“Christ, Catriona,” he breathed. “I didn’t think you could get any prettier than you already were.”
She kept her eyes squeezed shut and bit her bottom lip, both dreading and anticipating what was to come. But she did not anticipate her shiver of pure delight as his lips found the exquisitely sensitive spot on the inside of her knee.
She gasped as the moist heat of his mouth flowered against her flesh, tracing a tingling path up her quivering thigh. His hands encircled her ankles like a pair of velvet-covered manacles, luring her legs even farther apart, making her even more vulnerable to the enticing seduction of those kisses. He kissed his way up each creamy thigh in turn until her every breath was a sigh and her thighs were falling open of their own accord.
Catriona was so dazed she didn’t realize his hands had left her ankles until she felt one of them gently brush the damp nest of curls between her thighs. She gasped as he delved deeper, spreading the tender pink petals he found there until he could dip one finger into the nectar welling between them.
“Oh!” Her eyes flew open as a sob of raw pleasure shuddered through her. She tried to sit up, but he seemed to be holding her pinned to the earth with nothing more than the weight of that one finger. “What are you doing to me?”
Simon lifted his head to meet her eyes, the beautiful planes of his face both hard and hungry. “Exactly what you asked me to do. I’m taking my pleasure.”
With that, he lowered his head and put his mouth on her. Catriona moaned deep in her throat and arched off the blanket, but there was nowhere she could go to escape the bliss he would give her. After only a few strokes of his nimble tongue, she was arching into his mouth instead of away from it. She dug her fingernails into the blankets and whipped her head from side to side, rendered both blind and incoherent with need as he mated her with his mouth, using his tongue to take full possession of her.
Simon wasn’t just taking his pleasure. He was taking her will and making it his own. He was taking her heart and shattering every wall she had erected around it. He was taking her soul and giving it a taste of heaven that would haunt her to the end of her days.
The sweet, hot flicker of his tongue over the swollen bud at the crux of her curls was like a living flame whipping her into a fever of lust. When she tried to writhe away from it, he curved his big, warm hands around her bottom and held her still, forcing the flames even higher. At the exact moment they threatened to consume her, he closed his mouth around that tender bud and gently suckled, sending a rush of unspeakable rapture cascading through every nerve ending of her body.
It seemed to roll on and on, as did her broken wail of surrender.
Feeling as if she’d been flung up to the heavens to touch the stars, then dropped to float gently back to earth, Catriona slowly opened her eyes.
Simon was gazing down at her, the glint of triumph in his eyes unmistakable.
She lifted a hand to his cheek, unable to stop herself from touching him. Eyeing him solemnly, she said, “I was right about you. You’re an unscrupulous villain without an ounce of honor in your heart.”
“That may be true, sweetheart,” he whispered, cupping her face in his hands. “But tonight I’m also your husband.”
As his mouth came down on hers, feeding her an intoxicating taste of her own pleasure, she tangled her hands in the wheaten silk of his hair and kissed him back, wrenching a groan from deep in his throat.
Taking his groan for the invitation it was, she shoved the shirt from his shoulders, allowing herself to revel in touching him as she’d always dreamed of doing. He was a male marvel of sinew knitted over muscle—warm and smooth, supple and strong.
Desperate to taste what she was touching, she tore her mouth away from his kiss and pressed it over his heart. He tasted salty and unbearably sweet all at the same time. Her greedy tongue couldn’t get enough of him.
After shedding his shirt with an impatient shrug of his broad shoulders, he dragged her to a half-sitting position and tugged her nightdress over her head.
He gazed down at the pale globes of her breasts with an oddly beguiling combination of reverence and lust. “I don’t think even your beloved Robbie Burns ever composed any poetry worthy of such a sight.” He lifted his eyes to her face, the corner of his mouth curving in a rakish grin. “But perhaps you’ll let me put my own tongue to the task.”
