He looks quickly up and down the street then heads left and suddenly sweeps me into a side alley, abruptly pushing me up against a wall. He grabs my face between his hands, forcing me to look up into his ardent determined eyes.

I gasp, and his mouth swoops down. He’s kissing me, violently. Briefly our teeth clash, then his tongue is in my mouth.

Desire explodes like the Fourth of July throughout my body, and I’m kissing him back, matching his fervor, my hands knotting in his hair, pulling it, hard. He groans, a low sexy sound in the back of his throat that reverberates through me, and his hand moves down my body to the top of my thigh, his fingers digging into my flesh through the plum dress.

I pour all the angst and heartbreak of the last few days into our kiss, binding him to me, and it hits me—in this moment of blinding passion—he’s doing the same, he feels the same.

He breaks off the kiss, panting. His eyes are luminous with desire, firing the already heated blood that is pounding through my body. My mouth is slack as I try to drag precious air into my lungs.

“You. Are. Mine,” he snarls, emphasizing each word. He pushes away from me and bends, hands on his knees as if he’s run a marathon. “For the love of God, Ana.” I lean against the wall, panting, trying to control the riotous reaction in my body, trying to find my equilibrium again.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper once my breath has returned.

“You should be. I know what you were doing. Do you want the photographer, Anastasia? He obviously has feelings for you.”

I flush and shake my head.

“No. He’s just a friend.”

“I have spent all my adult life trying to avoid any extreme emotion. Yet you . . . you bring out feelings in me that are completely alien. It’s very . . .” He frowns, grasping for the word. “Unsettling.

“I like control, Ana, and around you that just”—he stands, his gaze intense—