Free The Mammoth Book of Regency Romance by Candice Hern, Bárbara Metzger, Emma Wildes, Sharon Page, Delilah Marvelle, Anna Campbell, Lorraine Heath, Elizabeth Boyle, Deborah Raleigh, Margo Maguire, Michèle Ann Young, Sara Bennett, Anthea Lawson, Trisha Telep, Robyn DeHart, Carolyn Jewel, Amanda Grange, Vanessa Kelly, Patricia Rice, Christie Kelley, Leah Ball, Caroline Linden, Shirley Kennedy, Julia Templeton Page A

surprised gasp of pleasure was his reward. He drew harder on the nipple and ran his hand down the soft plain of her belly to the curls at the juncture of her thighs.
    She was already damp. This slow seduction worked its magic on his wife too. He took her other nipple between his lips and nipped gently at the crest. She shifted restlessly under his hand and he caught the scent of her arousal. She buried her fingers in his hair, urging him closer.
    He needed no further encouragement. But even as he licked and bit and suckled, let his hands roam her soft skin, some trace of reason lingered. She wasn’t ready yet, however her touch and her sighs of pleasure urged him to further depredations. He kept coming back to her mouth. He had ten years of kisses to make up for. Each kiss was hotter than the last.
    “You’re wearing too many clothes,” she said in a broken voice.
    “Whereas you’re dressed just right,” he whispered with a low laugh, tasting her breast again.
    She’d been lovely as a girl, fresh and dewy and as rich with promise as a furled rose. But the woman in his arms now took his breath away.
    With every minute, he felt her confidence increase. When she dragged his shirt up from his breeches, her touch on his naked back shot lightning behind his eyes.
    “Sebastian, I want to see you.”
    He couldn’t remain immune to her pleading. He rolled off the bed and tore his clothes off, flinging them into the corner in his haste. Then he paused, wondering if he should have been more circumspect. Would the sight of his rampant nakedness terrify his wife? When she was a girl, his unabashed maleness had frightened her. Could that have changed?
    She slid up against the headboard, making no pretence at modesty by covering herself with the sheet. Dear Lord, she was a sight to set any man’s passions afire. Her face was flushed, her lips were full and red, her body was a symphony of curves and hollows. Her thick golden hair cascaded around her shoulders, teasingly covering one breast and leaving the other bare. Kinvarra felt himself grow harder, larger, needier.
    Her eyes widened as her inspection continued down past his chest and belly. Hell, what would he do if she stopped him now?
    Could he stop?
    Yes, something inside him insisted.
    “You’re magnificent,” she said softly, her eyes glinting blue fire under their heavy lids.
    She sent him a smile of such joy that his foolish heart performed another somersault. She’d always been able to confound him with a word. Ten years without her hadn’t changed that. She stretched out one hand in invitation. To his astonishment, she wasn’t shaking. All her earlier uncertainty seemed to have vanished.
    “Come to me, my husband.”
    Alicia watched the expressions cross Kinvarra’s striking face. Somewhere in the last years, she’d learned to read him. When they’d first married, she hadn’t known how to pierce the shell of physical perfection to reach the man beneath. He’d seemed a godlike creature, too far above mere mortals for her to feel worthy of being his wife.
    But the man who stood before her now, superb in his nakedness, was all too human.
    For all his strength and beauty, he was vulnerable. How had she never seen that before?
    Tonight she’d learned that he blamed himself for their marital difficulties. How odd, when finally she admitted that she’d been at least as much at fault as he in the disaster that had been their early married life. She’d been spoilt, demanding, headstrong, too quick to take umbrage, too slow to offer understanding.
    Tonight she surveyed her husband’s powerful body and felt a woman’s desire. And a woman’s ability to forgive. Sensual need raged in her blood, made her heart pump with eagerness to know this man’s possession. Fear lurked too but she refused to acknowledge it.
    As she watched his face, she recognized he was still unsure of her, unaware how she’d changed. He didn’t know that, after a long and difficult road,