Relentless Adversary by Jayne Castle

lips with a quick, fierce kiss that held nothing of a soothing nature.
    "If you don't stop this minute, I'm going to cry rape again," she breathed, her breasts lifting under the brown towel with the force of her panting struggles. "You said last night you'd never force yourself on me!"
    A slow, anticipatory smile curved his mouth and the warlock eyes flared with rising passion as he looked down into her defiant face.
    "Don't worry, my love," he whispered in a thickening voice, "I learned my lesson last night about the usefulness of honey in catching little flies with red and gold in their wings. . . ."
    He touched his lips to the mass of soft brown stuff that lay in tangled tendrils across her naked shoulders, and Kelly caught her breath as the nearness of him brought his scent into her nostrils. Clean, male, and primitively inviting, it threatened to cloud her senses for an instant.
    Grimly she fought free of the effect, her silvery eyes opening wide in quelling accusation as he lifted his head again to study her.
    "How can you talk about loving me when you treat me like this?"
    "How could I treat you like this if I didn't love you?" he countered silkily.
    "Don't tease me on top of everything else," she ordered in a kind of passionate anger. "No man who loved or respected a woman would threaten her with this kind of violence."
    "What kind would he threaten her with?"
    "Damn you!" she hissed, frustrated beyond reason at the aggressive laughter that mingled with the passion in his eyes. "I swear I'll hate you forever—"
    "No," he interrupted, the masculine humor fading at once. "You won't hate me. At least not forever."
    He moved, trapping one of her arms beneath the weight of his body and holding her other wrist above her head. His free hand went to the knot of her towel but he made no immediate effort to undue it. He buried his mouth in her throat and a slow, deceptively lazy trail of kisses began to work their way up toward her lips.
    "Locke, please!"
    She felt the strong, sensitive fingers rest lightly on her breast as if he liked the curving shape of her beneath the towel. Against her naked thigh the roughness of his denim-covered leg seemed like the scrape of a cat's tongue on her agitated senses. And the skin of her throat was violently aware of the warmth and firmness of his mouth.
    "Please what, darling?" he gritted gently, his tongue emerging to sample the taste of her shower-warmed skin.
    "Please love you? But I do. And I will. . . ."
    "You can't!" she cried brokenly, torn between sheer fury and the growing realization that outright battle with him wasn't the way to handle the situation. Locke thrived on outright battle. "If you loved me, you wouldn't do this!"
    "What would I do? Beg for your love in return? I don't think so. At least not at this stage. Do you think I want to end up with that hopeless, wistful look in my eyes that Brett Forrester has every time he watches you walk down the hall?"
    "What? Locke, what the devil are you talking about?" Kelly turned her head aside from his advancing kisses, shaken by his words. It seemed she was fated to receive one shock after another tonight from this man.
    "Don't pretend he doesn't want you. I've seen the expression on his face and I've heard the gossip in the computer room. But he didn't know how to go about getting you, did he? And now it's much too late, anyway. You're mine."
    "You're not making any sense! Let me go and we can— can talk things over at dinner." Gamely Kelly sought for a reasonable alternative to offer him.
    "Dinner can wait." He began untying the knot of the towel, ignoring her startled gasp. "Right now it's more important to consolidate my victory."
    "Victory!" she yelped, twisting violently in one last evasion attempt that proved fruitless. "That's all this has been for you tonight, hasn't it?"
    "It's definitely been a part of the evening's festivities," he agreed on a note of deepening intent and wonder as he unwrapped the towel to expose her