Page 54 of Some Like It Wild
As he began to gently but relentlessly push his way inside of her, Pamela moaned deep in her throat. There was no comparing the thickness of his finger tothis. No preparing her untried body for such an extraordinary invasion.
She began to writhe and pant, the cool marble beneath her a stark contrast to the fevered flesh struggling to possess her from above. Bracing his weight on his palms, Connor arched against her, the corded tendons of his throat and the bulging muscles of his forearms betraying the price of his patience, the cost of his control.
There was a sharp stab of pain, as if she was being torn asunder by a blunt club, then Connor slid the rest of the way home.
Pamela clung to him, tears spilling down her cheeks. There was no turning back now. He was buried so deep inside of her that nothing would ever be the same. She would never be the same.
“My Pamela,” he whispered, kissing away those tears one by one. “My brave, bonny angel.”
His mouth found hers then, giving her a taste of her own surrender flavored with the salt from her tears. Her sense of helpless wonder grew as he began to move within her. The sharp pain soon became a dull ache that only intensified her awareness of how deep she was taking him, how much of himself he was giving her. From that ache, another sensation blossomed—pleasure, dark and carnal and irresistible.
Connor had feared dealing Pamela a blow that might frighten her off forever. While most women welcomed himbecauseof his size, there had been a few who shied away from him, even going so far as to refuse his coins and foist him off on a more “adventurous” companion.
So when Pamela wrapped her legs around him and dug her little heels into the small of his back, urging him on, he was only too happy to oblige. He stopped trying to temper his thrusts with gentleness and drove himself into her again and again—deep and hard and fierce—holding nothing back, including his heart.
Pamela dug her fingernails into Connor’s back, forced to hold on for dear life as he used his body to bludgeon her with waves of pleasure. She knew in that moment that this man would not be the first lover of many, but the only lover she would ever want. She was not her mother. If he walked away from her on the morrow, she would never open her heart—or her legs—for another man. She would spend the rest of her life baking shortbread and collecting cats and remembering the moonlit night when a highwayman named Connor Kincaid had stolen both her innocence and her heart.
Then there was no more room for thought, no more room for anything but Connor and the driving rhythm of his thrusts. She had yearned to drive him wild, but he was the one driving her half out of her mind by angling his strokes just enough to strike fresh sparks off of that taut little flint nestled in the crux of her curls. At the precise moment that exquisite friction sent rapture burning through her like wildfire, Connor let out a guttural groan. She felt his powerful body shudder and jerk within hers as he spilled his seed at the very mouth of her womb.
As he collapsed between her splayed thighs, burying his face in her sweat-dampened throat, she gently stroked her hands down his back, welcoming the burden of his weight.
“Och, lass,” he finally bit off when his ragged breathing had steadied enough to allow him to speak, “you’re so bloody tight.”
“I’m sorry,” Pamela whispered, frowning in dismay. “I don’t mean to be.”
Connor lifted his head to give her a disbelieving look. “It wasn’t a complaint. What I should have said was that I’ve never felt anything so fine in all my life.”
“Oh! Well, I like that much better.” Swamped by relief, she curled her hand around his nape and urged his mouth down to hers.
Their tongues tangled until she felt him begin to stir and swell deep within her, impaling her anew.
She broke off their kiss, her eyes widening with shock. “Why, Mr. Kincaid, have you no shame?”
His mouth curled in a wicked leer. “Haven’t you heard that we Scots are a savage lot cursed with insatiable carnal appetites?”
She fluttered her lashes at him. “I suppose a timid little English miss could never hope to satisfy a big strapping Scots lad like you.”
“Probably not,” he said solemnly. “But I don’t think that should stop her from trying, do you? Perhaps if she let him have his way with her at every opportunity, he might even be able to get rid of his sheep.”
As he began to move within her, Pamela sighed against his mouth. “Why do I feel sorry for the poor sheep?”
Crispin slipped through the darkened corridors of Warrick Park as silently as a ghost. There was a time when he would have been terrified to leave his bed once the lamps were extinguished. When his mother had first brought him to live here after his father’s death, he had found everything about the immense house foreign and frightening.
They had only been living there for a few short months when his uncle had taken to his chair and never risen again. To a painfully shy, undersized nine-year-old, that chair had seemed like some sort of living monstrosity. He had been haunted by nightmares where he fled down one shadowy corridor after another, unable to escape the shrill creaking of its wheels. If it had ever caught him, he was convinced it would have gobbled him down without leaving so much as a bloodstain on the expensive carpet.
His mother had delivered daily lectures on how he must strive to ingratiate himself to his uncle. She promised him that if he would be a good boy and win the duke’s favor, Warrick Park and all of its treasures would someday be his—a prospect that horrified him more than she would ever know. He was plagued by new nightmares then. Nightmares where he was the one imprisoned in that chair for all eternity.
Crispin desperately wanted to please his mother but found it impossible to please the duke. No matter how hard he tried, he could never sit up straight enough or eat neatly enough or answer quickly enough to please his uncle. His every attempt—no matter how earnest—was greeted by a mocking rejoinder or a scathing set-down. That was usually followed by a private scolding from his mother or a stinging slap if she felt he had been particularly clumsy or slow-witted that day.
He had been fourteen when he had finally accepted that he would never win the duke’s favor. From that day forward, he had stopped trying. He would greet the man’s caustic insults with a sarcastic retort, honing the rapier-sharp edge of his own tongue. He surrounded himself with a circle of acquaintances who believed him to be polished and clever and always ready with a sly quip or a wittybon mot. He devoted himself to gambling and drinking and seducing women of easy virtue and any other decadent pleasure that might cast the shadow of scandal over his uncle’s good name.
Eventually even his mother had been forced to accept that his uncle would never love him. Crispin might be the man’s legal heir, but he would never replace the son he had lost.
The son who had now returned to whisk that inheritance right out from under Crispin’s nose.
Crispin’s furtive footsteps paused in front of his cousin’s bedchamber. He pressed his ear to the door, listening for any hint of movement within.
What he heard instead was a strangled groan, as if someone was in the mortal throes of agony. “Och, Cookie!” a man exclaimed in a Scottish burr so thick it was nearly unintelligible. “It feels like ye’re goin’ to break me spine in two when ye squeeze me that way. But whatever ye do, don’t stop!”
