Taming of the Beast (Scandalous Affairs #2) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,84

light in his eyes. Catching the fabric of his shirt, she dragged him closer and drew herself up so she could erase more of the distance between them. “I want to touch you,” she whispered. “And kiss you.” As he’d kissed her.

His eyes darkened. Desire lent those cobalt depths a shade that was very nearly black.

He slid his hands under her, cupping her buttocks and pulling a startled little gasp from her. “If I were a gentleman, I’d reject that offer, sweet,” he said harshly. “But I’m no gentleman. I’m just a man born to the streets, and I want you.”

“I don’t care about any of that,” she whispered. “I—”

He swallowed those assurances with his kiss, and she tasted herself on him, a mix of salt and musk, all the more delicious for how her scent was contained within his kiss.

As they mated with their mouths, Faye dragged his shirt from the waist of his trousers and slid it up. The lawn fabric made a brief barrier between their mouths as she worked the garment over his head, and then his chest was bare to her, naked for her to touch and explore.

Faye ran her fingers over him, caressing the contours of his muscles and then the hard, firm ridges of his flat, toned stomach.

Drawing her mouth from his, she pulled back so she might take in all of him, not just with her touch, but her gaze.

His chest was lightly scarred with faint little marks and nicks.

She trailed one of the longer scars with the tip of her finger, tracing that puckered, white flesh as reality reared its head, intruding in the passion game they played. He’d been hurt. Someone had hurt him. Likely any number of someones, and perhaps if she were a different woman, a lady like the women of Polite Society, she would have felt a proper tenderness and not this visceral rage that tightened her stomach and wound through her like a serpent’s venom. This, a different desire, was a desire to destroy the ones who’d hurt him.

“Who did this to you?” she demanded.

“Going to hunt them down and hurt them for the affront, kitten?” he drawled, his voice harsh as his breath came fast and hard.

“I’d like to, you know,” she confessed, and Faye ran a fingertip gently, tenderly over a scar that slashed across the flat, round disk of his nipple. Even as she did, she lowered her mouth to kiss the bottom of that jagged mark upon him.

A hiss exploded through Tynan’s teeth, and he caught her wrist hard in his grip.

She raised her gaze and then followed his movements as he dragged her hand to his lips and placed a kiss at the place where her hand met her wrist, that delicate place where green veins interconnected and her pulse pounded in a beat only for him.

And then, lowering her spare hand, Faye gave herself over to something far greater than curiosity—need.

She cupped his hard length, the part of him that tented his trousers.

He groaned. His eyes instantly closed, and she reveled in this new power born of sexual freedom.

Emboldened, she traced the hard ridge.

With a growl, his movements jerky and unrestrained, he reached between them and freed the front fall of his trousers.

His manhood immediately sprang forth, as if that enormous flesh exulted in a freedom of its own. Faye wrapped him in a light fist, the feel of him an unlikely mix of satin and steel. And as that book had advised, as it had said men so loved, she moved her fist over him, pumping his shaft.

A long, primitive, animalistic groan spilled from Tynan, and his shoulders rolled forward as his entire body slumped slightly.

“Here,” she murmured, and guiding him back as he had her, she reversed their positions and pushed him onto the edge of the table. She again took him in her fist and resumed stroking, working him slowly at first and then, as the motion grew more familiar, with a greater firmness and increased speed. He closed his eyes, a little groan escaping him as he gave himself over to Faye, and she rejoiced in his surrender. Tynan lifted his hips in time to her touch. With every stroke, his breathing grew more and more labored.

A familiar ache settled between her legs. The evidence of his pleasure and the power in being the one to provide it for him brought her desire roaring back to life. Reflexively, as she pumped him in her fist, her