“I just can’t believe it,” she finally added.

“Believe what?” His question came out rougher, and louder, than he’d intended, but at least it seemed to startle her into realizing that she hadn’t yet told him the news. “I still don’t know what happened.”

She gripped his hands even more tightly and he honestly didn’t think she had a clue that she’d put them between her br**sts as she finally told him, “Smith was nominated for an Oscar this morning. And so was I.” She pressed in even closer to his hands, as if only he had the power to help slow the incredibly rapid beating of her heart. “For Best Actress,” she whispered.

Her happiness was such a living, breathing thing between them that all Ian knew in that moment was that he would do anything he could, give everything he had, to keep her looking like this. Which was why it was the most natural thing in the world to say, “I’m so proud of you,” then pull her back into his arms and swing her around and around while she laughed again.

Her cheeks were flushed as she looked up at him, and he had to stroke her face, had to get closer to the brightest, warmest sunlight he’d felt in a very, very long time.

She was still laughing when she pressed her mouth to his. A kiss of pure happiness, pure joy. Stunned by the beauty, the sweetness of her unexpected kiss, he didn’t even have a chance to kiss her back by the time she pulled away.

Her eyes were wide with surprise, and when she looked at him, and said, “Oh my God, I just kissed you,” he knew for sure that nothing about the kiss had been planned. She had simply been so happy, so excited, so expressive in her joy, that hugging him, dancing with him, even kissing him, was the way she’d needed to express herself.

Just as he now needed—more than anything he’d ever needed in his life—to crush her mouth to his again. He could still taste her joy in their second kiss, but within the span of several heartbeats, desire and desperate need quickly edged their way in.

With Tatiana in his arms and her mouth pressed against his, Ian momentarily forgot all the rules, all the restrictions he’d put on his life and his heart. He couldn’t do anything but feel, couldn’t stop himself from taking another kiss, and then another and another, dragging her closer with each one, falling deeper under her spell with every breath he stole from her lungs, with every gasp of pleasure she made against his lips.

He’d known it would be like this with her, hadn’t he? So powerfully sensual, and so addictive as she opened for him so that he could stroke his tongue against hers and she could taste him just as intimately.

On and on their kiss went, her response utterly unrestrained, but it wasn’t until he heard her moaning softly against his mouth that he realized his hands had slid up from her waist to cup her br**sts, her ni**les pebbling against his thumbs as he stroked her.

What the hell was he doing?

And now that they’d kissed, now that he knew just how good they could be together, how could he possibly go back?

Ian tried to think straight. Tried to remember all the reasons why they shouldn’t do this, even as she told him, “I’ve never wanted anyone, or anything, as much as I want you, Ian.”

And in that moment, when it felt to Ian as though everything he’d ever wanted was right there in front of him, even though he knew better, he simply didn’t have it in him to move away from her.

But despite the hungry way she’d kissed him, he also instinctively knew that for all the lovers she’d already had, none could have needed her as badly as he did...or would demand as much of her unfettered sensuality as he would. Grasping at straws now, he decided the only chance—and the very last one—that he had of getting them to stop this madness before it slid all the way out of their control, would be if he could scare her with the force, the depth, the wildness of his need.

He slid his hand around to the nape of her neck, then fisted his hands in her hair and roughly tilted back her head so that he could scrape his stubble across the sensitive skin of her neck. “If you don’t leave right now,” he warned her in a voice made harsh with the inner conflict that rode him, “there’s no going back.”

“I don’t want to go back. Not now.” She shivered against him. “Not ever.”

“I won’t be gentle.” He had one last chance to try to do whatever he could to get her to run, because he sure as hell couldn’t figure out a way to let her go. “If you stay, I’m going to take what I want from you, Tatiana. Everything I want. Everything you’ve been offering to me since the moment we met.”

But instead of running, all she said was, “Yes.” And then again, even more emphatically, “Yes. I don’t want gentle. I just want you.”

And then she lifted her mouth to his again...and he was lost.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

As Ian kissed her, for the first time in her life Tatiana knew—really knew—what passion was.

This was the kind of passion that people wrote songs and books and movies about.

This was the kind of moment that people waited an entire lifetime for.

She’d acted out passion a dozen times on screen to the best of her professional ability, but she’d never truly felt it before. No one but Ian had ever kissed her like this, touched her like this. Touching not just her body, but her heart and soul, too.

She hadn’t meant to leap into his arms to kiss him like that, but she’d been so excited about being an Oscar nominee that it had been pure instinct to share her joy with him any way she could. They’d hugged, they’d danced, and then, before she knew it, she was kissing him.