A large, warm hand curled around Serena’s waist. Her breath whooshed out in surprise as she was spun around, but when she looked up at the guy who was holding on to her, she momentarily forgot about the need to breathe at all.

Because he had the most striking green eyes she’d ever seen.

She knew she probably should have told the stranger to take his hands off her. And she should already have been pushing out of his arms, too. But when he smiled down at her and said, “Hi,” she was so drawn by his incredible magnetism that she simply echoed him.

“Hi.”

“Damn,” he said in a low voice that rippled up her spine, then down to her toes, “you’re beautiful.”

For all the times that Serena had been told she was beautiful during the course of her modeling career, it had never meant as much to her as it did right then, from the lips of a gorgeous stranger holding her in his arms.

Maybe that was why her reply made its way past her brain to her lips. “So are you.”

Again, his smile flashed, but a moment later it was gone. That was when she belatedly realized that neither smile had reached his eyes. And when she looked more closely into the green depths, the twisted-up torment she saw in them had her instinctively raising her hand to his cheek.

“Whatever happened,” she said softly, so close to his lips that she could almost taste them, “I’m sorry.”

Pain flashed through his eyes before a brutal sound tore from his throat, pain so intense that she swore she could feel it herself. The next thing she knew, his mouth was on hers, claiming her lips in a way no one ever had as he pulled her closer against him.

Time and again, she’d read books about passion so deep that the characters would throw away everything in their lives for it. Only, no matter how skilled the author, she’d never really understood it. So even though her mother had warned her over and over, all the way back to when she was a very little girl, that she should never, ever let herself be seduced and enthralled by a man’s pretty words or caresses, Serena hadn’t worried about it. Not when it had always felt like any passion, any heat, she gave off for the cameras was all for show. Inside, she’d worried that she’d always feel frozen.

But this—the thrill bumps rising across the surface of her skin, the way her tongue instinctively licked out to stroke his, the perfect fit of her curves and softness against his muscles and strength—this was the kind of passion people threw away perfectly good lives for. And it was no wonder, when just kissing him could make her feel this way.

Like she was thawing from the inside out.

Serena couldn’t believe how good it felt to be in his arms and how quickly his kiss was heating up her body. And as he showed her the passion, the wild heat, and the wonder that she’d been seeking for so long, instead of stopping him or pushing him away, she moved even closer between his strong thighs and twined her fingers into his soft, dark hair to keep his mouth against hers.

On a groan, he captured her mouth more deeply. For a few perfect moments, they were equal partners in passion. He wasn’t leading and she wasn’t following. They were both simply taking and giving to each other exactly what they needed.

A break from the cold.

A reminder of what it was to feel alive, completely alive.

And a chance to forget what they each needed to forget.

For herself, all she wanted was to forget that her life had never been hers, not until she’d set foot on this campus. And for him? Well, it was obvious that whatever it was that he needed to forget had wounded him deeply. Very deeply.