Taming of the Beast (Scandalous Affairs #2) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,82

emerged gravelly and coarse.

She held his gaze with her own. “Oh, I know, Tynan,” she breathed. “I know.” As if to prove that very commitment to boldness, she traced the ridges of his pectoral muscles.

Releasing her hand, he glided a hand down the side of her trim waist, continuing lower until he stroked her hip. Then, using both hands, he gripped her hips firmly, his fingers sinking into that soft flesh as he drew her closer to the vee between his legs.

A whispery gasp—surprise? desire?—filtered from her bow-shaped lips.

“What do you want me to do?” he countered, whispering that question against her mouth.

“I think it is more what I want to do,” she said, her lilting voice breathless and sultry sin, all wrapped up in the delicious gift of desire. Hers was the most glorious of invitations. And then, going up on tiptoe, she kissed him.

Hard.

She kissed him with all of the abandon and boldness and fire she showed with their every exchange.

She parted her lips and let him inside, lashing her tongue against his. This meeting was raw and unbridled, all molten fire that burned hotter than their embrace in the streets.

Then, he’d been bent on teaching her a lesson.

Now, the student had become the teacher, and he found himself devoured by her. He caught her in his arms, lifting her up, and she immediately wrapped her legs around his waist, clinging to him. She rocked against him.

Never breaking contact with her mouth, he perched her on the table, anchoring her close.

Moaning, Faye lightly nipped him, suckling on the tip of his tongue.

“You are magnificent, Faye Poplar,” he panted between kisses.

She let her head drop back, and he shifted his attention to that long, graceful curve, pressing his lips against a small, tear-shaped birthmark.

Tynan shoved her skirts up and exposed her slender, stocking-clad limbs. He stroked his hands over that satin-soft flesh.

She moaned and arched into him.

Sliding to his knees, he dragged her to the very edge of the table and buried his face between her thighs. He slipped his tongue inside, finding her drenched with desire, the musky taste of her an aphrodisiac. Hungry for more of her, he lapped at her channel.

She cried out.

“Tell me, do you want more of this, love?” he whispered in between strokes.

Tynan asked whether she wished for more and put the decision squarely in her hands.

The properly raised and reared lady was, of course, expected to say no. She was to express horror and shame and disgust, shove him away, lower her skirts, and run as far and fast as her legs could carry her from the wicked Tynan Wylie and all the forbidden pleasures he tempted her with.

And yet, the woman who’d been freed by her desire relished the sense of power and freedom that came in surrendering to her body’s cravings. And having come so close to danger, she now reveled in all the joy that came from being alive.

There was something far more empowering in owning her yearning and allowing herself to know pleasure in all its most unadulterated forms.

Tynan pressed his lips to the inside of her thigh, and she shivered.

As he caressed that sensitive skin with his mouth, trailing a path of kisses up and down, he kept his gaze trained up, locked with hers. His meaning was clear—if she asked him to, he would stop.

Faye panted, lifting her hips wildly against his mouth. “I want this.” Then, gripping him by his head, she guided him to that place she needed him most, and then she held him there.

After all the ways he’d proven contrary, fighting her at every turn, in this he acquiesced, giving Faye precisely what she commanded.

He teased her with his tongue, alternately stroking her and darting that tempting flesh over the little nub there. Then he pressed a finger inside her sheath. Faye bit her lower lip hard enough that she tasted the metallic tinge of blood in her mouth.

The moment that blade had been pressed against her throat, Faye had seen how that incident in the street could end. In that instant, it hadn’t been her life that had played out before her, but rather, her death. She would meet her end with a dagger plunged into her throat, a gruesome, vicious, slow death.

She’d been so very certain that she’d been in the final moments of her life that when it hadn’t come, when she’d been freed and thrust into Tynan’s arms and felt the warm wall of his chest, she’d felt