“You’re the one who’s saying I leave you cold.” He hadn’t taken his eyes from hers, and in the span of a handful of words, they’d grown darker, more intense. “One kiss, Mia. Surely you can walk away from that.”

What had she done to deserve his return into her life? She’d packed up every beautiful moment, every sweet and sinful memory of being with Ford, and had buried them all in the deepest, darkest part of her heart. She’d worked so hard to put the past to rest. She’d been over him.

He couldn’t just come back like this, couldn’t make her want him like this, couldn’t send her emotions into turmoil with nothing but a dark look and a few tossed-off words in his deep, mesmerizing voice. Heck, she had a date tonight with a really great guy who could very well end up being the one.

But now, after less than an hour alone with Ford, she was grappling with all of her old demons.

She needed to take a step away from him, and then another and another until she was far enough that she couldn’t see him anymore, couldn’t smell him, couldn’t reach out to find out if his skin was still as hot to the touch as it had once been.

Pride be damned, she was going to have to let him win this round by running from him...if only to make sure he didn’t win back the one thing that really mattered.

Her heart.

Or worse, her soul.

But her feet still weren’t listening, because instead of taking her further from him, they were moving her closer, then closer still, until he was right there within kissing distance.

“One kiss,” she found herself agreeing though she knew better. “And when you realize that it, and you, mean absolutely nothing to me—” She shouldn’t need to pause, shouldn’t feel even the slightest hesitation in stating what she knew needed to happen. “—you’ll promise never to come near me again.”

He didn’t so much as blink before agreeing with a husky, “You have my word.”

And then he cupped her face in his hands and lowered his head to hers...

Chapter Five

Ford had never been much of a planner, had always chosen to follow passion, instead. Then again, this much had never been on the line before. One kiss to decide if Mia would remain in his life...or if he’d have to give her up forever.

Only, even if he’d thought to plan the kiss carefully by playing off all her sensual trigger points, Ford wouldn’t have had a chance of following that plan. Because the instant she agreed to the kiss, the desperation to touch her again ripped through every other thought, every other sense, every other need.

Just being near her tore his control to shreds.

The entire world thought Ford Vincent was the ultimate ladies’ man, and that there wasn’t a woman alive who had the power to bring him to his knees. But the world was wrong. Dead wrong.

Mia was the only woman who had ever truly marked him. Not just his body, but his heart...and down deeper than that, even. He’d never felt passion like this for anyone else.

He felt her breath hitch in her chest as his thumbs brushed gently over her cheekbones, his fingertips lightly caressing her jaw and the very tips of her earlobes. Earlobes he knew to be extremely sensitive. All he’d had to do when they were together before was score one of her lobes with the edge of his teeth and she would start begging him to take her.

She’d had on a fresh coat of lipstick when she first walked into the tower, and though it was mostly gone now, a faint stain of red pigment remained. Her eyes were still open, but her lashes were fluttering in her fight to keep them from closing.

The breath from her lips was warm, and so damned seductive against his as he tried to prolong the moment. But Ford just didn’t have it in him to draw out the anticipation any longer, not when he was dying to taste her again.

Finally, with her name on his lips, he closed the final distance between them.

There was no way he could have held back his groan of pleasure at how good the simple touch of Mia’s lips was against his. He felt almost drunk from the press of her curves, though she was trying to remain stiff and unyielding against him.

Shifting his hands up into her hair, Ford slicked his tongue in a slow path along her lower lip. For all his memories of how good kissing her had been, memories had never tasted this good, nor made his heart race nearly out of his chest.

Her hands had come up to press against his chest, as if to push him away. But as his tongue made a second trip over her upper lip, ducking into the bow in the middle before tracking a damp path to the sensitive corner, he could feel her warring with herself. Staying cold and unmoved by his kiss had been her intention upon rising to his challenge. And she’d clearly believed she could pull it off.

But when her fingers began to clench on his shirt, and all it would have taken was one slight shift to push him away and end the kiss before it really even got a chance to begin, she grabbed the cotton, instead, to drag him even closer.

Thank God.

* * *

Mia had mentally braced herself for pleasure. She had physically prepared herself for heat.

But it wasn’t until Ford actually touched her skin with calloused fingertips, then waited for her to have no choice but to respond to his sinfully sweet caresses before finally dropping his mouth to hers, that she remembered just how enormous his powers of seduction were.

Worse still, as if the mere press of his lips over hers wasn’t already enough to start melting her from the core outward, he’d dragged his tongue over her lips. And that was when her memories became even clearer.

Because Ford had never simply seduced her. He had demanded her passion, instead. Right from that first moment when he’d been on stage and she’d been in the audience, he’d forced her to face what was already between them. It hadn’t mattered that they were two complete strangers, because with nothing more than a look, and a song, she’d been his. Just as he was making her his again with this kiss, even as she tried to remind herself that she should be keeping him from touching any part of her, body or soul.

But as his tongue stroked against hers once, then twice, then three gorgeous times, sending shivers through her, head to toe, and her hands involuntarily clutched the fabric of his shirt even harder, their kiss deepened the way it always had. From nothing to everything in the span of one heartbeat, one breath.

And now that his heat, his strength, were beneath her hands and pressed hard against the length of her body, Mia couldn’t help but give in to the need that she hadn’t wanted to admit had been bubbling away inside of her for the past five years.