stopped her before she could take it away.
“No. Don’t.”
She froze. “Why?”
It just came out. Wishing it back didn’t do any more good than wishing Tejala didn’t want her. Sam responded with brutal honesty.
“Because I like the thought of your hand there ready to pleasure yourself if I tell you to.”
She couldn’t imagine doing that. Didn’t even know how to do that. “Touching oneself is a sin.”
“So you said, but for someone I doubt even has a kissingcousin relationship with the concept, you seem to have an awfully long list of things on your list that are sinful.”
“We are schooled in such things.”
Beneath her hip his shaft jerked.
“In sin?”
“Dios, no.” Too late she saw the teasing in his eyes. She shook her head at herself. “You are not serious.”
His smile was beautiful, making her forget for the moment the intimacy of their position and her discomfort with it.
“Not fully, no.”
Not fully implied he was partially serious. She shifted on his lap. His shaft jerked again, brushing her more intimately than his hand. She paused, absorbing the uniqueness of the sensation. It wasn’t unpleasant. That had to be a good thing in light of what she was planning.
“But you were a bit serious?”
“Just wondering what’s going on in that head of yours. Good women don’t just go throwing away their innocence.”
Ah, his conscience needed soothing.
“Maybe in my eyes it would not be a throwing away.”
“Uh-huh.” His lips grazed her again. She shivered from head to toe and the ache in her womb swelled.
“So.” He smiled against her temple before repeating the caress. “I take it you’d consider it too much of a sin to touch yourself like this for me?”
“This” was a slow draw of his finger upward from the well of her vagina to the hard point above, before wandering back down again.
Did she? Her face felt as if it were burning, the muscles so tight she couldn’t form the words. His finger pressed against her opening, gentle in its demand. She clutched at his shirt and nodded, as for the first time, her muscles parted to take a man. She cried out as the tip of his finger entered in a tiny consummation. Digging her nails into his shoulder, she arched, inviting more.
He froze. “Damn.”
The curse buffeted her temple. Heat transferred from his skin to hers, summoning an answering heat deep within her core. A heat that melted all that it touched. A foreign wetness invaded her flesh. He tested it with a light press. His finger slid deeper, easier.
“Maybe I should take over, then,” he rasped. “Just to spare you the burden of penance.”
Embarrassment twined further with desire, giving birth to doubt. “You are católico?”
For some reason it would feel better sinning with a member of her faith.
“No, but I’m familiar with the breed.”
The moisture spread as his fingers glided higher before slipping back down. Horror blended with an agony of embarrassment. Her time of the month had just finished. It could not be that. How did one ask if such a thing were normal? She stalled, searching for the way.
“You are a heathen?”
“Pretty much.”
A shiver went through her, and his smile grew. “You like the thought of that?”
How did he know the wildness in him attracted her? He couldn’t know. He was just guessing. She licked her lips again and clenched her fingers against the probe of his balm-covered ones. “Of course not. It is wrong to enjoy the misfortune of others.”
His fingertips worked between her legs in smooth glides, always ending at that shallow well, always ending in that erotic stretching as he forced her to take that first bit. Always her body welcomed the intrusion. Always her mind struggled with the reality.
Was she as swollen as she felt? Could he feel the unnatural wetness? O Dios, please do not let him mind.
“But maybe I’m happy being a heathen.” His drawl deepened until it was almost a growl. “Maybe you’re happy I’m a heathen, not bound by restraint and ‘must nots.’”
He removed her hand completely, placing it on her thigh while she was paralyzed with a dread that felt a lot like anticipation.
“Maybe,” he continued, “you like the thought that I’ll do what I like with you without one thought to proper.”
Maybe he was right.
The thrust of his finger was a shock, driving deep between her thighs when he’d trained her to expect a tease and withdrawal. The burning ache whipped along her nerve endings, flaying them with the rapture caught in the bit of pain. It was too much, but she didn’t fight, just accepted the burn and the pleasure. Accepted it because she’d asked for it. Accepted it because it felt right.
“Ah, duchess,” he growled in her ear before catching the lobe between his teeth, “I do think you like my heathen self.”
She did, and the proof was in the moan that accompanied the withdrawal of his finger.
“Now, that was a sweet sound.”
She thought it was a humiliating one. She wanted to be as in control as he was. Nothing made it clearer that that wasn’t going to happen than the slow reinsertion of his finger. Searing heat shot from her groin outward, jerking her muscles taut. She would have fallen off the horse if his arm hadn’t wrapped around her waist, trapping her arms at her sides, holding her for the pleasure he insisted she experience.
“Like that, sweetheart?” he asked as if he expected her to be able to answer. “Do you like it like that or do you prefer—” an equally slow retreat followed immediately by a shallow thrust “—that?”
The thrust was harder to take, but it delivered such sweet joy.
“Both,” she managed to gasp. “I prefer both.”
He chuckled. “Greedy, too.”
The urge to turn her mouth to his was almost irresistible. “You asked.”
“So I did. Hold on, now.”
She already clung to him as if the bottom was about to fall out of the world. His teeth nipped her ear. His fingertips grazed her hungry flesh. She thought the rough callus might hurt, but right now it merely provided an intriguing drag. A tingling ache followed in the wake of the caress. Instinct drove her hips up the fraction it took to renew the contact. It wasn’t the
