Playing With Fire (Phoenix Fire #3)(65)
Author: Cynthia Eden

Just kiss me, he’d said, but no smile had lifted his lips.

Yeah, right, I’ll just go through the flames and put my mouth on yours. She’d been mocking at the time.

Cassie swallowed. She wasn’t exactly flush with options. “Remember me,” she whispered, then she closed the distance between them. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and rose onto her tiptoes. Her lips pressed to his.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

She tasted of sweetness and sin. Her lips were soft and open beneath his, and her tongue pushed lightly into his mouth.

Mine. It was the thought he’d had when he’d first seen her, surrounded by his flames.

And it was the same thought he had as he tasted her.

His hands were around her, holding her tight, pressing her harder against him. She wore clothes. He didn’t. His had been—burned away?

He tried to grab for the memories, but they were just out of reach. All he could remember was fury and fire and—

My need for her.

He deepened the kiss, taking more from her, desperate for that sweet sin. He lifted her up against him so he could control the kiss.

Control her.

She was important, this woman with the dark hair and the green eyes that had shone with her fear, even as she called out to him.

Dante.

His name. He’d known it when it came from her lips.

He thrust his tongue into her mouth. Wanted to thrust into her.

But that alarm was still shrieking, and water was shooting down on them in this room, too.

He lifted his head. Didn’t let her go.

The water soaked her, him, but the cool liquid didn’t stop his fire. Only he could stop that.

“If . . . if you don’t put out the flames, I could die,” she told him, her voice husky.

He killed the flames.

The water continued to pour down on them.

“Th-thank you.” Her voice was . . . soothing.

The phoenix liked it. Wanted to hear more.

“We need to get out of here. We have . . . enemies close by. We have to run, Dante. Do you understand that? We have to run.”

He didn’t want to run. He wanted to f**k. Her.

Her gaze searched his. “Tell me that you’re starting to remember.”

Fire. Screams. Hell.

“Not yet, huh?” She exhaled and rolled her shoulders back. “Okay. At least I’m still alive and the fire’s out. We’ll just do this one step at a time.”

She tried to pull away.

He yanked her right back against him and kissed her again. Harder. Deeper.

He wanted more of the sin.

She kissed him back, her tongue sliding against his, and the lust burned through him as powerfully as the flames. He would take her there. Learn all of her, experience—

Her hands shoved against him. “We can’t! We’re in danger here!”

She’s in danger?

“Our enemies will find a way to get to us if we don’t move. I told you, we have got to get out of here.”

He wasn’t worried about enemies, but he didn’t want her afraid.

“We have to go now,” she said, her voice seeming to echo with desperation, and he was powerless to refuse her.

She took his hand and rushed toward the smoldering doors. “There’s a secret tunnel.” She stopped and coughed. The smoke was thick. “We need to get to that tunnel, but—” She spun back toward Dante, eyes wide. “Vaughn!”

She was pushing Dante aside. Typing on a computer and staring at the screens around her, even as the water continued to soak her clothes and skin. “He’s not here,” she whispered, shaking her head. “He has to be . . . the tunnel. ”

Dante saw what she was viewing. A man with dark hair was running through a small opening in the wall.

“He got out, but we’ve got to stop him! We can’t let him bite anyone.”

Bite?

“Let’s go!” She grabbed Dante’s arm again. Trying to pull him.

He frowned at her. “Mine.”

She slapped her chest. “Cassie, okay? Just call me Cassie and let’s get out of here.”

He’d rather call her his.

But he ran with her through the doors and down the hallway. Her wet clothes clung tightly to her body, and his gaze fell on her ass.

“Focus!” she called back to him. “Dante—here.” She tossed him a pair of jeans that she’d just jerked from some type of storage locker.

He pulled on the jeans. She stared at him a moment, and he saw the same fear lurking in her gaze once more.

He didn’t want her to be afraid. Not ever.

“Stay with me.” Her stare held his.

Always.

They ran, twisting through the halls, and he soon found himself in front of the same narrow entrance that he’d seen on her computer screen.

I remember computers. I remember alarms. He knew what all of those things were. Why not her?

But he did remember her . . . Cassie’s taste had been familiar to him.

She slipped into the tunnel first, and he followed right behind her. Though it took a bit more maneuvering for him to slide through that narrow entrance.

“Charles and Jamie left the door open,” she murmured. “That’s how Vaughn saw it. He’s in here somewhere, so stay on guard.”

She yanked the tunnel door closed behind them.

Instantly, they were in darkness.

He could see perfectly.

He heard her sharp gasp.

“Your eyes are still burning.”

His beast was very much in control. He wanted to burn and destroy everything in sight but she was keeping him in check.

“You can see, can’t you?” she whispered. She’d put her hands on the left wall and was carefully walking forward in the dark.

“Yes.”

“Good. Because if you see a very hungry vampire coming toward us, give a warning shout, okay?”

Dante saw no point in bothering with such a shout. “I’ll just burn him.”

“Ah . . . he’s kind of a friend. So focus on the shout.” She stumbled, righted herself, and kept going. “The tunnel is half a mile in length. Once we get clear, we’ll hit the woods and try to find some transportation.”

Transportation, in the woods?

Her breathing seemed loud in the tunnel. Fear still rode her heavily, and he didn’t want that. He reached out for her, curling his fingers over her shoulder.

He heard a loud boom from behind them—and the whole tunnel started to shake.

“Was that an explosion?” Cassie whispered. Debris began to rain down on them.

From the sound of things, yes, it had been an explosion, and the tunnel was collapsing. Giant chunks of the ceiling hit the ground.