I felt pouty, and I was glad I knew how to hide my colors now. I opened my notebook with a dramatic whoosh and yanked out the top worksheet. The first question made me grumble.

“What’s the matter?” Kaidan asked.

“I can’t stand these kinds of questions. ‘What is the author’s opinion of death, as seen in lines eighteen to twenty-one?’ It’s a poem, for crying out loud! The beauty of poetry is that it can mean different things to different people at different times. But you know they’re expecting one specific, so-called correct answer, and any other thoughtful response will be counted off. It’s wrong to dissect poetry like this!”

I threw down the paper in heated passion and felt his hand cup my cheek. I hadn’t even noticed him sitting up during my tirade. My heart was already pumping hard when I turned my face to him. Kaidan’s eyes were on fire, and his sweet, earthy scent slammed my senses.

“Seriously,” I whispered, unable to look away. “You’re doing that bedroom-eyes thing again.”

We met halfway. His lips were as hot as his eyes, sending a shock wave through me. His tender mouth opened mine and I could sense the red of passion, like silk, circling us, pulling us closer. I was aware of a halfhearted battle within me, but I clambered nearer, pushing the notebook and papers to the floor.

His lips broke away from mine and moved greedily down my neck. A moan escaped me at the feel of his hot breath on my skin, and it was all the encouragement he needed. He was on top of me, and I was gripped by an unfamiliar hunger. I hushed the urgent whisper of my heart by grabbing his shirt and tugging it up until it was over his head, and his smooth brown skin was everywhere, emanating heat. He unbuttoned my shirt and I wiggled out of it. It was off, tossed to the floor with the notebook, and my tank top was over my head, in his hand, then soaring across the room. His lips were on mine again, our bare skin crushed together, but we still needed to be closer. He pulled his lips just far enough away to speak.

“What time will Patti be calling?”

I managed a glimpse at the clock, feeling his mouth on my collarbone.

“Not for an hour,” I whispered.

“That simply is not going to be enough time.”

In one smooth motion he flipped us so we were both sitting up, me across his lap with my legs wrapped around him. My hair brushed my skin, soft in contrast to the hardness of his hands. His perfect lips moved over my shoulders, pushing my bra straps down and nipping with just enough pressure. My head lolled back into his waiting hand. I pressed my hips against his and was rewarded when he groaned, flipping us again, so fluidly.

His mouth was on the small swell of skin peeking out from the top of my bra. My hands were in his thick hair. He kissed down my upper body to my belly button, keeping his hands under my back, concentrating on my skin. I was gasping for short breaths now, unable to control myself as his lips burned a trail down to the edge of my shorts. He flicked open the button and licked the sensitive skin there. I gasped, and he made a masculine growling sound at me before he spoke.

“Now would be the time to stop me, luv. You’re about to be undressed, and trust me when I say it will be too late after that.”

My body was overpowering my mind. I couldn’t think. I could only smell and taste and see and hear and feel him.

An annoying whisper sounded from the depths of my mind again, but something else was there too: something I had managed to flatten to the bottom of my consciousness until now. The demonic doubt.

We were damned for simply being born. So why was I holding fast to rules that didn’t really apply to me anyway? Why shouldn’t I take from this life what I could in the time I had? This had nothing to do with what Pharzuph demanded of us, and everything to do with what Kaidan and I had become to each other.

“No, Kai,” I said, arching my back under his hot fingers. “Don’t stop.”

His face was in front of mine again, our mouths moving in a harmonic frenzy. My hands moved from his hair, over his hard chest, down the ripple of his stomach, around his waist, and up over his firm back. I pulled him to me. I couldn’t believe this was happening. Excitement and fear coursed through my blood.

And then there was... confusion.

He was murmuring something to himself that I couldn’t make out, then shaking his head. I pulled him to me again, but he reached down, taking my wrists and holding them between us. I lifted my hips to him and was shocked to meet resistance. What was going on?

“We can’t,” he barely whispered.

“Kai?” He was pulling himself away from me, and it was such torture that I could hardly bear it.

I made one final attempt to revive the closeness, reaching for him, but he had gone to stone above me.

“Damn it, Ann, please! Don’t. Move.”

I lay still, breathing hard and staring into his deep blue eyes until he ripped his gaze away.

He rolled to the side of the bed and got up, moving an agonizing distance away. He groaned and grabbed his hair hard in both of his fists, then began to pace, shaking his head from side to side. His bloodred badge pumped as hard as my heart.

I sat up, mindful of my heated, exposed skin in the room’s cool air. I grabbed a pillow and pressed it to my chest in a tight hug. Every inch of skin he had kissed felt like it was on fire.

Rejection swept over me, turning my heat to ice. Saying he wouldn’t be my boyfriend was one thing. But this?

“You don’t want me.” Such a pathetic revelation would have been better left unsaid.