Free STORM: A Standalone Romance by Glenna Sinclair Page A

tongue, but noticed that he had set aside his glass to come to her. Cara threw her arms around his neck as she reclaimed his lips with hers—or was it the other way around?—her head spinning with the final, intoxicating realization that she had brought down his last defense. Deep dark secrets or not, he was as helpless to resist the pull between them as she was.
                  Simon whipped his dinner jacket off, never breaking from the kiss long enough to allow either of them to catch their breath. Cara grasped his face in her hands, and they moved backward together through the darkened room as he undressed. His shirt came off next, although she hadn't noticed when he had unbuttoned it; the sound of small scattering objects in their wake implied that he had wrenched it from his body without bothering to save a member of his staff a future repair job.
                  She felt the flush of his naked chest against her, the tension in his coiled abdominal muscles, and thought she would go insane if she didn't find an expedient way to strip herself out of her own clothes. Favorite dress or not, Cara was so afraid of any little hitch halting the proceedings now that she was very near to tearing it off herself. Thankfully, Simon got to it first. He pulled the dress up and over her head, as if he had known all along that was how to get it off her; it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that his earlier study of her that evening had been for the express purpose of figuring out how to best get her naked. The thought made her shiver with barely contained happiness. No more swimming pool challenges—she had placed herself entirely in Simon's very capable hands.
                  "You weren't wearing anything underneath it?" His breath caught at the sight of her standing in the spill of moonlight before him. Shadows from the rain outside raced across her pale, slender figure. "All evening?"
                  Cara raised an eyebrow and bit her lip, but she gave no response. Simon's hands roved down her, dipping into her every curve as he explored her thoroughly for the first time. This wasn't a stolen moment in one of the downstairs rooms, where they risked discovery at any moment—this was the privacy of the master's bedroom. And I'm here to be mastered, was Cara's fleeting thought, as she twined her arms around his neck and allowed Simon to carry her down onto the bed with a worshipful kiss.
                  He trailed his lips down every exposed inch of her. Cara basked beneath his attentions, reveling in the articulation of that talented English mouth. When Simon made his next pass upward to kiss her lips, she arched against him and flipped him over. He was clearly the bigger and the stronger of the two of them, but he gamely allowed her to top him, and in the next instant she had his pants off. Cara raised her eyes to him, taking in his expression, before lowering her mouth down to encase his rigid length.
                  Simon reacted immediately by bucking his hips up to meet her. An explosive moan tore from his throat, and Cara guessed that it had been a very long time since anyone had done this for him. She took him fully into her mouth, lowering her head back down as Simon's hand came up to grasp her hair by the roots.
                  "Cara…" he moaned. "Cara, come here."
                  She raised herself off him and kissed her way back up the length of his body. "What's wrong, Simon?" she murmured against his lips. "Too intense for you?"
                  "If you want to make me come already, that's your prerogative," Simon gritted out through his teeth. No sooner had she surfaced from beneath him than he was throwing her over onto her back and climbing on top of her. The box spring protested loudly beneath their bodies; Cara kicked her leg out as Simon lowered himself down between her thighs, aligning his pelvis with