Free Some Like It Wicked by Teresa Medeiros Page B

very tip of her tongue, showing her exactly what wonders he could work if she would just let him. She moaned, the provocative motion sending a shiver of yearning deep into her womb.
    She might have been able to convince herself she was still dreaming if she hadn’t felt truly awake for the very first time in her life. Her every sense was alive and tingling, a willing slave to the tender mastery of his mouth and hands. It would be all too easy to feign sleep until his seduction of her was complete. To let him bear the blame and the shame of it while she played the innocent victim, despoiled by his uncontrollable lust.

    But her conscience would not allow her the luxury of such a ruse. She might not have the courage to look him in the eye and risk letting him see just how recklessly and faithfully she had loved him or how very long she had waited for this moment, but she could breathe his name into the honeyed chalice of his mouth. She could tangle her hands in the wheaten silk of his hair and kiss him back with an artless fervor that betrayed a lifetime of longing.
    His response was something between a groan and a growl. The primal sound sent a heady thrill through her. For the first time she realized she had her own array of wiles—a power over him that did not require either experience or expertise.
    Accepting her unspoken invitation, his tongue swept through her mouth in a kiss that was both tender and erotic, while his hand slipped beneath the sheet and glided up the bare silk of her thigh. Catriona gasped. She was about to be compromised in earnest, yet all of her moral fortitude seemed to have fled. Instead of protesting in outrage, all she could seem to do was welcome her ruin with open arms.
    She had never dreamed that a man could be so gentle and so ruthlessly persuasive all at the same time. Simon coaxed her thighs apart as easily as he had coaxed her lips apart, his fingers breaching the softness of her nether curls with exquisite care.
    Whatever he discovered there seemed to please him mightily. His powerful body tensed and shuddered as he dipped one finger between those tender petals.
    Catriona buried her face against his shoulder and moaned deep in her throat as a sensation like no other threatened to rip the last of her inhibitions asunder. Pleasure was too common a word to describe it. It was bliss and agony and a desperate yearning all rolled into one. She didn’t think she could bear it for another second, yet she wanted it to go on forever.
    “Please,” she whispered hoarsely. “Oh, please…” She didn’t even know what she was begging for. She only knew that if she didn’t get it, she might very well perish from longing.
    He knew exactly what she wanted. His devilishly clever fingers spread and stroked and teased and petted until she was writhing beneath his hand. She did not know this wanton stranger she had become. She only knew that she craved his touch and the maddening pleasure it was giving her the way an addict must crave opium. She had been right about him all along. He was both angel and demon, relentlessly urging her toward the promise of paradise even as he sought to make her soul his own.
    He gently flicked his thumb over the rigid little bud nestled at the crux of her curls and for a timeless moment she hung suspended between heaven and hell. Then a shattering wave of rapture broke over her and she went tumbling head over heels into the abyss with only his arms to break her fall, only his lips to muffle her soft, broken cry of ecstasy.
    She was still clinging to him, lost in a haze of delight, when her bedchamber door came thumping open and a shrill voice raked across her tender nerves. “Have you seen my pearl hair combs, Catriona? I should have known better than to lend them to you. You have no appreciation for the finer things in life. You’d have probably been just as happy with some filthy plaid ribbon or a…” The voice trailed off.

    While Catriona lay frozen, her eyes as