Tempting Fate by Kerrigan Byrne (best free ereader .TXT) 📕

He besieged her with his lust, thrusting his tongue past the barrier of her lips with a wet, demanding glide. Caressing and tasting, he explored the recesses of her mouth in deep, drugging strokes.

The top layer of his skin was still damp and chilled, but the inferno beneath threatened to immolate her in the conflagration of his unsatisfied lust.

She would be a willing sacrifice to such a blaze.

“I want to look at you.” He broke the kiss to make the husky confession. “You’re so fucking beautiful. Every inch of you. But I can’t seem to let you go.”

Placing her hands on his chest, she peeled away from his flesh with reluctance mirroring his own. “I want to look at you, too,” she replied from behind lowered lashes. “Perhaps while you discard your trousers and boots, we can become familiar with the sight of each other. And then… we can familiarize ourselves in other ways.”

He shook his head, and it took a moment for Felicity to realize it wasn’t in rejection of her suggestion, but in incredulity. “A man’s body is nothing but a utility, whereas you…” He seemed to lose his ability to speak.

“I want to see,” she gently insisted, stepping out of the circle of his arms.

His gaze devoured her as his hands fell to his waistband. Felicity found it rather lovely that he didn’t simply stare at her breasts and the thatch of gold between her thighs. Other parts of her seemed to snag his notice. The curve of her shoulder, the dip of her waist, her feet, and her hips.

That wasn’t to say his eyes didn’t darken with dangerous storms when they devoured the most private parts of her.

Finished with his buttons, he bent to remove his boots, and Felicity, in kind, hungrily viewed the bunches and planes of his shoulders, the chords of his neck, the ropes and knots of his insanely muscled arms.

Pushing his trousers and underthings down in one motion, he stepped out of them and straightened, standing before her with nothing but the firelight flickering off his magnificence.

All moisture deserted her mouth as his sex, already heavy and large, thickened right before her eyes, swelling against veins and smooth skin.

Swallowing profusely, she did her best to tamp down on a surge of concern. She could think of no place in her body where that could possibly fit.

He’d been wrong about men, though.

At least about himself.

Never in her life had she looked upon something and been so thoroughly affected. Not the art at the Louvre, or the plethora of other monuments made by man or nature.

Gabriel Sauvageau was certainly built with the perfection and precision of the most ingenious of machinery. He rippled with strength, and radiated masculinity.

Every single part of him was so large. So undoubtedly male. His thighs, thick with the divots and swells of detailed muscle. His torso, ribbed and grooved with sinew and strength.

But what truly transfixed her was the art he’d carved into his own skin, often covering scars beneath.

The wary suspicion haunting his eyes moved her as she floated toward him, her hands reaching out to splay across the veritable mounds of his chest. She loved the dichotomy of crisp yet silken hair beneath her smooth palms.

Not a word was spoken as she smoothed her hands up over the mountains of his shoulders and down the slopes of his arms. He stood passively— if not patiently— allowing her to inspect a tattoo she liked, or trail her finger along a scar.

She’d ask about them someday. Each one. When they’d become more comfortable like this. When the uncertainty had given over to trust.

It was cruel to other men, she decided, that one such as he should exist. He was Achilles in a field of Greeks. Some of them heroes, some of them even demigods, perhaps.

And not one with the slightest hope of comparing to him.

“You can touch me, too, if you like,” she offered with a bashful flutter of her lashes.

His hands curled to fists at his sides. “Not yet,” he said through clenched teeth. “I’m not… in control.”

She made a sympathetic sound, wondering if arousal was different for men and women. Because, for the first time in her entire life, she felt nothing less than powerful. It was a strong word, but she hadn’t another one in her repertoire.

Fear didn’t belong in this place, because he’d chased it away. Of course, she fought a bit of self-conscious uncertainty and her innate shyness and modesty.

But no courage was necessary, because she was truly unafraid. In control. She held this beast of a man beneath a spell, and before the night was through, they’d belong to each other.

His gaze upon her was a strange medley of reverent and carnal, and she lifted onto the tips of her toes to offer a kiss.

He still had to bend a little to grant it, and she smiled against his lips when he did.

Relentless in their quest, her fingers slid between them, drawing past the corrugations of his abdomen, and the bandage at his side, to where she knew a delightful trail of dark hair led down to his sex.

“No.” He tore his mouth from hers, levering his hips out of reach.

She pulled her hand away, as if she had been branded. “Did I do something wrong?”

Smoothing a rough palm down her hair, he quickly replied, “Never, mon coeur. But I am so… if you touch me. I might… I might come.”

“That’s all right. I don’t mind.”

“I mind.” His brows drew together.

“I’d like to know what it feels like,” she admitted. “I’d like to see before…” She ducked her head into his shoulder, her fingers finding a tender, especially smooth spot of skin where his hip met his thigh.

Nodding, he closed his eyes.

Her name escaped his lips on a strangled whisper as she found the barrel of his erection with her smooth, cool fingers.

The heat of it stunned her the most. Though his entire body was flush and warming from