Page 50 of When the Scoundrel Sins

“It’s only a touch, nothing more,” he promised, although the husky purr of his voice curling through her was far from convincing. “We’re up to our necks in ice-cold water. The last thing I’ll be able to do is ravish you. Although”—he swirled his tongue along the outer curl of her ear and drew a hot shudder from her—“I’d be happy to try.”

Oh,thatcertainly wasn’t putting her at ease! “Quinton, be serious.”

“I am. When I kissed you all those years ago,” he whispered, his hand on her stomach tracing tantalizing patterns of seduction across her bare skin, “I had no idea that you would grow into such a temptress.”

Leaving her light-headed and tingling, all her senses alive, the world around her spun into a swirling mass of contradictions. The heat of his lips on her cold skin…the warmth of bodies pressing together beneath the cold water…the silence of the wild glen around them while her heartbeat roared deafeningly.

And most of all, there was the contradiction that was Quinn himself. The pest who had always sent her pulse racing with anger was now a man who sent it cartwheeling with desire.

“Have I truly become that woman?” she whispered, all of her on pins and needles in anticipation of his answer. “Am I at all what you expected?”

A small pause…“No,” he admitted quietly.

A stinging pain pierced her—

“You’re more beautiful than I ever imagined.”

She closed her eyes, unable to keep back a smile of happiness. Oh, he was still a charmer, through and through; it was in his nature. But only Quinn could utter such a piece of sheer flattery and actually mean it.

“Why does that surprise you so?” he murmured.

“Because no one has ever told me that before.” That the first man to do so was Quinton Carlisle—she could scarcely believe it.

“You deserve to be told how beautiful you are. How brilliant and special.” His hand caressed in long, slow strokes along her outer thigh as he murmured, “Especially by the man you marry.”

She trembled and struggled to keep her wits through the delicious fog of wanton sensations he swirled inside her. God help her. She was losing the war already, and the battle had barely begun! “That…doesn’t signify.”

His lips caressed at her temple. “Then what does?”

“Mutual respect,” she whispered. During the past few weeks, she’d resigned herself to her situation. A loveless marriage was inevitable. Now she only hoped it would be painless. “Friendship, caring…”

“And desire,” he rasped hotly. “Never forget about that.”

He drove her to distraction as his fingertips poised at the edge of her feminine curls yet teasingly refused to slip lower, to that aching place that now craved his touch. Her heart pounded like a drum, half in longing for his hand to drift lower, half in fear that it wouldn’t. “That’s not important.”

“You know you want desire in your marriage,” he admonished softly. “That you want to be touched, like this.”

His hands slid up to capture her breasts. She gasped, her argument dying on her lips.

She closed her eyes and gave over to his caresses. And oh heavens, how good his hands felt…how thrillingly wanton and warm, and oh so wicked. Beneath his massaging palms, she rose up in the water until her breasts floated on the surface. She bowed her head and watched shamelessly as his fingers teased at her nipples until they ached, already puckered hard from the coldness of the water and throbbing in time with the pulsing heat flaring up from between her thighs.

She gave a frustrated whimper. No good could come of this. He was still leaving to put half a world between them, and she would still be forced to marry another…Yet she couldn’t quash it, that delicious craving swelling inside her that only Quinn could satisfy.

She panted softly as her body arched back against his and shamelessly invited his touch. She couldn’t stop herself. To be bare to his seeking hands yet still hidden beneath the mirror-like surface of the dark pond—a delicious contradiction. And when his fingers pinched her nipples and shot a shiver of pleasure-pain straight down to that aching place between her legs, she didn’twantto stop.

“You enjoy being touched and pleasured. Even now you’re craving it.” His lips curled into a knowing smile against her temple. “You should have that, Belle. You should be with a man who wants to give you every pleasure you desire, a man who desires you in return.”

“Desire…will come…in time,” she somehow found the breath to force out as his hands left her breasts. While his right hand rested against her outer thigh, his left arm encircled her waist and held her tight against the cradle of his hips, his manhood pressing into her bottom.

“No, it won’t.” He nuzzled the back of her neck. “Desire is immediate or never, an unstoppable need to bury yourselves in each other until the two of you become one.”

When he placed a hot, openmouthed kiss to her nape, she bit back a whimper on her lips. “I don’t need to feel desire to be a wife.”

He nipped sharply at her shoulder in punishment for that untruth. But instead of a rebuke, his bite sent a wanton shiver curling through her, followed by an immediate longing to have him sink his teeth into her flesh again.

“Your husband should make you feel wanted as a woman, Annabelle. He should give you everything you desire. Especially himself.”

His velvety voice swirled through her, like a ribbon unwinding from a spool, puddling in silky softness between her thighs. He meant to chastise, but the eroticism behind his words left her aching with an intensity she’d never experienced before.