Beauty Tempts the Beast (Sins for All Seasons #6) - Lorraine Heath Page 0,93

docks was responsible for shaping a good bit of you. You’re so firm, so taut.”

His task done, he combed his fingers through the long, silken strands he’d set free. “You’re so soft.”

Bringing his hands around, he cradled the underside of her jaw against the edge of his palms, tilted up her face, and claimed her mouth for his own.

The kiss was not a gentle thing. It was wild and hungry from too many nights of abstinence. The fever of it grew when his hands glided over her back, pushing her forward so her bare breasts flattened against his bare chest. She moaned low at the silkiness, the heat, the intimacy. How many women knew the glorious sensation of their skin touching his?

He towered over her. She should have felt small, a shrub in the shadow of a mighty oak. Instead, she felt powerful, more in control than she’d ever been. They were giving and taking in equal measure. While his experience far exceeded hers, he gave her no cause to believe he found her any less pleasing than she found him.

While his mouth moved provocatively over hers, she glided her hands up over his shoulders, kneading the hard muscles that bunched and relaxed as his hands swept down the length of her back to finally close over her buttocks and squeeze. She rose up on her toes and took her hands higher, up the tense cords of his neck—

His fingers closed over one of her hands and he carried it down to the front of his trousers, cupping it against the hard bulge that was an aphrodisiac to her senses. If size was any indication, he wanted her badly. Groaning low, never taking his mouth from hers, he guided her hand up the lengthy shaft and down.

“Unbutton me,” he rasped against her lips before reclaiming the mouth he’d temporarily deserted.

Her other hand joining the first, she set herself to the task. Her fingers trembled not from fear, but from excitement. When his cock sprang free, the heat of it surprised her, as did the silkiness. She glided both hands along its length, his groan nearly feral in its intensity.

“Halt.” He sounded as though he were on the cusp of dying.

She did as he bade. He shoved down his trousers, kicked them off to the side, reached for her—

“Halt,” she ordered.

He did, his breathing harsh and heavy. The firelight was at his back, giving her a view of him that was largely lost to shadows. “I want to see you more clearly.”

Taking his hand, she turned them, so they traded places, and he was more fully revealed to her. The orange light danced over his skin, highlighting the contours of muscle, the flatness of his stomach, a hideous raised welt at his side. She touched her fingers to the mottled scar. “How did you come to have this?”

“Knife.”

Which told her very little. “Did someone attack you?”

“It was a long time ago. It doesn’t hurt.”

But it had at one time. It was three or four inches long. It looked angry, and her own anger ignited with the knowledge that someone had wished him harm, that he might have been taken from her before she’d ever even had an opportunity to know him. “Why?”

“It’s not important, and it’s certainly not conducive to seduction.”

Determined to know the answer, she lifted her gaze to his. “Why would someone want to hurt you like this?”

He released a long, drawn-out sigh, obviously coming to the conclusion that she wasn’t going to let this matter go. “I’d taken from him his doxies, let rooms for them so they could work in relative safety, and kept watch over them. He took exception to my meddling.”

She had little doubt one of those doxies had been Sally Greene. “I hope you saw to it that he regretted hurting you.”

“I believe it’s safe to assume he did come to regret it.”

Lowering herself to a crouch, she kissed one end of the ragged line where a knife had torn into his flesh, the center of it, the other end. With each touch of her lips, she felt a quiver go through him, saw the tight muscles in his stomach jump. “I hate that anyone ever hurt you.”

He cradled the back of her head. “Wounds of the flesh heal much easier than wounds of the heart. If it was possible, I would take upon myself the pain others have inflicted on you.”

She didn’t know if anyone had ever uttered sweeter words to her, but