Tied With a Bow

really want to stay?” Malachi asked the two men without looking at them as the doors slid open again and no one moved.
    No one except Isabelle.
    Releasing the rail, she stepped across the distance separating them. She felt as though she were being drawn to him, pulled to him by some unseen force. His gaze held hers, his lashes lowering to half mast.
    She was only distantly aware of the other two exiting the elevator. All that mattered to her was that they were gone. She didn’t have to hold herself back. She didn’t have to force herself not to touch him, taste him, kiss him.
    She wanted that kiss. The kiss she had dreamed of. A kiss she had been certain she would never feel.
    Moving to him, her hands braced against his chest, she went on tiptoe, but without his help, if he hadn’t lowered his head, it wouldn’t have happened.
    Her hands slid to his shoulders, one against his neck as she felt the warmth of his breath against her lips.
    “I caught you,” he whispered.
    Her lips parted as his touched, moved with his words.
    “Or I caught you.”
    Suddenly, it didn’t matter who caught whom, or if there was a head start, time to think or even a need for thought. His lips covered hers as his arms slid around her, pulling her closer, lifting her to him.
    The taste of ambrosia filled her senses. It had to be ambrosia. The elixir of the gods. It had to be something not quite natural, because the taste of his kiss went to her head like a drug. Like a pleasure she couldn’t deny herself because she had waited far too long for it.
    For Malachi.
    His fingers cupped the back of her neck, tilting her head back as his lips slanted over hers, parted them, and pure heat swept through her senses. His tongue slipped past her lip, swept over hers and tempted her, teased her to catch it.
    She nipped it.
    He growled.
    Strong fingers slid into her hair, gripped and held her head in place as he turned her, lifted her with his other arm and braced her against the side of the elevator.
    His tongue swept past her lips again and stroked against hers.
    And she nipped again.
    Exhilaration surged through her. Adrenaline surged through her veins as his fingers moved from her hair, cupped her jaw and his kiss became firmer, more dominating, demanding.
    He wasn’t asking permission. There was nothing exploratory about the claiming, nothing introductory. He was taking her with his kiss, with his tongue, and she knew what he wanted.
    What she was aching for.
    Her lips closed around his tongue, sucked with delicate greed as it pumped between her lips and the most unique taste, subtle and hot, filled her senses.
    She couldn’t define it. She couldn’t describe it.
    She wanted more.
    A growl filled the air, a moan whispering around it as the kiss suddenly became hotter, hungrier. The arousal that had been brewing inside her became a firestorm, racing through her, tightening inside her.
    This was hers. He was hers.
    She’d known it the moment her eyes met his in the bar the night before, and she knew it now with his lips covering hers, his tongue pumping in her mouth and his hands pulling at her dress.
    “Hell! Malachi. Honey. You have a room. Use it!”
    Isabelle blinked as he pulled back from her. Flushing, she gazed around his shoulder to the elevator entrance.
    Ashley stood, leaning against the elevator frame, holding the doors back. Fingers tucked into the snug pockets of her jeans, her blond hair falling over one shoulder, her eyes wide as she stared back at them.
    Then her gaze slipped down and her brows arched. “Nice sandals there, Belle, but I think they should be on the floor, not wrapped around Malachi’s hips while you’re in the elevator.”
    Around his hips?
    Yep, they were around his hips.
    He lowered her slowly. As her feet touched the floor, his arm went around her back and he all but picked her up and carried her from the cubicle.
    “Nighty night,” Ashley called out as Malachi slid the electronic key quickly through the lock on his room, then pulled her inside.
    His room was across from hers.
    It was only a distant thought and it sure as hell didn’t matter. Because he was holding her again, pulling her to him, his lips moving over hers and spilling the taste of pure desire to her senses.
    “I warned you.” Isabelle had only a second to understand the words that rasped from his lips before he was pulling the dress from her. “You’re mine now, Isabelle. Mine.”
    As he jerked it up her legs, she might have