Mistletoe Wishes: A Regency Christmas Collection

She was already damp. Her musky scent lay heavy on the air. This slow seduction worked its magic on his wife, too. He took her other nipple between his lips and bit softly at the crest. She shifted restlessly under his hand and buried her fingers in his hair, urging him to continue.

He needed no further encouragement. But as he licked and bit and suckled, as his hands roamed her silky skin, some trace of reason lingered. She wasn’t ready yet, however her touch and sighs spurred him to further depredations. He wanted to be inside her more than he wanted his next breath. But this night wasn’t about what he wanted, but about showing her the pleasure a man and a woman could find together. To his everlasting regret, he’d never given her that.

Her mouth kept luring him back. He had ten years of kisses to make up for. Each kiss was hotter and sweeter than the last. He couldn’t get enough of her taste.

“You’re wearing too many clothes,” she said in a broken voice.

“Whereas you’re dressed just right,” he said with a low laugh, kissing her breast again.

She’d been lovely as a girl, fresh and dewy and as rich with promise as a furled rose. But the voluptuous woman in his arms now took his breath away.

With every second, he felt her confidence increase. When she dragged his shirt up from his breeches, her caresses on his naked back shot lightning behind his eyes.

“Sebastian, I want to see you.”

He’d never heard her sound like this, choked and frantic and starving for him. In those joyless, mean little encounters in his bed at Balmuir House, she hadn’t spoken at all. And then she’d cried. This woman claimed her right to sample every pleasure.

He couldn’t remain immune to her pleading. He rolled off the bed and tore his clothes away, hurling them into the corner. Then he paused, wondering if he should have been more circumspect. Would his rampant nakedness terrify his wife?

When she was a girl, his unabashed maleness had frightened her. He’d come to her in the dark, and even then what he’d done had revolted her. Could that have changed?

She slid up against the headboard, making no pretense at modesty by covering herself with the sheet. Dear Lord, she was a sight to set a man’s passions afire. Her face was flushed with eagerness and curiosity, her lips were full and red, her body was a symphony of curves and hollows. Her golden hair cascaded around her shoulders, teasingly covering one breast and leaving the other bare. Kinvarra felt himself grow harder, larger, needier.

Her eyes widened as her inspection continued down past his chest and belly. Hell, what would he do if she stopped him now?

Could he stop?

Yes, something inside him insisted. For Alicia, he could stop.

“Magnificent,” she murmured, her eyes glinting blue fire under their heavy lids.

Her smile glowed with such anticipation that his foolish heart crashed inside his chest. She’d always been able to confound him with a mere word. A decade without her hadn’t changed that.

She stretched out one hand in invitation. To his astonishment, she wasn’t shaking. All trace of her earlier uncertainty had vanished.

“Come to me, my husband.”

Chapter 4

ALICIA STUDIED THE expressions that crossed Sebastian’s striking face. Somewhere in the last years, perhaps only since they’d entered this room and laid down their weapons against each other, she’d learned to read him. When they’d first married, she hadn’t known how to pierce his shell of physical perfection to reach the man beneath. He’d seemed a godlike creature, too far above lowly mortals for her to feel worthy of being his wife.

But the man who stood before her, superb in his nakedness, was heartbreakingly human.

For all his strength and beauty, he was vulnerable. Even more, he was vulnerable to her. She’d always felt powerless in this marriage. Now she recognized his overwhelming longing for her. And with a shock, realized that he’d longed for her when they’d first married, too. How had she never seen that before?

Tonight she’d also learned that he blamed himself for their difficulties. How odd, when finally she admitted that she’d been at least as much at fault as he. She’d been over-indulged, demanding, headstrong, quick to take umbrage, slow to offer understanding or tolerance.

Tonight she surveyed her husband’s powerful body and rejoiced in a woman’s desire. And a woman’s ability to forgive. She’d finally cast away the chains of hatred and prejudice. Sensual need raged in her blood, made her heart pump with eagerness to know this man’s possession. Fear lurked as well, but she refused to succumb to it. Fear had crippled her for far too long.

She saw also that he was still unsure of her, unaware how much she’d changed. He didn’t know that, after a long and difficult road, she’d discovered exactly where she ought to be.

In Kinvarra’s arms. Forever.

How had she ever imagined that weak, inadequate Harold Fenton could compare with the wonderful man she’d married?

“Sebastian, I want you,” she said softly, surprised at how easily the words emerged. “Don’t make me wait.”

Something in her voice or her smile must have convinced him she’d grown beyond the skittish girl who had fled his passion. Determination lit his face, hardened his jaw, set his eyes glinting in a way that, for all her arousal, made her pulse race with trepidation.