“I can’t,” she burst out, hating the tears filling her eyes. She didn’t even have the painkillers to blame this time. She tried again to step away from him, but his strength defeated her. She looked up at him, desperate to save him, willing him to understand. “I can’t.” That came out in a whisper, and God help them both, her control was already slipping away.

Wyatt stared down into her eyes. More purple than blue or black, with tears shimmering, with the strange starburst moving through the dark color, he saw far more than she would ever want him to. She needed him. She wanted him. There was paradise waiting. There was also hell. She was showing that to him. Both.

He was no kid. He knew prices had to be paid. It would be steep for both of them. He was willing to risk it and he wasn’t going to let her back out. His palm curled around the nape of her neck.

In that moment, he recognized just how dangerous he could be and it didn’t matter to him. And that was what she’d tried so hard to warn him about. It wouldn’t matter. Nothing else would matter but having her. He was willing to burn in hell as long as he could have this. She shook her head, again, her body struggling against his, and he felt his temper rise to meet that challenge.

“You want this,” he hissed. “You fuckin’ want this, Pepper, just as much as me.”

“Not with you. Not to you,” she denied.

But she did. It was there in her eyes. In the way her body moved against his. The heat. The fire.

“With me, yes,” he decreed in the face of her denial. “Only me, absolutely yes.”

Hunger starkly raw, fully aroused, he brought his mouth down hard on hers. There was nothing gentle about his kiss, not one single thing, but it didn’t matter. The moment his mouth touched hers, she went up in flames. There was no holding back no matter how hard she tried. She’d waited her entire lifetime for him.

A growl rumbled deep in his throat. His arm was an iron band, dragging her closer, fitting her body into his as his mouth sought to devour her. He drove her back until she hit the side of the Jeep, never once lifting his mouth. Pepper stroked her tongue along his, along the edge of his teeth, feeding the fire, tasting desire. His. Hers. She was familiar with hunger and need crawling through her and clawing at her relentlessly. This was entirely different.

His arousal was a fever pitch matching the terrible heat of hers as he cupped the back of her head in his palm, holding her still, not allowing her to move while his mouth turned her body into pure liquid fire. He’d lit a match and thrown it right into a pile of dynamite without thinking it through, but it didn’t matter to her now.

Pepper heard her own soft little growl and her arms circled his neck as she fiercely kissed him back. The wildness in her unfurled. Stretched. Spread through her like a firestorm that raged out of control. Her body moved against his, rubbing like a cat in heat, desperate to get closer to his skin.

Her body was sensitive, too sensitive for clothes. She needed them gone. Her mouth moved under his. Mindless. Insatiable. Hot. She was so hot she was burning from the inside out. He had gone from charming to pure primitive savage, sweeping her up, still kissing her, still devouring her mouth, taking long strides to take them inside the hunting cabin.

She barely recognized the change from outdoors to indoors. She didn’t know how she got there. She did know that she was more out of control than Wyatt, and it wasn’t supposed to be that way. That didn’t matter either. Only the taste of him, bursting on her tongue, sliding through her body, feeding her terrible need, the ache that would never go away. Now it was Wyatt she craved. She was addicted to. Wyatt’s taste and the heat of his body, the press of his hard muscles against her softer body.

Her growls of demands had changed to moans and soft little pleas. His growling had deepened, a primal sound of a male claiming his woman. She couldn’t think, not surrounded by him. She could only feel, needy, hungry, so breathless her lungs burned.

Wyatt swept her away, commanding her in a storm of fire, ruthless, decisive, yet he was every bit as wild and out of control as she was. He pinned her to the wall, lifting his head to look down into her eyes. For a moment she couldn’t breathe. The fire there, the possession, it was stamped, no, carved deep, into his face.

His eyes glittered down into hers, and a shudder of desire rippled through her. Still, there was a ripple of fear. He would own her. This man holding her so tight against the wall was taking her over and she was letting him, already craving him. He matched her heat and fire. She hadn’t thought that possible. His face could have been etched in stone in that moment, and it would have been caught for all time, the look of a conquering male predator, sensual and implacable.

She made a single sound of protest, and that was her undoing. Sheer male dominance crossed his face and he dropped his mouth to her throat. He wasn’t gentle about his claiming, suckling and biting with sharp stings followed by the heat of his tongue as he left dozens of marks of his possession. He stripped the blouse from her shoulders, snarling as if the material offended him, sending it flying across the room.

“If you want to save that skirt, get it the hell off,” he snapped, his mouth already finding her breast beneath the bra she wore. His hands were busy, and the bra followed the blouse, sailing across the room.

His mouth was on her, hot and demanding, and she cried out, a keening wail she couldn’t stop. It felt so good. His teeth scraped over her soft skin while his tongue became a wicked insistent instrument of torturous pleasure, pressing over the hard tight bud of her nipple again and again. His arms locked her closer, while his mouth devoured her with an urgent hunger that only fed her own.