His words were like hot honey being drizzled all over her skin, burning and sweet at the same time. Marissa couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t speak to stop him again.

It was probably because she had the very same voices holding the very same argument inside of her. And somehow, knowing he couldn’t heed them despite his better judgment made her whole existence go up in flames. By the time he had dragged her up to meet his mouth, she had confessed to herself just how badly she had wanted it.

His lips touched hers, the contact so light it was barely there. They were both working hard for breath, both tense and troubled just as much as they were burning with craving.

“I just need a moment, Marissa. Just one little moment where who and what we are doesn’t matter. Because it has been just as hard for me to accept all the things you are trying to accept right now. But in all this upheaval,” he breathed, the softness of his mouth brushing over hers as he spoke, “the only thing that comes crystal clear to me is the way I burn for you.”

Then he swept up her mouth with his, holding her so tightly to himself with the wrapping strength of his arms, his hands running fiercely hot across her back.

She should have pushed away from him, but there was no strong, instinctive desire to do so. In fact the ultimate opposite desire was in play, until it felt as though her actual soul was craving to feel him kiss her.

She wanted the kiss to pale … to be less than her illicit fantasies had made of it. She wanted the reality to help her find reason to never let this happen again. It was a wish that would never be fulfilled. The painfully soft and powerful strength of his kiss, the poignancy of the struggle within them both, made it everything it could be and more. He smelled of the woods around them, so unbelievably earthy, as if this were his natural habitat and she had been caught trespassing. She had been cold before, as the waning spring night bit at her poorly clothed body. Now her chilled skin gave way to the heat that had been flirting beneath it for every last moment she had been in his presence. It was like pressing herself up against a radiator, his heat enveloping and permeating her. He took no half measures, his mouth testing hers for all of a few moments before his tongue came into play and commanded ownership of hers. She’d never liked men who assaulted her with all tongue from the start of a kiss, but what others had made offensive, he made a seduction. His hand came up to cradle the back of her head, his fingers burrowing into her hair and he used the possession of his hand to turn her into his kiss more fully. He did not invade, but conquered just the same as the taste of him was swept into her mouth and against the buds of her tongue.

Marissa drew breath in in little shots, only to let it slip away again just as quickly in stunned hitches. She couldn’t think as the heat he delivered burned away all thought, burned away all reason, leaving nothing for her but the feel of his mouth and the touch of his hands bringing her more and more tightly against him. Her hands lifted to the backs of his tightly muscled upper arms, her fingertips clinging weakly to the crisp fabric of his uniform shirt. That his kiss was a pure seduction was never in question. The way his tongue stroked hers was nothing less that an exotic spell compelling everything she had into the connection. And there was darkness there. An indefinable element to him that was so incredibly deadly if he was not respected or did not get what he demanded. The fear that came with that thought only made her body react more strongly, her ni**les tightening fiercely, her br**sts screaming with sensitivity inside the lace of her bra.

His hands were in neutral territory still, but they may as well not have been because the demand of his kiss set sensitive sexual places alight with passionate fire. She became tantalizingly wet, a startling reaction for her because things like that did not happen so easily for her. What was more, she could feel him, a wall of powerfully taut muscle and h*ps framing an undeniable erection pressed to her. The soft fabric of his uniform pants made it impossible to hide … but his boldness told her that hiding was the very last thing on his mind. On the contrary. She knew he wanted her to feel it. Wanted her to react to it. Wanted her to know there was no denying what she did to him.

He broke from her mouth just far enough to allow breath between them. She was panting for it. For everything.

“I never knew,” he said roughly. “If I had, I would never have let you hold yourself from me.”

The sentence frightened her just as much as it melted her with excitement and arousal. He made no show of asking for further permission, taking what he felt was his as he swept her up into a new kiss, this one twice as aggressive as the one before it. She felt him move, felt him turn, but she was blind as to the reason until she felt her back come up against the rough bark of a thick trunk. The woman she had been before that kiss would have complained that the roughness could catch and ruin the cashmere of her sweater, but she was no longer that woman and, she feared, she never would be again. The woman she was now no longer cared about that triviality, and instead she craved his hands on her sweater, dragging it from her, making way for his hands to touch her craving skin at last.

Instead his hands slid down her sides and around her hips, his fingers gripping her ass through her skirt and dragging her h*ps tighter to his. Are you feeling what you do to me, the action demanded of her. You thought you could deny me this?

And still it was just a kiss. A fierce, unbelievable, soul-stripping kiss. It shoved aside all the bullshit they had been trying to protect themselves with and went for the throat of their craving for each other. His mouth wrestled with hers, devouring her six ways from Sunday. She felt her hair dropping down against her neck and shoulders and realized his hand was combing through it, unraveling the strict twist it had been in. His other hand, however, was on her thigh, grabbing possession of it, dragging the inside of it along his outer hip until somehow they were both wrapping around his waist, opening her up to the aggressive press of his sex against hers. It was through layers of clothing, but it may as well have not been, that was how ferocious the flame inside of her became at the connection. She gasped into his mouth, her fingernails curling into the flesh of his arms.

“Easy,” he breathed against her lips. “God, Marissa, go easy.”

