Animal Instincts [The Andersons 2] (Siren Publishing Classic) by Marie Jermy Page A

him, and he instantly noticed her striking emerald eyes appeared moist, as though she was holding back the tears. He contained another urge to touch her by shoving his hands into his pants pockets. “ Who attacked Samantha? Was it somebody local? From the town? ”
    “ Mark Raven. ”
    He ’ d only met him the once, but remembered how he had wanted to punch the man’s lights out. He definitely wanted to do the deed himself. Just one problem… “ A tree won ’ t be of any use. Raven hasn ’ t the balls to be hung by. ”
    Ramona smiled. Rex smiled back.
    “ Have you finished? ” she asked.
    “ Finished what? ”
    “ Twenty questions. ”
    Yep, it definitely had been too easy.
    “ Kiss off and leave me alone. ”
    His brows shot up with surprise. “ Excuse me? ”
    “ Are you hard of hearing as well as being a jerk? ”
    Dammit, she had to be the most exasperating woman he had ever come across. Rex resisted an almost childish urge to kick the filing cabinet. He felt he had three choices here.
    One, he could have an all-out argument with her.
    Two, he could ignore her.
    Or three, he could kiss her.
    Against his better judgment, and because he was a red-blooded man who had slowly and unequivocally been going out of his mind for the last month, Rex opted for the latter.
    Removing his hands from his pockets, he reached out and curled his fingers around Ramona’s upper arms. Then, yanking her against him, he lowered his head and fused his mouth to hers. Because her mouth was open, probably down to the startled gasp she’d uttered, his tongue plunged between her teeth to explore her warmth with energetic strokes.
    At first, she resisted, but then her hands stopped pushing him and started grabbing him. She grabbed the front of his shirt, his collar, his tie, his hair, and kissed him back twice as hard, her tongue dueling wildly with his, evoking a spike of hot need to shoot down the entire length of his body, before it settled in his groin. Dreams of dewy, hunger-driven, tongue-tangling kisses had nothing on the real thing.
    And she kissed with open eyes!
    His heart pounding with gusto, his cock pounding to the same beat, Rex wrapped his arms around Ramona, lifted her up until their bodies were intimately aligned, and backed her into the door, provoking a startled and somewhat painful cry. He broke off their wild, passionate kiss to see what the problem was. Seeing the protruding coat hook was the culprit, he spun them around and deposited her onto the treatment table, then near enough jumped up onto it, too.
    Foreplay and finesse forgotten, panting hot and hard, they frantically tore at buckles, buttons, and zippers, desperate to sate the red-hot-tauter-than-a-violin-bow chemistry that had been sparking and twanging between them from the moment they met. As soon as his pants and boxers and her jeans and panties had been flung to the four corners of the room, Rex rocked into Ramona. The table rocked with him. There was then a loud snapping sound, and the table gave way beneath them.
    “ Fuck! ” Rex swore when they both landed back on terra firma in more ways than one. He ’ d forgotten all about using protection. And it was a toss-up of either being hypnotized by her mouth or her eyes that had made him forget. He pulled away. “ I ’ m not wearing a condom. ”
    “ It ’ s okay. I ’ m on the pill, ” Ramona panted, trying to pull Rex back down onto her, into her, but he pulled further away.
    Hurtful images from the past swamped Rex’s mind.
    “Stacey, darlin’, please listen to me. We’re not to blame for losing our baby… No, please, don’t do that!”
    He’d grabbed her hands in order to stop her tearing the scan photo into pieces, but hadn’t been quick enough. The pieces fluttered to the floor, like the tears that had spilled from his eyes, blurring his vision of the woman he’d wanted a family with. Had wanted to grow gray and old with.
    “Freak. The incident was a freak. Damaged. As damaged