Seven Wicked Nights (Turner #1.5)

He shook his head. “You don’t understand. Sometimes, I scarcely feel human anymore. The brutal way I took down that boar, Cecily. That barbarism with the stocking…”

“Ah, yes.” She put aside her handkerchief and stood. “The stocking.”

She propped one boot on the stool and slowly rucked up her skirts to reveal her stocking-clad leg.

“Cecy…”

“Yes, Luke?” She leaned over to untie the laces of her boot, giving him an eyeful of her décolletage.

He groaned. “Cecy, what are you doing?”

“Tending to your wounds,” she said, slipping the boot from her foot. With sure fingers, she unknotted the ribbon garter at her thigh, then eased the stocking down her leg. “Making it better.” Skirts still hiked thigh-high, she straddled his legs and nestled on his lap.

“Shh.” She quieted his objection, then deftly wound the length of flannel around his injured arm, tucking in the end to secure it. “There,” she said in a husky voice, lowering her lips to the underside of his wrist. “All better.”

“I wasn’t after your damn stocking,” he blurted out. “When I took you to the ground last night and pushed up your skirts. By all that’s holy, I wanted—” With a muttered oath, he gripped her by the shoulders, hauling her further into his lap. Until she felt the hard ridge of his arousal, pressing insistently against her cleft. “Cecily, what I want from you is not tender. It’s not romantic in the least. It’s plunder. It’s possession. If you had the least bit of sense, you’d turn and run from—”

She kissed him hard, raking his back with her fingernails and clutching his thighs between hers like a vise. Boldly, she sucked his lower lip into her mouth and gave it a sharp nip, savoring his startled moan. Wriggling backward, she placed her hands over his, dragging them downward and molding his fingers around her breasts. “For God’s sake, Luke. You’re not the only one with animal urges.”

He took her mouth, growling against her lips as he did. Tongues tangled; teeth clashed. With a small rip of fabric, he liberated her breasts from her stays and bodice, fastening his lips over one pert, straining nipple. He licked roughly, even caught the tender nub in his teeth, and Cecily gasped with shock and delight.

Then his hand left her breast and strayed downward, tunneling through the layers of skirts and petticoats and drawers to find her most intimate flesh. He stroked her there, so tenderly. Too tenderly.

Impatient with desire, she grasped his shoulders and rocked against his hand. A thrill of exquisite anticipation coursed down to her toes. She licked his ear and heard his answering moan.

Yes. Yes. This was finally going to happen.

“God,” he choked out. “This can’t happen.”

“Oh, yes it can.” Breathless, she worked the buttons of his trouser falls. “It will. It must.” Having freed the closures of his trousers and smallclothes, she snaked her hand through the opening and brazenly took him in hand.

Of course, now that she had him in hand, she wasn’t quite sure what to do with him. She tentatively skimmed one fingertip over the smooth, rounded crown of his erection. In return, he pressed a single finger into her aching core.

“Cecily.” He shut his eyes and grit his teeth. “If I don’t stop this now…”

“You never will?” She pressed her lips to his earlobe. “That’s my fondest hope. You say you’re done with fighting, Luke? Then stop fighting this.”

He sighed deep in his chest, and she felt all the tension coiled in those powerful muscles release. “Very well,” he said quietly, resting his chin on her shoulder. “Very well. To you, I gratefully surrender.”

Clutching her bottom with both hands, he rose to his feet, startling a little shriek from her.

“Too late for protests,” he teased, carrying her toward the cottage’s narrow bed and tossing her onto it. With an impressive economy of movement, he stripped himself of his boots, trousers and smallclothes before settling his weight onto the bed. “Now you.”

All that remained of the daylight was a faint, dusky glow filtering through the small window and the chinks in the thatching overhead. He helped her out of her gown and petticoats, then loosened her stays and the ribbon tie of her drawers. When she was completely bared, he sat back on his haunches and regarded her with a quiet intensity. He sat that way for so long, she began to grow anxious.

“Luke? Is everything—”

“Promise me,” he said hoarsely, “that you will give me another opportunity to do this properly.” Shaky fingertips traced the pale curve of her hip. “You are so beautiful, Cecily. Yours is a body that deserves to be worshipped, adored. Promise me the chance to kiss every lovely, perfect inch of you—next time.”

How she loved those words, next time. She nodded as he prowled up her body. “Of course.”