She whimpered against his lips, but it was lost to the hot glide of his tongue, probing deep, retreating. Mating, escaping. Playing with her, dancing a slow, torturous, blatantly sexual dance.

Somewhere he’d learned—oh, probably a few thousand years ago, she thought with a tiny, almost hysterical bubble of laughter—exactly how much to give a woman before taking away, exactly how to keep a woman on a brittle desperate edge, merely with his kisses. The moment she melted into it, he would change it, take it some other way, give her less. Then come back for more the second she was about to scream. With him behind her, she had no control over the kiss. He had it all, and was exploiting it mercilessly. One hand on her face, one between her legs, holding her immobile while he tortured her with his lips.

Intense, breath-stealing, mind-numbing kisses, then gone. A soft, sultry brushing with that full lower, sulky lip of his, creating a delicious erotic friction that made her ache far more than it satisfied. More deep, toe-curling kisses, but not lasting long enough . . .

And, oh, God, if he devoted the same languorous, teasing attention to all parts of a woman’s body, she was never going to survive him. She’d be an incoherent mess before he even got to the important ones.

And speaking of the important ones, she thought peevishly, he could start moving his other hand anytime now. She wiggled in his implacable grip, trying to communicate the wordless message. She was so close, had been since the moment he’d slipped that big hand between her legs, hovering on the edge. If he’d just move his hand the tiniest bit!

But if he understood her silent plea, he chose to ignore it. His hand remained implacably there between her legs, keeping her excruciatingly aware of her warm, wet readiness, of that sensitive bud begging for friction, for even the smallest movement, but stayed mercilessly still. He had her trapped between two things that could bring her endless erotic pleasure, and was giving her nothing of them. Only the tantalizing promise, but nothing to ease the intolerable pressure building inside her.

Kisses. Slow and long, hot and hard. Tongue gliding satiny and sleek, tangling, withdrawing.

They were kisses to die for, she thought feverishly, trying to get more of him in her mouth, trying to suck his tongue deeper, refusing to release his lower lip when he pulled away with a soft laugh. She tried desperately to arch against his hand, but each time she managed to gain a tiny range of motion, he shifted his hand, backing off the pressure. Testy with impeded desire, she nipped at his lip.

“Bloody hell, Irish, you after blood? Trying to kill me?” he said with a soft, rough laugh.

“Me? Quit teasing! Kiss me deep! And anytime now you could move—”

He shushed her complaint with his kisses. Small laps, nibbles, kisses at the corners of her mouth, a long slow pull of her bottom lip. Deep again, then away. More torture. He kissed, she realized then, as perhaps only an immortal would. Kissed like a being that had all the time in the world, lazily but thoroughly, savoring every subtle nuance of pleasure, drawing it out, prolonging it. No clocks ticked in his world, no hours sped by. There was no work to get up for tomorrow, nothing more pressing than the passion of the moment. He existed as an immortal lost to immediacy, and being kissed with such in-the-now intensity was devastating. And she had a terrible suspicion that he might dole out the orgasms the same way—only letting her have one when he’d milked from her every bit of anticipation and need that he could.

She was drowning in sensation, the feel of his mouth on hers, the swollen hardness of him against her bottom, the heat of his big hand between her legs.

Then suddenly he broke the kiss and the hand cupping her jaw slid to her waist, raked up inside her shirt, and popped the clasp of her bra. He closed his big hand over one of her bare breasts. She shuddered in his arms, her body bucking forward against the hand between her legs.

“Adam,” she gasped. “Move your hand!”

“Not yet.” Coolly, unyielding.

“Please!”

“Not yet. Has any mortal man ever made you feel like this, Gabrielle?” he purred, a hint of savagery in that smooth deep voice. “Did any of your little boyfriends ever make you feel this way?”

“No!” The word exploded from her when his fingers closed abruptly on her nipple, pinching the hardened peak.

“No mortal can. Remember that, ka-lyrra, if you think to go back to your silly human boys. Do you know how many times, how many ways, I’m going to make you come?”

“I’d settle for just one if I could have it right now,” she hissed, so intensely aroused that she was bordering on hostility. She’d never felt this way before, had no idea how to handle it.