“Tell me,” he demanded. She didn’t play shy or coy, a thing he liked. She let him read her hunger in her face, in her expressive stormy eyes, hiding nothing. But would she speak of her desire? Would she be audacious and whisper words to him that would tell him how to fulfill her wildest needs?
“Tell me,” he insisted.
His wee Gwendolyn said a thing to him then that he’d never heard a woman say before, neither high-born nor whore, and the baseness of her words slammed into him as if he’d swallowed a double dose of a Rom lust potion.
He’d never had a woman say that to him. They used gentler words, but what Gwen had asked of him was exactly what he wanted to do. Their attraction to each other was primitive and went far beyond reason.
If she could voice such raw desires, what more might she confront bravely? Who and what he was? Might she possess such courage?
She lay beneath him, shivering with desire, her lips glistening in the moonlight, wet from his kisses, and he realized he was falling for her harder than a mighty oak cleaved in two by a lightning bolt would crash to the forest floor.
He plunged inside her.
And stopped.
Not by choice—oh, nay, not by his choice—but because there was something in his way.
“Oh, just push,” she cried. “I know it’s going to hurt at first. Just do it! Get it over with.”
He was stunned. Fragments of thoughts collided in his head: She is untouched by any man; how could this woman have survived a maiden so long? Are the men in her century utter fools? Then, Ah, she chose no other, but she chose me!
What a gift!
A more noble man might have backed off, a more noble man who knew that even a minute possibility existed that he might disappear that night would surely have refused, but there was something about Gwen Cassidy that drove him far past nobility. He wanted her, by fair means or foul. And if the worst happened tonight, the loving between them might make her more able to face what she may have to confront. Mayhap help her complete all the things he might need her do, and mayhap—he could entertain the outlandish dream—she could be persuaded to find a happy future in his past. For like it or not, the only future she was going to have after tonight was in his past.
He would make it up to her, he vowed. Her happiness would be his first priority. He would give her anything she wanted, heap her with mountains of gifts, attention, and devotion, as befitted a queen. He would wait on her hand and foot. And mayhap loving could work out the uncertainties in his plan that no amount of careful and cautious orchestration could accomplish.
“I may be little,” she coaxed softly when he hesitated, “but I’m tougher than you think.” And she repeated her previous request that had sent all the blood in his body rushing to his groin.
Inflamed, he plunged through the barrier, claiming her.
“Yes,” she screamed, and he drank her cry into his mouth, kissing her savagely, pushing deep within her. She matched his urgent rhythm, and although he knew it had caused her pain, her desire quickly surpassed the tearing of her maidenhead.
He gave himself to her with intensity he’d not given a woman before, burying himself so deep inside her he thought he must be touching the lip of her womb, then gliding out, slowly, only to thrust again. His entire world, his every breath and heartbeat, was focused on the woman in his arms.
Slipping her legs over his shoulders, he angled himself to drive back into her. He took the move achingly slowly, knowing how wee she was and that he would stretch her to her limits, but he needed to be so deep inside her that he no longer knew where he began and she ended. He slid into her, inch by inch, his body straining from such sweet torture.
“Drustan,” she cried, tossing her head from side to side, tangling her silky hair. He suckled her nipples as he withdrew and returned, and when he felt her contract around him, he clamped his teeth lightly on a nipple and tugged. He drove himself into her hard and fast and deep, over and over until he was nearly mindless with savage need.
“Och, lassie,” he said roughly, caught up in her spasms, “I canna ride out this storm again.” And as he thrust inside her so hard it nearly hurt him, his husky voice mingled with her sweet cries. They peaked in perfect rhythm, each shuddering contraction of her body drawing forth his seed.
He purred to her as he came, in an ancient tongue he knew she wouldn’t understand. He said foolish things, heartfelt things, deep and weighty things he could never acknowledge otherwise. He called her his goddess of the moon and praised her courageous spirit and fire. He asked her for babies. Christ, he talked like a fool.