Excerpt of Forbidden by Lauren Smith

He lifted his glass to his lips and sipped. It wasn’t ale he was drinking but something else, a dark, warm gold color, probably Scotch. She realized she must have been staring at his mouth when he licked his lips and spoke again.

“Keep staring at me like that and I’m liable to kiss you.”

Desire and hunger lit up his eyes, heating the strange mixture of blue and green. It almost made her forget that she was talking to a stranger. It really was possible to lose yourself in someone’s eyes. Maybe the poets weren’t wrong about love at first sight. She didn’t love this man, but she was…captivated by him, which felt like love, in a strange sort of way. The lightness of her head, the wobbly knees, the fascination with him.

“There’s nothing stopping you from kissing me,” she breathed. Her heart was pounding against her ribs as excitement skittered through her. Would he accept the challenge and kiss her?

His eyes softened, but there was a dangerous glint to his expression, one that warned her that if he kissed her…it wouldn’t be chaste, wouldn’t be sweet. It would be the sort of kiss that made a girl forget where she was and moan helplessly for more.

They were mere inches apart now…When had she leaned into him? Somehow she had shifted closer, fixated on his mouth, the full sensual lips. The bit of the cider ale she’d been drinking earlier made her thoughts a bit muddy. Well, all but one thought.

I want him to kiss me. If he won’t, I’ll kiss him first.

Before she let herself think better of it, she seized the chance to be reckless and rocked up on her tiptoes, curling her fingers into the lapels of his coat as she kissed him. Hard. It was wild, the way she let go and just gave herself into kissing him. Her own sexy stranger…

His hands gripped her waist, fingers digging in slightly, making tingles of excitement shoot down her spine, clear to her toes. His lips were soft and warm, moving against hers hungrily. When he angled his face, he caressed her lips with his tongue. The startling, erotic feel of it had her mouth parting, and he thrust inside. The little teasing strokes of his tongue against hers created shivers deep in her belly. He overwhelmed all of her senses, and Kat couldn’t catch her breath. There was no escaping his strong hold, and she didn’t want to. His lips were a drug, and she couldn’t get enough.

Every cell in her body pulsed and hummed to life when the kiss turned slightly rough, as he nipped her bottom lip. She rocked her body into his, desperate to get closer, to feel him completely surrounding her.

All mine. She smiled against his lips just as their bodies separated a few inches and she gasped for a breath. Blood pounded against her temples, and she panted and glanced up at him. Stark, raw lust burned like coals behind his eyes as he stared down at her, an almost animal ferocity in his expression.

“That was—”

Before she could finish, he curled an arm around her waist and pulled her flush against him for another kiss. The touch of his lips this time was feather light…as though he were savoring her. A simple, almost innocent brush of mouths, before she shivered, and a little moan of longing escaped. Suddenly he rotated her, pinning her against the bar, his mouth taking her hungrily, seeking entrance to hers. She parted her lips, more from surprise than anything else. When his tongue slid in and teased hers, she whimpered. The bare hint of stubble rasped against her skin as he kissed her, making her sensitive to every sensation.

More, I need more of this…

No one she’d dated in high school had kissed like this, as though he had all night to taste her, explore her, excite her. Nothing else mattered, nothing but this man and his life-altering, seductive lips.

When his mouth parted from hers, she blinked and stared up at him, wondrously dazed.

“You were too tempting to resist. Makes a man hungry for more when a woman looks at him like that.” He brushed the pad of his thumb over her swollen lips, his eyes tracing the shape, along with his finger.

“Like what?” she asked, fascinated by his words just as much as his hands and the way they touched her.

His laugh was dark and rich like a pint of Guinness. “Like she needs to be kissed, to be taken by a man who knows just what to do to make her moan with pleasure.”

Taken…the word was heavy, dark, forbidding and yet it filled her with a secret thrill. She could picture this man taking her, doing a thousand erotic things that would blow her mind and her body apart.

She struggled to respond, but what could she say to the man who’d just changed her life with one mind-blowing kiss and talked to her about how he could make a woman moan with pleasure? Had she really just made out with a complete and total stranger? She needed to do something, anything, to lessen the suddenly awkward moment.

She thrust out her hand and said, “I’m Katherine Roberts, but everyone calls me Kat.” It felt silly to introduce herself after the kiss they’d shared, but she did it anyway.

The man stared at her hand and then took it, raising it to his lips rather than shaking it. He brushed his mouth over the backs of her knuckles in a caress, like an old world prince greeting a lady. Her heart fluttered inside her chest at the little romantic act. She’d never met a man who’d done that before, and it made her imagine what it might feel like to have his lips on other parts of her body.

“Tristan Kingsley. It’s been quite the pleasure meeting you.”