Page 14 of Untamed Billionaire's Innocent Bride

She shouldn’t have thought about that just then. Because she was sitting there on his hard, muscled thighs, so disastrously and intriguingly hot beneath her, and she couldn’t seem to help herself from squirming against him.

And as she did she could feel something tense and electric hum to life in the space between them.

The fire was so hot. The air seemed to thicken with it as if there were flames dancing up and down the length of her arms, and the strangest part was that it didn’t hurt. Burning should hurt, surely, but in this case it only seemed to make her breathless.

She eased closer to the wall of his chest, twisting herself so she was level with his face, and close enough to kiss him. Or she thought it was the correct distance, having never experimented with this position before.

He moved, but only a little, sliding his hands to grip her lightly at her waist.

Lauren couldn’t think of a single reason why that should make her shudder.

Everywhere.

She gulped in a breath, aware of too many things at once. Those broad, blunt fingers of his like brands through the thin shell of her blouse. The iron forge of him beneath her, making her pulse and melt in places she’d never felt much of anything before.

This close, and knowing that a kiss was about to happen, she noticed things she hadn’t before. The astonishing lines of his face, from his high cheekbones to the blade of his nose. The supremely male jut of his chin. And that thick, careless hair of his, that for some reason, she longed to sink her fingers into.

Her heartbeat slowed, but got louder. And harder, somehow, as if it was trying to escape from her chest.

She searched that implacable gray gaze of his, though she couldn’t have said what she was looking for. She burned still, inside and out, and the fire seemed to come at her from all sides, not just from the fireplace.

Slowly, carefully, she lowered her mouth.

Then she pressed her lips against his.

For one long beat, there was only that. The trembling inside her, the feel of his firm lips beneath hers.

There, she thought, with a burst of satisfaction. This is even easier than I expected—

But that was when he angled his head.

And he didn’t kiss the way she had, halting and unsure.

He smiled against her mouth, then licked his way inside, and Lauren...ignited.

It was as if the cabin caught fire and she was lost in the blaze.

She couldn’t seem to get close enough. Dominik’s big hands moved from her waist, snaking around her back to hold her even more fiercely. And she moved closer to him, letting her own hands go where they liked. His wide, hard shoulders. His deliciously scratchy jaw. And all that gloriously dark hair of his, thick and wild, like rough silk against her palms.

And still he kissed her, lazy and thorough at once, until she found herself meeting each thrust of his wicked tongue. Until she was the one angling her head, seeking that deliriously sweet fit.

As if they were interlocking parts, made of flame, intoxicating and dangerous at once.

Lauren was the one meant to be kissing him, and this was nothing but a bargain—but she forgot that. She forgot everything but the taste of him. His strength and all that fire, burning in her and around her until she thought she might have become her own blaze.

And she felt a different kind of need swell in her then, poignant and pointed all at once. It swept her from head to toe, then pooled in the place between her legs where she felt that fire most keenly and pulsed with a need too sharp to be shame—

She wrenched her lips from his, startled and shamed and something else that keened inside her, like grief.

For a moment there was nothing but that near-unbearable fire hanging in the air between them. His eyes were silver and bright, and locked to hers. That mouth of his was a temptation and a terror, and she didn’t understand how any of this was happening.

She didn’t understand much of anything, least of all herself.

“You promised,” Lauren managed to say.

And would likely spend the rest of her life reliving how lost and small she sounded, and how little she thought she had it in her to fix it. Or fight her way back to her efficient and capable self.

“I did,” he agreed.