The Bid by Jax Page A

singe and electrify. That was how he went from a light caress to sealing himself to her and diving for her tongue with hunger and intensity. Hanna might be restrained, but it didn’t stop her from matching his sudden aggression. She opened to him, drew him in deep with a sound of appetite and the slink of her talented tongue. Her powerful confidence and the sheer skill she used to engage him and draw him in was astounding. As worldly as he was, or thought he was, he’d never encountered a woman who could kiss with such…power. He couldn’t explain it, but it was as though she were bleeding raw need into him. Hunger. He felt her torso straining toward him, pulling against the stiff restraints, her soft breasts touching his bare chest lightly, so that he felt the firmness of their erect tips drawing against him.
    Jhon reached up suddenly, wrapping his hand around her throat and tearing back away from her as he pushed her flat to the wall. He pulled for breath in deep, disbelieving draws and licked the flavor of her from his lips. She relaxed into his will, although she, too, was breathing hard as she studied him with sensually hooded eyes.
    “Too bad you’re standing,” he rasped. “With a mouth like that, I can think of excellent ways of employing it.” The crudeness was unwarranted and purposeful, a knee-jerk reaction to force distance because distance was so badly needed.
    “You could always free me,” she suggested.
    Vejhon went suddenly still at that. She didn’t want her freedom. He knew instantly that wasn’t what she wanted by making the request. She wanted…
    “Thinking about it?” she coaxed, tilting her head and licking her lips slowly.
    “You would do that?” he asked, unable to completely hide his confusion and shock. “You would get down on your knees for a total stranger?”
    “You would allow a total stranger to take you into her mouth?” she countered.
    Well, hell, if she was going to be all logical about it…Yeah, if the stranger had lips like that and a tongue as carnal as hers, he most likely wouldn’t hesitate. “So, I free you,” he speculated, “you take me into your mouth and suck and stroke me until I climax…then what?”
    “You mean besides swallowing, I take it?”
    Vejhon choked out a laugh, her quirky brow teasing it out of him. She smiled slyly.
    “Ask a stupid question…”
    “I didn’t say it was stupid,” she argued lightly. “But the ‘then what’ is really up to you. You are looking for a way to humiliate me? It will take more than treating me like a whore, honestly. I think I’m too naturally inclined toward sex for you to shock me with it. So are you, for that matter. You’re a soldier. Typically people in life-threatening, on-the-edge careers express their sexual needs with frequency and tend to do it without remorse.”
    “Yeah,” he agreed absently. He reached out to run the tips of his fingernails down her side, no longer even trying to curb his impulses. He started beneath her armpit and slid down to her hip, riding every contour of every rib and curve along the way. She barely squirmed, but he watched with satisfied fascination as chills raced along her skin in sheets of little blue bumps that were chasing each other in waves. She had responded openly to his kiss, yes, but this reaction was far more telling to him, even a little equalizing.
    Jhon was hooked and he knew it. He already knew, deep inside of his own mind, that he had no cause for vengeance anymore. He hadn’t since the moment she’d deflated his every preconceived notion about her by throwing herself down like a gauntlet. Still, that didn’t mean he wasn’t beyond considering an alternate challenge. It was like seeing a wild creature tethered but not tamed. Men had wanted to tame the wild things since all the worlds were young. It was probably in their blood, their very genes, to be lured by such deadly, beautiful passion. So proud and powerful in her own right, who could earn