the strength to try to pull away, but she pressed small kisses to his jaw and throat and murmured his name. When he felt the sharpness of her teeth against his skin, he jumped and set her apart from him.
“We canna do this,” he panted.
“What? Why?”
He could only answer her confusion with a pained laugh.
“Collin,” she moaned, “please.” Her tongue flicked out to lick her lips. She stared at his mouth like it might save her from some dire danger.
She needed to be startled to her senses just as he had been. “Think about this, Alex. Do you want me to take you here? Right here in the open, on the ground?” He threw the words at her in a growl—an insult, a threat—but they had the opposite effect he’d intended.
Instead of drawing herself up in outrage, instead of slapping his face with the flat of her hand, she parted her flushed lips and sighed, and her eyes flared with blue desire. “Oh, yes,” she breathed. “Would you please?”
“Oh, God.” He didn’t recall moving toward her, but she was in his arms. He lifted her, carried her to a soft patch of grass sheltered beneath a tree, and laid her gently on the ground.
“You canna expect me to ignore a pretty request like that,” he murmured, pressing his mouth to the salt-damp skin of her neck. Her delighted laugh sealed his fate, and Collin lost his hard-fought battle with lust.
Alex arched her neck to give him full access to that sensitive spot just below her ear. She felt the press of one of his hard thighs between her legs and scooted her knees farther apart as he kissed and nipped at her skin, and the muscles of her belly tightened at the feel of his body between her legs.
She couldn’t keep from humming in pleasure and was thrilled when her sighs excited him further, excited him until he kissed her so deeply her body ached with it.
Urging him on, pushing him further, she eased her hands beneath the shoulders of his coat and slid the fabric back as far as she could. He broke away from her mouth, rising up to tear off his coat in one great shrug. Before she could manage to even pull his shirt past his breeches, he had framed her face with his hands and kissed her again, more carefully, nearly gently.
That gentleness stopped the press of her need for an instant, brushing against her heart instead of her body. She almost pulled her mouth from his, almost pressed a hand to his chest to end this mad embrace. She almost tried to reason with her selfish body. Almost. But when he groaned and slicked his tongue over hers, she let her conscience sink back to its hiding place beneath her lust.
The sea breeze caressed her, tried to cool her skin but didn’t succeed. She felt the brush of air on her thigh, and knew that his knee had pushed higher, raising her skirts up her legs. His hand left her face to skim down her body, down to her knee, then up to push her skirt higher so he could slide the calloused pads of his fingers over the skin just above her stocking.
A terrible and wonderful tension coiled in her belly. She’d certainly been touched before, but the simple brush of a man’s fingers over skin had never affected her like this. His mouth moved over hers with such delicious skill, but all she could do was close her eyes and wonder at the effect his hand had on her body. His fingers brushed over her thigh, rising slowly up, closer to that place where everything tightened to a shuddering pulse. The anticipation built to torment, and she cried out before his hand had even traveled halfway up her thigh.
A growl sprang from his mouth to hers, and his hand gripped her leg in a tight hold for a moment before he slid his palm up the last few inches of her thigh. He stroked just the barest touch against the curls between her legs, and she jerked her mouth from his, gasping and straining, then crying out when his hand lifted to hover over her, a cruel torment.
Desperate, she opened her clenched eyes to slits to see him. His face looked carved from stone, it was edged so sharply, but his jaw jumped in time with her own pulse. Fearing he would change his mind and cry off, she squirmed beneath him, pushed her hips up till his hand was flush against her. He lowered his mouth to hers again and curled his fingers into the wetness.
“Collin!” His name flew from her lips as he slid one finger into her slick seam, then farther, until he was snug inside her body and so, so deep. She wanted to tremble, wanted to buck beneath him, but she held herself still, waiting. His finger slid out, out, then slipped to trace tiny circles around a little nub of sensation.
“Oh,” she moaned, turning her face away. “Oh, yes.”
It felt like torture, like she would die from the pleasure and pressure curling deep in her belly. She’d wanted so badly to be calm and irresistible and enticing to this man and all she could do was push herself against him and try not to scream as he rubbed and thrust and stroked.
Tiny shivers took her body, starting somewhere in her knees and working up, up, up till even her chin shook.
“Alex.”
She heard her name against her throat just before her back arched and her hips jerked so hard that she sobbed. Every feeling in her body rose and spun and thrummed through her until it spiraled tight and exploded, and she finally grew limp against him.
“Oh, Collin,” she sighed one last time and let her head fall back to the green ground.
Collin’s smile nearly split his face. A man could live his whole life and never hear his name spoken with that kind of reverence.
He’d lost any will to resist her long minutes before. She wanted him and he certainly wanted her and they were both adults. Young as she was, she was no innocent, there was no reason to protect her from her wants.
Now he was simply fighting not to throw her skirts over her head and push roughly into that tight heat.
He squeezed his eyes shut, took several deep breaths. Her response had shattered his control. She’d reacted to even the simplest touch with such unbridled pleasure that he worried he would hurt her in his eagerness. Not that she wasn’t ready. Not that she wasn’t so slippery that his mouth watered. Still, he had yet to even undress her.
Slowly, missing the warmth of her already, he slid his finger out of her limp body. “I hope you’re not planning to sleep now.”
A soft smile played over her lips as he unbuttoned her jacket. “No. No, I couldn’t bear to miss a thing.”
Finished with the jacket, he went to work on the buttons of her demure white shirt. Alex’s drowsy eyes met his as he reached the last button and his hand smoothed the fabric away from her. Her corset was cut low, and her breasts rose above it, covered by only the thinnest linen of her shift.
His eyes fell to the tiny bows that held the chemise together, and he watched as his callused brown fingers pulled at the blue bows. The linen parted in a slow revelation. He felt her eyes on his face as he slid the fabric down and his fingers brushed over bare skin. She was small and perfect, the warm rise of her just fitting into his palm.
He felt curiously unhurried now, though his cock strained at the tightness of his breeches. He let his hand rest still against her hot skin a moment, absorbed the hard thud of her heart into his palm before he slid it aside and lowered his mouth. His tongue circled the pink tip of her breast, felt it harden and peak against him. Alex sighed and her fingers curled into his hair. He took the hard pebble of her nipple into his mouth and laved his tongue against her until he felt her hands tighten to fists.
Urgency came upon him again, and he shifted and bared her other breast to taste that one as well. She moaned and raised her knees into a V that cradled him between her thighs. His clothes were suddenly the roughest wool cloth against his skin.
Collin knelt between those raised legs, tugged at his cravat, and tore his fingers down the buttons of his shirt. Her flushed face stared up at him, her small, beautiful breasts heaved with the force of her breath.
An unwelcome sound floated to his ears over the thump of his heart and the steady rush of the sea. He froze, shifting his eyes to a place above her body.
“Collin,