Go easy, Jackson thought. Otherwise he was going to try to f**k her right where they stood, only a few kisses into learning each other. That was how blinding his desire was for her. Hadn’t he told himself he wasn’t going to do this? Hadn’t he told himself there was nowhere for this to go? Hadn’t he realized that she wasn’t the type of woman he could throw up against the nearest hard surface and tear a path into her with no thought for the consequences?

She will be ours one way or another …

Jackson didn’t understand what that meant. He wasn’t exactly in the right mind-set for clarity of thought. Of all the times he’d thought of getting his hands on her, even the instances he wouldn’t admit to himself, he’d never conceived the power of what his reaction would be. She smelled of summertime, hot and sultry, as though the air were so heavy with heat it clung to all of the senses. How her legs had ended up around his hips, he simply couldn’t comprehend. Had he done that? Had she? Did it matter?

Her fingertips released from that clutch on his arms and slid up into his hair, the sensation of them running through the crisply short strands sending clenching heat stripping over him like the lash of a whip. He couldn’t make himself draw his mouth away from hers, couldn’t make himself move slower and softer. He was famished for her and she was utterly divine. In feel. In taste. And, oh god, that smell. That sweet, lusty smell of her.

It was Sargent’s sudden bark of alarm that forced reality into the situation. He had spent weeks in training learning and teaching the requirements of that bark. He jolted away from her mouth, his body jerking into a turn even before he was sure she had her feet back under her. He drew hard for every single breath, trying to shake the fog of need from himself, like trying to break the surface of heavy water in order to pull in much needed oxygen. He raked his eyes around the perimeter, including the sky. He would not be taken by surprise again by thinking in human, linear ways. He kept himself against her otherwise, turning front to back, keeping her pressed between his back and the armor of the thick tree behind her.

“What—?”

“Shh!” he hissed softly, his hand reaching to touch her on her hip, the act possessive and ebbing a powerful warning in case she didn’t take the verbal one in the spirit it was meant.

“Waverly!”

There it was. Distant, still out of normal human earshot, but clear as hell to him. The rest of the searchers were looking for him. And that was when he realized just how light the night sky had gotten.

“Shit,” he hissed. “I have to get out of here. They’re looking for me and Sargent, but …” He turned back to her and winced when he saw the embarrassment coloring her face, the hands that had been in his hair with such abandon now pressed to her cheeks in mortification. He didn’t have time to unravel the knots she was tying herself into as she realized just how far out of control she had allowed herself to go. If there was one thing he had learned about Marissa Anderson, it was that she despised losing control. Not only of any given situation, but most definitely of herself.

“Marissa, sunlight can kill me.” He cut straight to the chase, time too short to do otherwise.

“What?” she demanded. “What do you mean …?”

“Think of it like kryptonite, Marissa. The touch of the sun paralyzes my kind. We don’t turn into solid stone statues like the Gargoyles do, and therefore the only protection we can provide ourselves is whatever pitch-black room we lock ourselves into. I don’t have time to explain and I don’t have time to be debriefed by the captain before sunlight crests over the horizon.”

She must have realized that his precarious position had been brought about, largely, because of his need to deal with her. He had wasted precious time comforting or explaining or … touching. He could see all of it playing over her features and wanted so badly to reassure and comfort her.

“Sargent,” she rasped out roughly, her voice still sounding full of the arousal that had so overwhelmed them both. “Tell them he’s injured.”

He couldn’t help but explode into a grin. So simple. So perfect. The caretaking and well-being of his dog was Jackson’s largest priority when in the field and everyone knew that. It would not be questioned if he dismissed everyone and hurried to take care of the canine that had been entrusted to him by the department. He commanded Sargent to his side and stooped to hoist the solid shepherd into his arms.

“You need to drive me,” he told her. “I can get us out of sight of the searchers, but then I have to … I can try to stay mobile, but the longer I fight it the more strength I lose and the longer I will need to recover. I have to … I have to …”

Trust you. He didn’t speak the words aloud; thereby making it known how difficult a concept it was for him. And all he could do was hope that she understood it had nothing to do with her and everything to do with being that vulnerable.

“But I saw you in sunlight just yesterday …”

“It was the last day before Menes and I finished the Blending process. And believe me, forcing myself to keep mobile in the sunlight was getting harder and harder every damn day. Fighting it now … it’s deadly. If I don’t sleep it can be deadly, Marissa. And I haven’t slept in …”

“Oh my god!” she cried. “Why would you risk yourself like this?” she demanded.

He looked at her as if she had lost her mind.

“Marissa, there’s a child missing.”

He said as though it was entirely self-explanatory and Marissa supposed that it was. And how could she have forgotten what had brought them out there in the first place?

Well, getting attacked by supernatural beings could easily make that happen. And she saw by the expression on his face that Jackson was torn up about that fact. He didn’t want to quit. He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to keep going until that child was found. She watched him hoist Sargent higher onto his chest, the dog’s tongue lolling happily, the shepherd perfectly comfortable being held by his master and probably much in need of a good rest himself. Jackson started making his way toward the base of operations where he had left his car, his long legs devouring ground as if he were walking over a manicured lawn, rather than through the tough, uneven bracken of the forest floor. They met Officers Hampton and Reese very shortly after they began.

“What’s going on? Where’s your radio and cell?” Hampton demanded. “We’ve been trying to reach you.”

“The radio is at the bottom of Ranger’s Cliff,” Jackson lied easily. “Sue me for butterfingers. Cell must be dead.”