Winner Takes All - Anna Harrington Page 0,22

to place a lingering kiss to her ear. “The first time I realized that you were more than just a viscount’s spoiled daughter,” he confessed in a hot murmur as he flicked the tip of his tongue against her earlobe, “was the morning when you were riding a chestnut gelding who decided to buck you off.”

The memory fought for space in her mind with the delicious sensations his hands created inside her as they swept up her body to cup her breasts through the thin shift.

“You didn’t scream in fear or cry out for help. You brought the horse under control yourself.” As he caressed her breasts and caused her nipples to harden, he gave a long lick around the outer curl of her ear that made her shiver. “You were so quick and confident, so sure in your seat and skills.”

She tilted back her head to give him more room to place hot, open-mouthed kisses down her neck and arched herself into his hands as they teased at her breasts. “I was terrified.”

“You never let it show.” His lips brushed down her neck and across her collarbone. “Instead of being afraid to ride the horse again or taking a whip to him, you worked with him…slowly, calmly.”

When the strap of her shift blocked his way, he gently nudged it off her shoulder with his mouth and down her arm to expose her right breast to his searching lips. He closed his mouth over her nipple and sucked.

She gasped and stiffened beneath his ministrations for only a moment before softening. With a long sigh, she ran her fingers through his hair, keeping his mouth on her even as his hands caressed teasingly over her legs. They slipped down to brush along her bare inner thighs until he caressed the folds at her aching center. His thumbs traced over her in a wanton pattern of exploration and desire, and with each pass, his fingers delved deeper, making her soaked and heated and tingling.

He mumbled against her breast, “You spent time with that horse until he did everything you asked of him.”

“I couldn’t…let him think,” she panted out as his fingertip tantalizingly circled her throbbing core, “that he’d won…”

“Of course not.” He smiled against her breast and slipped his finger inside her.

“Jack!” Her hands gripped his hair as the delicious sensation of having him inside her shot through her, and when he began to slide decadently in and out with long, slow strokes…“Oh, Jack….”

With a shuddering moan, she shifted back on the saddle to tilt her hips toward him and claim the pleasure he was giving to her. The aching tingles inside her flamed in both intensity and frequency, yet shamelessly she craved more.

A second finger slipped inside with the first and doubled the wonderful sensation each silken slide in and out shivered through her. Her soft folds throbbed around him, in such hard and echoing beats of her heart that she was certain he could feel her desire for him at his fingertips.

He’d done this to her once before, all those years ago in their hidden cottage at Willow Wood. She knew what to expect, knew how her body would clench around his fingers and bear down, to eventually break with a wave of delight that rushed over her and out to her fingers and toes. She yearned for it with every stroke into her tight warmth, and a begging whimper fell from her lips.

“So you convinced him to trust you,” he rasped out as he lifted his head from her bare breast, “slowly but surely, until you’d broken him. Until you’d tamed him completely.”

When he slipped his fingers out from her warmth and moved his hand away from her, she cried out at the loss, and her arms and legs tightened their hold around him. No! He couldn’t leave her. Not now, not after all these years—

But he didn’t leave. Instead, he lowered himself slowly onto his knees in front of her, her trembling thighs still open wide around his broad shoulders. Her heart leapt into her throat. They’d done this before, too, just once on the night before he left. It had nearly undone her then, to have his mouth on her so intimately yet not be able to have him fully the way her body and heart longed for. If she couldn’t have him tonight, the loss would simply end her.

He stared up the length of her body into her eyes, and the comforting reassurance she saw in