Surrender by Stephanie Tyler

the pieces wouldn’t rattle and give her away.
    “Kiss me,” he demanded.
    “I don’t follow your orders.”
    “You’ll love it if you do—I can promise you that.”
    Would she? Probably. And that bothered her more than anything else. She wanted the control—needed it.
    But making Dare think he had it? That would put her head back in the game. “Fine.”
    She went up on her tiptoes; he bent his head to meet her halfway. The kiss was the start of the battleground for both of them. It was beyond good. She knew it would be.
    As he kissed her literally stupid, at some point he surrendered her wrists. She wound her hands into his hair to keep him close. In return, he pressed against her so she could feel the hard swell of his arousal.
    The game wasn’t working. Or maybe it was—on her. Pleasure flowed like white-hot sunshine through her body. She’d be on fire soon if she didn’t douse her desires. Had to bring this to a manageable level for herself and didn’t see a way clear to doing so if she remained in Dare’s embrace.
    But his hands, oh, his hands roamed her body like he was following a map—or creating one. He noticed every nuance, every small jolt of pleasure she allowed to break through her expression.
    If she could stay stoic, unmoving, cause him to lose his mind with her touches, that would be perfect.
    There was lust on his face—his eyes were heavy lidded. But he had all the damned control, and he knew, goddamn him, he knew. He knew because he softened his kisses, his hold on her hair, her waist.
    Would she be powerless against him? She’d wanted to think she’d learned her lessons so well that she could never repeat her mother’s patterns and fall for a man who wanted nothing more than to use her for his personal gain and leave her a dried-out husk.
    You are your mother’s daughter.
    But she’d absorbed enough of Rip’s ruthlessness to even that score, to balance her enough so that she felt she could be practical in all matters pertaining to love.
    All that resolve fell away when Dare touched her for the first time. Now she had to make sure he didn’t know that.
    If she had her way, he never would.
    She pulled him tighter, wanted that dizzy, falling feeling to fade. But it wouldn’t. Instead it persisted until she was holding on to him to keep upright.
    “You’re not like Esme, are you?” he murmured. “I can see it in your eyes when I mention her.”
    “Now you’re psychic?” she asked without irony.
    “Not even close. You are hiding something . . . or at least you think you are . . . but Esme would never put herself in the kind of danger you do—not without a payout.”
    The payout for her wasn’t monetary, but it was there. She stared at him, uncertain what to do next, when the flash hit her like lightning. She half collapsed in Dare’s arms. Vaguely heard him urgently repeating her name.
    Something was terribly wrong.
    The feeling of dread continued tocourse through Grace’s entire body—took her over completely, making her pulse race. She started to sweat and shake.
    It was returning—a gift she didn’t want—and there was no denying it. It was so unwelcome. She had pushed it down for years. The last time she’d had a feeling like this, Rip had locked her in a room and she hadn’t seen daylight for a year.
    To pass the time, she’d recited lyrics to some of her favorite songs over and over until they became a mantra. She’d forced herself not to feel.
    Even when she’d had that slight tingling of her senses before Dare kidnapped her, she’d been able to convince herself that it was nothing but the intuition she’d developed over the years, a sixth sense S8 had helped her hone.
    But she’d been wrong. She was starting to feel again. Just when she’d had the coldness, the hardening of her heart, down to a science, Dare and her gift forced her to feel.
    She would resist both as long as it was humanly possible.
    But this feeling—it wasn’t leaving—was