Page 41 of Some Like It Wild
Pamela arched one eyebrow. “So you decided to pursue the more virtuous vocation of highwayman?”
“A highwayman doesn’t have to lie to himself to make himself believe that all of his efforts are for some noble cause when the only worthwhile cause is filling his own purse. He doesn’t have to play the hero and spend half his life pretending he can save his men and his clan when he can’t even save himself.”
Pamela should have been alarmed by the ruthless glint in Connor’s eye, but she found herself creeping closer to him instead of fleeing. She already knew there was nowhere she could hide to escape his piercing gaze.
“Why did you come here tonight, Pamela?” he demanded in a low growl. “What do you want?”
No one had ever asked her that question before. Not her mother. Not Sophie. She’d been too busy tending to their wants and needs to consider her own, which was why she still had no answer for him. At least not one she could trust to words. All she could do was return his gaze and pray her heart was not in her eyes.
He reached out and idly stroked his thumb over her lips. “I was hoping you’d come to deliver my prize.”
His touch coaxed a smile from her lips. “If Crispin had won the fencing match, were you going to let him kiss me?”
“If I had believed Crispin had a chance in hell of winning, I wouldn’t have agreed to the wager. Because if he had kissed you,” Connor told her solemnly, “I would have had no choice but to cut off his head.”
There it was again. That thrilling note of possessiveness that made her feel as if she belonged to him. As if she would always belong to him.
She blew out a long-suffering sigh. “Well, you did win, so I suppose I have no choice but to honor the wager.” She leaned toward him and pressed her eyes shut, already anticipating the tantalizing brush of his mouth against hers.
“Oh, no you don’t, lass.” Her eyes flew open to find him leaning against the bedpost with his hands folded behind his head and a lazy smile curving his lips. “The kiss ismyprize.Youhave to give it tome.”
“Oh!” Pamela had no idea why she suddenly felt so ridiculously shy. He had already kissed her numerous times and she had kissed him back with an alarming lack of restraint. But somehow that wasn’t the same as initiating the kiss.
Judging from his smirk, he was probably expecting her to give him a virginal peck on the cheek. Pursing her lips into a tight little rosebud, she touched them to the very corner of his mouth. But then that rosebud flowered, her mouth going soft and inviting against his smooth, firm lips.
Connor sucked in a hissed breath but held himself utterly still, allowing Pamela to sample him to her heart’s content. One kiss soon melted into another. And another. Until his ragged groan emboldened her to trace the seam of his lips with the tip of her pert little tongue, to lick into his mouth with a tender hunger he ached to satisfy.
He threaded his hands through her hair, tugging her mouth away from his. Her lips were still parted, her eyes misty with longing.
“Were you planning on kissing Crispin with such unbridled enthusiasm?” he demanded, his breath coming hard and fast.
“You’re the one who agreed to the wager. If he had won, I was going to makeyoukiss him.”
He shook his head. “I always knew the English weren’t to be trusted.”
“Then don’t trust me,” she whispered, lifting a hand to his cheek. “Just kiss me.”
Pamela didn’t have to ask him twice. Connor slanted his mouth over hers with a ferocity born of desperation, mating her with the warm, rough sweetness of his tongue. For a breathless eternity, she could only cling to him, could only take what he would give her and wish for more.
It seemed he was only too eager to oblige her unspoken wishes. While continuing to lay claim to her mouth with long, lavish kisses, he cupped her bottom in his big warm hands and lifted her into his lap. Her dressing gown fell open and her nightdress rode up as her knees slid down on either side of his powerful thighs, leaving her straddling the firm ridge of flesh beneath the sheet. As he arched upward, pressing himself to the tender mound between her thighs, her head fell back and a moan of raw pleasure tore from her throat.
That moan turned into a whimper as he shifted her again, urging her around until she sat between his sprawled legs with her back to his chest. He reached around her, his sun-bronzed hands gently smoothing the skirt of her nightdress up to her waist, exposing her threadbare drawers to the silvery kiss of the moonlight and his touch.
Their encounter in the Highlands had given him an unfair advantage. He knew he only had to tug at her drawers and the frayed seams would give way. As he did just that, Pamela gasped a protest.
“I’ll buy you more,” he vowed, his voice a husky whisper in her ear. “Or better yet, you can just stop wearing them altogether. Then I could touch you whenever I wanted. Wherever we happened to be. You can’t tell me it wouldn’t make those long, horrid meals with the duke and his asp of a sister more bearable.”
A wicked little shiver raked Pamela as she imagined Connor slipping his hand beneath the tablecloth and beneath her skirts to stroke her there, without their fellow diners ever suspecting a thing.
His hands were chapped and callused from hours of riding, which only made their tenderness more impossible to resist. His large fingers parted her curls, then her delicate folds, touching her in that wild and secret place with an exquisite care that made her want to weep.
As he stroked and petted her, she shuddered with longing, a sob of pure pleasure wrenched from her trembling lips.
“Shhhh, lass,” he murmured in her ear, desire thickening the musical cadences of his burr. “I just want to touch you. I’ll not hurt you. I swear it.”
How could she tell him he was already hurting her? That he was carving off a piece of her fragile heart with each nimble stroke of his fingertips, each deft flick of his thumb over the throbbing little bud nestled in the crux of her silky curls? As he wrapped one arm around her waist, imprisoning her in a vise of delight, she could feel his unabated desire for her, riding high and hard against the cleft of her rump.
She stole a furtive glance downward, captivated against her will by the forbidden wonders his fingers were working in the moonlight. There was something both shocking and erotic about being in his arms while bared all the way to the waist. As she watched his longest finger glide toward the very heart of her while his thumb continued its maddening rhythm, her treacherous body betrayed her deepest secret—that she wanted him as badly as he wanted her.
