Andrew felt his blood rush through his veins with a sudden frenzy. Every part of him went rigid at the woman's sudden and audacious movement.
There was a smooth, soft, and warm feeling plastered against his mouth. This sensation for him was the very first in a very long time.
A kiss!
This woman actually dared to kiss him?
His dark-as-night eyes flared open really wide. The small space between himself and this woman caused him to feel her every curve against his chest, her body warmth merging with his own. Her fragrance was constant in his senses with every breath, and something hot, like warm water getting hotter each second, began to build up within him. This warmth quickly turned to a deep, hot temperature—a searing heat that made the slightest brush of this woman's inexperienced hand kept on his chest create an electrocuting feeling.
He couldn't move an inch, even though he wanted to push her away.
Perhaps someone out there might find it impossible that he'd always been repulsed by kisses, hence he'd never touched lips with a woman in a long time. He couldn't even remember the last time he did; none of them were worth it. He took his pleasure out of them like a business transaction—done calculatedly and controlled until the final aim of release was achieved, and then it would be done and over with, no memories of it at all.
People said kisses were an intimate action of love, and to him, the thing called love was a game played between two people who manipulated each other's emotions to achieve their personal goals. To the fairer sex, it was for money, and to the males, it was for pleasure—a smooth business transaction.
But this woman's warm lips against his own was intrusive. His expected emotion was disgust, absolute revulsion, but what trailed through his veins in this moment wasn't any of that. It was something that felt like the crackling sparks of a flame being ignited.
This flame seemed to burn even more as her delicate little hands trailed up his neck. He felt her fingers brush against his bare skin, and it felt like fuel was poured upon the crackling flames within him, bursting all at once.
This familiar, yet quite unfamiliar, feeling within him caused his blood to rush rapidly all the way to his lower belly, tightening in a sweetly painful knot before his body hardened within his pants.
Arousal.
The look of astonishment in his eyes deepened.
His body was reacting unusually. It had been less than five minutes of him being in this room, and he already felt aroused by this woman.
Something like this had never happened to him before.
It really astounded him. He had been seduced by countless women in the past who wanted to be with him for his identity, his money, and other selfish motives, and they had done even more extreme things to arouse him—and not even once did he lose control if he hadn't wanted to. But this woman here—she was barely doing anything, but a certain part of his body was straining through his trousers.
This was Anne deluding herself.
She would lose herself in this little fantasy so the reality of what she was actually doing wouldn't be so terrible.
She came here tonight with a determination to fulfill the contract and make sure to give this man her body, but if she could make it even a little bit less unsettling for herself, she could get through this night.
That was why she'd taken the daringly bold step of kissing the man.
She had dreamed of this... her very first kiss. Though in her dreams, it had been with someone who would say words of confessions. Confessions of love and adoration.
Slowly, she pulled her lips away from his own. If there had been any light in the room, one would have seen her face, reddened like a ripe tomato.
She couldn't see the darkness that shrouded the man's expression, but she could feel the dense aura he exuded. However, it wasn't cold and unfeeling—it burned hot and scalding, enough that she took a step backwards.
What had she done?
Was he angry?
Why had she impulsively kissed the man? She must have been high on something she ate.
There was one thing she always felt from this man whenever she was around him: danger.
And that danger subconsciously frightened her.
Should she apologize? Make up some excuse?
Make it less daunting, you said. Well, look what you've done.
The heat from the man could as well be the introduction at the gates of hell, and it felt like he could be the keeper who would banish her to eternal damnation in the fiery depths.
Just as she parted her lips to speak—words that would save her from the man's fury at the sheer action of her overstepping—her chin was suddenly grabbed, and her head tipped up.
His thumb and forefinger felt coarse against her chin. Looking up at his face within this dark room, she could only see the sheen of sweat around the outline of his face.
He definitely was angry!
However, his next action stunned her—perhaps equally as much as she'd stunned the man when she'd audaciously taken the initiative to kiss him.
She was tugged into his arms by a sudden force, and before she could react, something hot collided with her lips.
The force of his sudden kiss was like fire—hot and scalding. His mouth pried her own, and she felt a sudden intrusion that caused a strange flutter to assault her stomach.
Anne went rigid when he suddenly grabbed her. It wasn't from fear or resistance but from utter shock, and when his unimaginably warm lips landed on hers... it was as if she had been electrocuted, as so many sensations exploded in her body all at once. Her senses went numb, but all she could feel was him—his mouth against hers, his hot breath mingling with hers, his warm lips that caught hers. It was inescapable seduction.
She trembled when his mouth trailed over her lips playfully before his tongue invaded her mouth, and a thousand more sensations exploded in her mind. She couldn't hold back the strange sound that rose up her throat as realization slammed into her.
She was being kissed with such dizzying intensity!