Hands digging into her shoulders, he demanded, “What didn’t you understand about staying put and keeping quiet?”

“I only wanted to know what was going on.”

“So you eavesdropped?” he growled, his mouth so close their breaths mingled, fusing into one shared gust of air.

“You know a better way for me to find out what’s going on? You only tell me half-truths.”

His legs slid between her bare ones, the rough denim scratching the sensitive skin of her inner thighs. Her breathing hitched and she forgot about the stairs digging into her back. Forgot about everything except the wonderful weight of him bearing down on her. Damn primitive urges.

“Do you know what would happen if he found you?” He grabbed her face in both hands and his voice sounded strange to her ears—hoarse and uneven. “Nothing in the world could help you, then.” His eyes searched hers, glittering with an emotion she could not name. “He’d kill you.”

Her belly tightened at the feel of his broad, callused palms against her face. “Would you have stopped him, Gideon?”

He inhaled a ragged breath that shot through her like a bolt of high-powered voltage. His voice fell to a hush. “Don’t make me choose.”

She let the tips of her breasts brush against his chest, keenly aware that only the thin cotton of her T-shirt separated them. “Haven’t you already?”

He groaned, his look tormented, making her heart clench inside her chest.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he rasped before his mouth swooped down on hers. He swallowed her moan, took it deep inside his mouth as his hands dove beneath her, pulling her off the uncomfortable steps and pressing her close to his chest, to the wild beating of his heart.

This time it was all about them. It wasn’t a ploy to get a pair of handcuffs on her. He kissed her because he wanted to. Had to. And she reveled in that knowledge. Like a bird released from its cage, her heart soared with the awareness of her feminine power.

Mouths meshing, limbs tangling, her body somehow ended up on top of his. Her hands roamed his naked chest, palms grazing the hard pecs, the narrow indentation of his sternum, the flat plane of his stomach. She exulted in the freedom to touch, to feel all that hard, bronzed flesh.

She slid down the length of him, her lips trailing kisses across warm, quivering skin. The sound of his panting breath reached her ears, filling her with triumph. She pulled the opening of his jeans wide. The tantalizing line of hair trailing below his navel pointed like an arrow to the hard heat of him she remembered. She pressed a moist, open-mouthed kiss at the lowest point visible.

Moisture rushed between her legs, dampening her panties. Needing satisfaction, she growled and yanked at his waistband urgently.