Brazen and the Beast (The Bareknuckle Bastards 2)

Like lightning, he fisted his hand in the fabric at her back, pulling it from the waist of her trousers. “Hattie . . .”

Her eyes went wide as he repeated the motion in front, tugging, revealing bare torso. She immediately caught the hem of the shirt and tugged it down. “No.”

The word stung. “No?”

She shook her head. “It’s very—bright.”

He smiled. “I know.”

She shook her head, her gaze flickering to the doorway to the next room. “Do you not have a bed somewhere? Somewhere dark?”

He did. But that wasn’t what she was saying. “Hattie. Let me see.”

She closed her eyes. “I’d rather you not.”

He leaned back against the loveseat, refusing to remove his hands from her, letting his fingers slide over her thighs and play at the tops of her leather boots. “Shall I tell you what I wish to do?”

Her eyes flew open and he almost laughed—he had her attention. His curious girl wouldn’t be able to resist his telling her precisely what he wished to do to her. In full detail. “I wish to remove this shirt that is too plain for you,” he said softly, his fingers sliding back up to the lawn hem, not stopping until they were underneath the fabric, on her warm skin.

He teased along the soft strip just above her trousers, and whispered, “I need to remove it, you see, because I can’t taste you until I have.” Her lips fell open on a little intake of air. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Me tasting you?”

“I . . .” She hesitated.

“I’d like to run my tongue over you here,” he said, his hand splaying wide over the soft curve of her stomach, his cock growing harder with every new inch of her. Had anything ever felt as good as the silk of her skin? The curve of her body?

He sat up, burying his nose in the curve of her neck as he wrapped his arms around her. “Let me,” he whispered at her ear before capturing the lobe between his teeth. “Let me taste you.”

She exhaled her “yes,” as though it was the only word she could find.

He pressed a wet kiss just beneath her ear and released her, his hands returning to the hem of her shirt and pulling it over her head, sending it sailing across the room, forgotten before it hit the ground, because he was too focused on what he’d discovered.

The vision of those bindings, the way they disappeared her beautiful breasts—they made him want to do damage. He set a finger to the uppermost edge of the bandages, where her skin was straining white against the binds. “You know, my lady, when you spoke of undergarments, I did not expect—”

She gave a little breathless laugh, and he was grateful for it . . . for the way it pulled her from whatever doubt she had been having. “I don’t imagine you did.”

“Mmm,” he grunted before leaning forward and tracing the pale line just above the too-tight bandages with his tongue.

“Oh, my,” she whispered, her hands coming to his head, threading into his hair. “That feels—”

It was nothing compared to what he was going to make her feel. He found the end of the linen and untucked it, pulling it free before beginning the work of unbinding her.

She reached to help him.

“No,” he said, as he worked to lay her body bare. “This is for me. You, on my lap, wrapped like a parcel. It’s like Christmas.”

She flushed at the words. “Is it?”

He slowed, holding her gaze for a long moment before he answered, “How could you not know?” The strips fell away and her eyes went hooded with the pleasure of their loss—so keen that Whit felt it like a blow, his mind going blank but for the single goal of making her feel a pleasure to rival it again and again, forever.

She returned to her senses too soon—almost immediately—and instantly moved to cover herself, an impossible task as the beautiful globes overflowed her hands. The vision was the most erotic thing Whit had ever seen, and he could not contain the growl that came from low in his throat as he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the straining flesh above each hand, licking slowly over the red, worried skin there.

“Poor love,” he whispered. “You must take better care.”

He covered her hands with his own, threading their fingers together as he tracked the red lines that crisscrossed her breasts. Another kiss, and another, and another, soothing her sensitive skin with soft, gentle kisses and lingering licks and tiny sucks at the impossibly soft outermost edge of one breast. Then the other.

He worshipped her until she was rocking against him once more, until she forgot her embarrassment. Until she forgot her nerves. Until she moved her hands—and his—and revealed herself to him.

Stealing his breath.

Her skin was red and mottled by the bindings, but her nipples, pink and perfect, strained in the cool air in the room, and he took one stunning peak in his mouth and licking over it with his tongue before sucking gently, again and again, until she was panting with pleasure, her hands fisted in his hair.

Whit reveled in the sting of her hold, even as he turned his attention to the other breast, repeating his actions. He scraped his teeth across the peak, then soothed it with tongue and lips. She cried out, and for a wild moment, Whit thought he might come in his trousers like a boy.

He released her, needing to collect himself—to tamp down the riot of emotion he felt with this woman in his arms—eventually dragging his attention to her eyes once more, reading the desire there, and the uncertainty. He wanted to destroy one and flame the other, and so he did the only thing he could think to do; he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the pillows strewn before the fireplace.

He followed her down, loving the way her body turned itself over to him, relaxing into his. One of his hands stroked down her now naked torso, toying at the waist of her trousers. “More wrapping,” he said quietly, his fingers at the fastening.

“I wish I were wearing something more exciting,” she replied.

“I don’t,” he said, leaning over her to nip at the line of her jaw before reaching to pull off her boots in quick succession. “These trousers have been teasing me all night, tracing every inch of you. Making promises that I very much hope you intend to keep.” He grasped the waistband and tugged, and magnificently, she let him strip them from her.

He lost his breath at the vision of her, bare and beautiful, the peaks and valleys of her body, her soft curves made stunning in the flickering firelight, and there, at the apex of her beautiful thighs, a thatch of curls that had his mouth watering. “Christ, Hattie. You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

She smiled, shy and sweet, her hands coming to cover herself. “You make me nearly believe that.”

He slid his hands up her legs, leaning over, unable to stop himself from pressing a lingering kiss to the back of her hand where it blocked his view, the sweet scent of her turning his words into a growl, as he continued up her body. “I’m not letting you up until you believe it, entirely.”

“That might take some time,” she said softly, almost too soft for him to hear.

“I have a lifetime.”

Her head was turned toward the fire, staring at the flame. Somewhere along the way she’d lost her hairpins, and her beautiful blond mane spread out on the pillows like silk thread. Whit wanted to bury himself in it, in her. “You have tonight.”