As he leaned down and circled one blushing nipple with the very tip of his tongue, Catriona discovered she had neither the will nor the desire to refuse him. Her head fell back in surrender as he proved once again just how eloquent that tongue could be.
Without wasting a single word, he lavished attention on each of her breasts in turn, using the taut flick of his tongue, the moist heat of his lips, the gentle scrape of his teeth, to compose a glorious sonnet to her feminine charms. She could only clutch at his hair and clench her thighs together when he drew one of her nipples into his mouth and suckled her deep and hard, skirting the boundary between pleasure and pain and sending a shadow of that earlier delight rippling through her womb.
His equally accomplished hands stripped away his trousers. Before she could steal so much as a peek at what he had revealed, he gathered her tenderly into his arms and laid her back on that bed of blankets and moss, pressing his naked body to hers and drinking one kiss after another from her lips.
There was something timeless about being here in the moonlight in this place. In this man’s arms. With their breath mingling in wordless sighs and their naked limbs entwined, they might have been any lord and lady throughout all of history, drunk with the carnal pleasures of love and all of its intoxicating possibilities.
When he pulled away from her, she clutched at the smooth muscles of his back in protest.
“It’s all right,” he murmured, pressing a soothing kiss to her temple. He reached up to a shelf created from a fallen stone and retrieved a small lacquered box. He lifted the lid to reveal a delicate glass flask nestled on a bed of silk. As he drew out its stopper, the rich exotic smell of myrrh scented the air, mingling with the heady musk of his own desire.
“I’m afraid I can’t make myself smaller for you, since you’ve had the opposite effect on me since the moment you walked into my jail cell. But I can”—he dragged the cool, hard stopper between the flushed softness of her breasts, leaving a glistening trail of oil—“ease things along.”
As his meaning became clear, Catriona both blushed and scowled. “I suppose you carry that around in your portmanteau just in case you run across a virgin you’d like to seduce.” Utterly fascinated, she watched the faintest hint of color creep across his high cheekbones. “Why, Mr. Wescott, are you blushing?”
Simon blew out a sigh and raked a hand through his hair. “I’m going to share a deep, dark secret with you that could very likely ruin my reputation if it got out.” Leaning down to her ear, he whispered, “I’ve never had a virgin before.”
Her eyes widened in disbelief. “Truly?”
He nodded solemnly. “You’re my first.”
She smiled, feeling ridiculously pleased by the revelation. “I suppose that makes you something of a virgin yourself.” Patting his chest, she said, “Don’t worry. I’ll strive to be gentle with you.”
“Please don’t,” he growled, catching her lower lip between his teeth and giving it a tantalizing little tug.
She thought he might smear a bit of the oil on his fingers, but he surprised her by tilting the bottle and pouring it freely over her belly and thighs.
“Oh!” she exclaimed as the oil began to trickle between them.
Led by his thumbs, Simon’s hands followed its path, gliding downward over the incredibly sensitive hollows just above her hipbones, stroking upward until her thighs fell apart. The oil seemed to warm beneath the hypnotic friction of his touch and the sensation of his hands on her made Catriona feel deliciously decadent, like some pampered harem girl or Queen Esther being prepared for the King’s pleasure.
He kept up that maddening circling and stroking until the whole world narrowed down to that silky little triangle between her legs. The one place he wasn’t touching.
He had told her once that if she would give him ten minutes, he would make her beg.
But it had taken less than five. “Please, Simon,” she moaned, dying for his touch. “Oh, please…” She turned her face into her hair, but there was no place to hide from this terrible wanting.
He was not without mercy. At her breathless urging, he used both of his thumbs to part those silky curls and follow the glistening path all the way down to its ultimate destination.
He used the pad of one thumb to stroke the oil around the mouth of that fragile opening. She could feel herself blooming like a flower beneath the kiss of the sun, eager to take whatever he would give her.
She bit back a sob of pleasure. “Is this one of those creative perversions you’ve been known to practice?”
