Excerpt of A Virgin to Redeem the Billionaire by Dani Collins

"How can I persuade you to change your mind?"

"You can't." His mouth pulled into a wicked grin. "But I'm tempted to let you try."

She narrowed her eyes. "I don't use sexual favors to get what I want," she informed him. "If I kiss a man, it's because I want to." There. It was a dropped glove, but it was true. If she thought a man boorish, she told him so.

If she found a man enthralling… Well, he was the first to fascinate her like this. She wondered if he might become her first in other ways. This power struggle was inordinately exciting.

"Is that so," he murmured. All the humor bled out of his expression, leaving it full of grave angles. He seemed to consider her words while the backs of his fingers continued to caress her throat where her pulse thrummed like a hummingbird's wings.

What was she doing? This was madness. He was a stranger. Voices were conversing in a nearby room.

But she wanted him to kiss her. It wasn't about the earring. He was unlike any man she had ever met. If he walked away and she didn't at least know what it felt like to have his mouth on hers, she would always wonder.

She stared into eyes that had become the incendiary gleam of liquid gold and dared him to make her day.

His hand came back to her jaw, his touch firm as he bent his head.

He claimed her mouth without ceremony, as if they'd been kissing like this every night for years. And, oh, did he know how to kiss.

This was what she had sought all her life. A man who met her strong personality with an even stronger one. One who took her out of herself with a twist of his mouth against hers, parting her lips and sinking into a hungry, passionate ravaging that dismantled her even as he promised she would be safe in his strong arms.

She became a molten substance as he gathered her hair and squeezed an arm across her back. She pooled like quicksilver against him, curves fitting into the dips and contours of his chest, arms curling around his tense waist to settle her fingers against the warm hollow of his spine.

She had never been kissed like this. Carnal and possessive, urgent and lazy at once. Her scalp stung under the clench of his hand in her hair. Heat consumed her, burning up any memory she had of other men. A moan of pleasure escaped her, but it contained loss. She understood that every kiss that had come before this one had been a manufactured fraud. This was the real thing. She could never settle for less again.

And he was already pulling away.