Taming of the Beast (Scandalous Affairs #2) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,93

squeezed.

A guttural groan climbed from his chest, and he increased his cadence. “Come for me,” he demanded harshly, his words a plea as much as a command. “Take your pleasure. Come,” he repeated, and her entire body stiffened, and with a loud, wanton scream buried in his kiss, she shouted her release and came.

A pleasure unlike she’d ever known, unlike she’d ever known was possible, curled her toes and ripped all the way through her, and she gave herself freely over to it.

And then, with a gasp, she collapsed.

Tynan continued thrusting inside her.

“It’s so good,” he gritted out. “You’re so damned good.”

“Mmm,” she moaned. She wrapped her arms about him, gliding her nails over his back, encouraging him on to his release.

And then he stiffened. With a low, guttural groan, he pulled out and spent himself onto her belly; marking her.

He collapsed atop her, just catching himself with his elbows to keep from crushing her. Her eyes heavy and her breath coming quick and hard, she wrapped her arms about him, stroking her fingers along the muscled planes of his back and his corded shoulders.

She never wanted this moment with him to end.

Nay, that wasn’t altogether accurate. She didn’t want any of her time with this man to end. But she wanted this instant to go on longer. Wrapped in each other’s arms, sated lovers in a world where only the two of them existed.

Invariably, though, reality reared its ugly head.

And she knew the moment she’d lost him. She felt it in the way his shoulder blades pulled together and in the way his body stiffened over hers.

“Christ,” he hissed. Sitting up in one fluid motion and setting her down beside him on the sofa, he drew back like he’d caught fire from touching her. “You were a virgin, Faye.”

She forced a smile, the muscle movement feeling weak. “Yes, I think we sorted all that out.”

“This isn’t a damned game,” he bit out. “How…? I thought…”

“That I was experienced?” she finished for him. “I found a forbidden book. It was most enlightening.”

He seethed, fury rolling off his frame in waves. Grabbing a kerchief from his jacket, he wiped the remnants of his seed from her belly.

There were more shades of the icy stranger she’d first struck up an unwanted-for-him partnership with, and her heart ached, calling out for the man whom she’d come to be friends with… and lovers.

And yet, despite his palpable fury, there was a gentleness to his touch.

Cursing, he sat forward and swiped his servant uniform off the floor. She might as well have been invisible to him. And she hated it, even as invisibility had become something of her power these years. People didn’t see her.

Tynan, however, had been the first and only one to truly see her.

Coming up on her knees beside him, she wrapped her arms about his waist and rested her chin atop his shoulder.

He tensed, but met her touch with more of his stony silence.

“Why does it have to matter, Tynan?” she asked softly.

Christ in heaven.

She’d been a virgin.

Yes, she’d kissed with abandon and taken him in her mouth and given him a pleasure he’d never known.

But there’d also been clearer shades of her innocence—the initial hesitancy of their first kiss which she’d quickly abandoned and thrown herself freely into.

He’d simply let himself see what he wished. Because he’d wanted this moment. He’d wanted to take her just as he had, rough and hard and fast, as she’d urged him to.

No, ultimately, the signs had been there. He’d just selfishly chosen to ignore them.

“Tynan?” She spoke his name with a hesitancy he’d never before heard from her.

Why does it have to matter? the lady had asked.

“It matters,” he gritted out, drawing away from her touch.

Grabbing a kerchief, he gently cleaned between her legs with a tenderness that threatened to undo her.

She arched a perfectly formed dark eyebrow. “Were you a virgin?” she asked when he’d finished.

“Was I…?” What she’d asked and what she’d implied hit him. “I… no,” he said tightly.

“Hmph.” She folded her arms at her small chest, plumping that flesh he’d been worshiping just moments ago. “Then I hardly think you have grounds to talk, Mr. Wylie,” she said archly, interrupting the stirrings of his renewed lust.

“It’s not the same, Faye.”

“Oh, this I’d like to hear,” she muttered as she hopped up and shoved her night skirts down.

She really didn’t know.

Because she really was that innocent. And naïve.

And nay, that wasn’t the sole reason. It was because she belonged to