“No, but this is,” he whispered, sliding that thumb deep inside of her.
Catriona let out a low moan, as if her very soul were being torn from her in exchange for some unspeakable pleasure. Aided by both the oil and the tears of joy her own body was weeping, he slid his thumb in and out of her, ravishing her tenderly but thoroughly in a bold imitation of what was to come.
And still he wasn’t done with her. Just when Catriona thought she might very well swoon from the primal power of it all, he brushed his forefinger ever so lightly against that swollen bud he had suckled earlier. That was all it took for her body to erupt in a fresh rush of ecstasy.
The tremors of delight were still coursing through her when he withdrew his thumb from her, leaving a raw emptiness that ached to be filled. As she felt the solid weight of his manhood against her thigh, she knew he intended to do just that.
Suddenly it didn’t matter how many women he had bedded in the past. Tonight he was hers. Only hers. All hers.
The thought made her feel both wild and bold. “Wait,” she commanded.
His startled gaze flew to her face. His voice was hoarse, barely recognizable as his own. “If you’ve decided not to abide by our bargain, you’d best tell me now.”
She reached for the bottle of oil, poured a generous amount over her palms, then reached for him. He threw back his head and sucked in an agonized breath as her small hands struggled to enfold him. She used both hands to smooth the oil over his rigid shaft, as stunned by the length and breadth of him as she was beguiled by the flickers of rapture that danced over his face in the moonlight. His eyes were closed and his lips pulled back from his teeth in an expression that was both feral and beautiful.
She was boldly stroking the oil over every inch of him when he captured both of her wrists in a viselike grip.
“Don’t you like it?” she asked, unable to hide her dismay.
“That’s the problem, angel,” he murmured, easing her to her back and covering her with his shadow. “I like it far too much. And if you keep doing
that
, I’m not going to be able to do…
this
.”
She gasped with shock as he sheathed himself in her all the way to the hilt in one masterful stroke. She suffered a sharp pain as if he’d cleaved her with a genuine blade.
Despite all of his efforts to prepare her, her untried body could barely contain him.
He kissed her sweat-dampened brow, breathing as if he’d been running for a very long time. “I’m sorry, sweeting. I swear I only wanted to give you pleasure, not pain.”
She let out a disgruntled little snuffle. “I think I liked your thumb better.”
He cupped her face in his hands and gazed down at her, his eyes glowing with a fierce tenderness that made her heart clutch. “I promise to do everything in my power to change your mind about that.”
Knowing that was one promise he would delight in keeping, Simon braced his weight on both hands and began to move within her. She was exquisitely tight. Exquisitely hot.
Exquisitely his. It wasn’t as if she was the first virgin he’d ever had. It was as if she was the first woman he’d ever had, the only woman he would ever want.
He took her with long, deep, slow strokes, gliding in and out of her as if he had all night to devote to the act. Although he would have liked nothing more than to close his eyes and surrender to sensation, he couldn’t resist watching her face as her pain began to melt into flickers of delight.
Before long, her lips were parted in a soundless sigh, her cheeks were flushed, her eyes glazed with pleasure. When she began to lift her hips to answer each of his thrusts with one of her own, Simon had to squeeze his eyes shut and clench his teeth against a ragged moan, in danger of losing his legendary mastery over his own needs.
Catriona ran her hands over Simon’s sweat-sheened chest, marveling that she could be joined to such a beautiful male creature. The throbbing between her legs had faded to a dull ache that only made her more exquisitely sensitive to the friction between their bodies.
Both Aunt Margaret and Cousin Georgina had led her to believe that kisses, caresses, and whispered endearments were to be desired, but the marriage act itself was something to be stoically endured—the price a woman must pay for a man’s affection.
But apparently someone had failed to tell Simon that, because the pleasure he was giving her now was even deeper and more powerful than the bliss he had offered her with his mouth and hands. She felt taken. Possessed. As if she might never truly be her own again.