as though she were floating; it was surreal.
    ‘This feels really strange.’
    He bared his