He needed to bloody think! And he couldn’t with the heady scent of her in his nostrils and the sweet taste of her on his tongue. Every battered sense was reeling. All he wanted was to throw himself back into her embrace and lose himself in her. Drag those luscious hips to the edge of his desk, part her thighs, and drive into her body until they were both lost to pleasure.

He spared a glance to the wild-eyed, red-lipped woman standing inches away. Emotions chased across her face, and she pinned the inside of her cheek between her teeth. Sarani looked as staggered as he felt—stunned that the inferno between them had somehow managed to stay alive after all this time.

How had it? Because despite everything—betrayal, rejection, bitterness, and a half decade of hate—the attraction, the passion, was still there. Rhystan wanted her with a ferocious desire that had not abated in five years.

And she wanted him.

But regardless of the random flare of lust, they were over. Sarani Rao was in his past. She was female and he was simply a man with needs that had not been met in some time, as evidenced by the unrelenting pressure in his groin.

“Damn it,” he muttered, raking a frustrated hand through his hair.

Dark lashes dropped over her eyes, hiding her thoughts from view, one bandaged palm rising to quell the shaky rise of her breast. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I should go.”

Rhystan scrubbed his face with one hand and took another step back, giving her a wide berth as she swept past him to his cabin door in case he did something infinitely stupid like try to stop her. She had to leave, and he needed to clear his head and stop thinking with other disorderly parts of his body.

With a shaking hand, he reached for the tumbler of whisky she’d left behind on the desk and drained it. The thought that her lips had been on this glass, too, made his bruised lips burn. Rhystan swiped at his mouth with the back of his knuckles, sucking in a breath at the residual tenderness. Recalling the sight of her red, swollen lips, he knew she’d given as good as she’d gotten.

But then, Sarani always had. In Joor, she’d lived and fought with passion, never giving ground, never conceding. Their first kiss had been a battle for position, for dominance. Surrender had never crossed her mind, and he’d loved it. He relished her fight, that fierce intensity that had always called to its likeness in him. Even with the illusion of submission, this kiss had mirrored its predecessors, and Rhystan wasn’t sure who had emerged the victor.

He smiled reluctantly. She’d make love like a warrior. The image of a gloriously nude Sarani Rao riding him into the bedsheets filled his addled brain, and his knees nearly failed him.