Free Teasing the Wildcat by Mina Carter & Bethany J. Barnes by Mina Carter Page A

one
purpose—to tickle the heck out of him.
    “ You want something to
laugh about? I’ll give you something to laugh about!” Smiling and
giggling, she attacked him with a ruthlessness she’d reserved only
for her brothers up to this point.
    He lay on his back, trying to bat her
hands away until he seemed to notice she wasn't trying to hit him.
Leaning on his elbows, he looked at her in confusion. "What are you
doing?"
    Her giggles and smile faltered as it
became clear he wasn’t laughing or squirming to escape her
marauding fingers. Not only was he not laughing, he looked baffled
by her actions. She stopped trying to tickle him, her hands coming
to rest flat against his ribs.
    “ I’m tickling you…or at
least I was trying to.” Holding his gaze, she tried to be ready, in
case he was tricking her into dropping her guard. She wouldn’t put
it past him to be sneaky that way.
    His expression was still blank.
"What’s tickling?"
    Okay…that was most definitely a new
one for her. Not only was he not ticklish, but he didn’t even know
what it was. Holding her hands up, she mimed with her fingers how
to tickle, as she tried to come up with a way to explain
it.
    “ Umm…it’s something you do
to someone to make them laugh. You wiggle or ‘tickle’ your fingers
on different areas of their body to get them to laugh and squeal.
If they’re ticklish, they can’t control their reaction, and they’ll
laugh until you stop. For example—you can tickle babies to make
them laugh when you want to see them look as cute as can be, or…”
Summer rolled her eyes “…like my brothers did, you can use it to
drive your little sister crazy, as a form of torture. It can be a
lot of fun because most of the time, the person doing the tickling
ends up laughing almost as much as the one getting
tickled.”
    Pouting a little, she asked. “You’ve
never been tickled? Ever?”
    A small smile on his face, he shook
his head. "No...it's not something we do. Not that I know of
anyway."
    The penny dropped. He’d told her just
after they were married that his culture was very different from
hers. They'd never played as children because their parents hadn't.
Brought up in a war, they didn't know how to. Doing something
purely for amusement was as alien to him as handing explosives to a
five-year-old so they could make mines, was to her.
    Her heart ached. He’d told her bits
and pieces about his childhood, merely enough for her to remember
it didn’t sound as if it’d been all that happy. Abruptly, she felt
like an idiot. “I’m sorry. I must seem pretty damned silly to you,
huh?”
    "No, not at all." He grinned suddenly,
his expression mischievous. "I used to bunk off cleaning duty to go
play in the woods. There were mines there to play with. I used to
skip rocks over them."
    Without warning, his hands wrapped
around her tiny waist and he wiggled his fingers, digging them into
her skin slightly.
    Her incredulous expression changed
instantly. She squealed, squirming to desperately evade his
fingers. Sprawled on top of him the way she was, all she
accomplished was to press herself harder against him. All grace
gone, she practically screamed with laughter and gasped for air.
“Stop…you…eee!”
    He laughed in delight and kept up the
assault. Yeah, he seemed to understand the appeal of tickling now.
“Why?” he asked. “What's it worth?”
    What the hell? Had he sprouted extra
hands? Every direction she tried was blocked by strong fingers
digging into her sides. Summer felt like an epileptic cat, rubbing
against him in uncontrolled twitches.
    “ What’s—” she couldn’t
work out whether to gasp, squeal or giggle, so she tried to do all
three at once “—what’s what worth?” But she was laughing so hard,
getting words out was nigh on impossible.
    Straddling his hips, she used her legs
to try to push off him. All she ended up doing was falling down on
him again. Great. She’d smother him with her breasts if he