Amid the chaos, Bane’s desires should have cooled. But the inferno of need blazing through his veins only grew and strengthened, torching his control. As he devoured her mouth, he imagined this beautiful female draped in those jewels and nothing else.

I will strip her, palm her breasts and tongue her nipples. When I will thrust a finger deep inside her...then another and another...she’ll be wet for me.

The moment Bane had realized Nola sickened during intimate moments, two equally compelling urges had hit him. To learn if he would be an exception, and to prove Nola was a means to an end to him. Then he would stop softening whenever he looked at her, stop aching whenever she revealed a tidbit about her past, stop craving what he shouldn’t want more than his next breath. But as soon as their lips had met, he’d lost all sense; the reasons for initiating the kiss had ceased to matter.

The taste of this woman...

He required more. As necessary as water.

The kiss never paused as Bane stalked forward, forcing Nola to walk backward. When she bumped into the cave wall, he kicked her feet farther apart, fisted locks of her silken hair to angle her face and took her mouth deeper.

Need ruled him, and standing still ceased being an option. He ground his throbbing shaft between her legs, the intimate contact startling them both. She moaned, melting against him. His neglected body screamed for more, for everything.

“Bane, I... This...”

His name, spoken in her passion-drugged voice, only ratcheted up his need. “I know,” he growled against her lips. A second later, the tempo of the kiss changed. From exploratory to nuclear, becoming a frenzied mating of tongues and teeth.

A woman possessed by primal desire, Nola kissed him back wildly, hungrily. As if she would die if she didn’t experience complete satisfaction. The pleasure! She clawed at his flesh, rocked against his length, retreated, then rocked again. Every point of contact sizzled.

Oh, what luscious curves she possessed. Curves forever branded in his brain. Curves he needed to resist.

Resist. Yes. He must resist her—and this incredible arousal. And he would. Soon. As soon as his needs mattered more than his wants: penetration, coming inside her, branding her with his essence. Other males would scent him on her—the musk of a volatile predator—and be overcome with fear.

“More,” she gasped, so he happily gave her more. “My breasts.”

Rumbling growls left him as he cupped and kneaded those pert beauties, her distended nipples teasing his palms.

Again, she rolled her hips and rocked against his length, lost in the throes. Rolled, rocked. The friction...

Had any woman ever fit against him so perfectly?