Chapter Ten
Violet stared at the hulk of a man lounging in the chair by the fire. Her heart skittered in her throat. He was so...menacing. So angry. Her lungs locked. She struggled to breathe.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find you?” His voice, a low thrum, echoed through the small room. “Did you think I would just let you go?”
“Ewan.” She swallowed. “How did you—”
“How did I find you? It hardly signifies.” He stood, tall and foreboding, and approached the bed. “I did. I always will.” He glared down at her. “Do you have any idea how dangerous these woods can be?”
She tipped up her chin. “I can take care of myself.”
He snorted. “The hell you can. Goddamn it, Violet. You could have been injured. Or raped. Or worse.” His eyes took on an unholy glow.
“The risk was worth it. Better than being held captive, being used by you.”
His lip curled at her choice of words. “Used?”
“As a means to an end,” she spat. Then she hunkered back because he leaned toward her, nostrils flared, ferocity flowing from him in waves.
“You know it isna like that. It wasna like that.”
“I don’t know.” She flinched as he seized her shoulders in a crushing grip. Shook her. Just a tiny bit.
“It wasna like that. And you enjoyed it.”
She put out a lip. “I did not.” A complete and utter falsehood but she let it slip out because she was still tender, still wounded by his words. The denunciation of her true feelings helped dam up the pain.
Her denial seemed to infuriate him. He yanked her up and into his arms. His mouth closed on hers.
It was not a gentle kiss. There was something savage in it. He mashed his lips against hers and forced his tongue into her mouth and took what he wanted.
She resisted, thrashing and fighting and attempting to wrench away. He did not allow it.
But then something changed. He softened. Or perhaps she did. The kiss became something else altogether. Seductive, tantalizing, irresistible.
Oh, she tried to resist. She didn’t want to want him. Didn’t like the rising passion coiling in her belly. But his scent, his taste, the masterful way in which he possessed her lips set a fire raging within her.
Against her will, she responded, pressed against him. Gave as good as she got.
He growled low and deep in his throat and pressed her back onto the bed, yanking up her skirts. She murmured her dissent but he swallowed the peep and delved deeper, finding the curls, the tender nerves at the crux of her being.
He stroked her hard, rough, and shudders raced through her.
“You’re wet,” he muttered, and then he plunged his fingers inside. Everything in her seized. He hissed in a breath. “So...tight.”
He fumbled with the ties to his braes, yanked them down with short, desperate tugs, fisted his cock and drove it home.
Violet wailed as bliss plowed through her. The invasion was an assault of sensation. Delight screamed on every nerve as he filled her, stroked her inner walls.
His passion was not gentle. It was not slow or tame.
It was as though that wild creature within him had awoken and was intent upon feasting on her soul, determined to own her, possess her, command her every breath.
Every ort of her being trained on the delicious thrusts, the agonizing withdrawals, the magnificent filling of an aching void as he entered her again and again in a frantic flurry.
Passion flooded her, easing his passage.
He looped his forearms around her thighs and lifted her up and took her from another angle, hitting another spot deep within her. Blinding heat scalded her, a bliss so intense it curled her toes.
Her crisis threatened. Her body began to quake, to flutter, to spasm. She clenched him hard to hold it off, or to coax it closer. She wasn’t sure which. Her thoughts had shattered and spiraled off into the night. She could only feel. Barely breathe. Only be.
And then she peaked. Rapture claimed her and took her and sucked her down into a miasma, a churning whirlpool of spinning emotion and sensation and elation.
But he was not done.
He thrust again and again, pressing hard into her, near whimpering when her muscles melted and he sank deep—deeper than he’d ever been before. Another wash of sharp pleasure raked her.
His pace increased. Became shorter, harder, faster. “Never,” he panted. “Never.”
“Ah! Never?”
His nostrils flared. His member swelled. He erupted, flooding her with his hot seed. It burned through her. Warmed her. Body and soul.
“Never run from me again,” he growled. And then he took her mouth with his, repeating the words against her lips. Making her taste them.
His hips slowed but still continued that exquisite motion, now easing in and out as they both recovered from this sprint of passion.
Then he pulled out and lowered himself to her side.
His pulse was visible in his temple, throbbing at a manic pace.
He blew out a breath and scrubbed his face with a palm.
They lay there in silence, side by side, two landed fish, gasping for air.
Violet struggled to calm her heart. She didn’t know what was wrong with her. How could she have enjoyed that? How could she already be yearning for more?
He was a beast and a brute and to him she was nothing but a vessel.
She longed for a man who would love her. Truly, deeply love her...not just make glorious love to her.
She wanted to matter to him. But she didn’t.
She turned her head away from him so he couldn’t see her tears. Not that he was paying attention. He’d finished with her after all. At least for now.
After a while, when his breathing calmed, she rolled over on her side and stared at the wall. He curled up behind her and wrapped his arms around her, tugging her against the wall of his chest. His heart thumped, resonating in the echoes of her soul.
Why couldn’t he love her?
Why couldn’t he love her the way she loved him?
With all his heart?
Because he wasn’t that kind of man.
And he never would be.
“I meant what I said.” His voice rumbled sleepily in her ear. “Never run from me, Violet. I willna allow it. I canna allow it.”
She didn’t answer, other than a soft grunt. He seemed to accept that as an assent and tightened his hold. His warmth seeped into her. His breath was a tender comfort on her cheek. She could lie like this forever.
She would not, of course.
As soon as he fell asleep, she would slip away.
And this time, he wouldn’t catch her.
Something woke him deep in the night. He’d been in the arms of a delicious dream so it took him a moment to come fully awake and recall where he was. Violet had rolled away so he reached for her...and found nothing but warm blankets.
Ewan shot up and glared at the empty spot on the bed. He raked the cabin with a furious gaze. There was little light, only a slight glow from the embers of the fire, but he could tell she wasn’t here. She’d gone.
With a plaintive roar, he sprang from the bed and pulled on his braes. He saw at once that the lamp was gone as well. Fuck.
He’d told her in no uncertain terms. She was not to run from him.
He hoped to God she hadn’t been gone long, that the sound of the door was what had awoken him.
He ran outside and scanned the tree line, his heart thudding painfully in his throat. He’d only just found her. He couldn’t bear to lose her again. He couldn’t.
And that terror raging in his breast? A panic far beyond that of a captor defied. He didn’t dare scrutinize that.
He saw the light in the distance, flickering like a bobbing star. He set off toward it at a dead run. How dare she. How dare she? Fury and exhilaration and the bitter aftertaste of dread twined together in his gut.
It did not take him long to catch up with her. His night vision was good. He skirted the fallen logs and leapt over gullies and ruts with ease. Wayward branches were no match for his resolve.
She was in sight within seconds.
She glanced over her shoulder and saw him coming. She let out a little cry and started to scamper away, in another direction. There was no hope for her. No way she could outrun him. Not with her short legs, the hampering of her skirts.
He captured her easily, looping an arm around her waist. He hefted her off her feet, turned around and, pausing only to pick up the lamp, which she’d dropped in that headlong fruitless flight, towed her back to the cabin.
She kicked and squirmed and pummeled him with tiny fists. “Beast!” she bellowed more than once. As though it was the only word she could think of.
When they came to the door, she hooked it with her grip and tried to stop him from taking her farther. He pulled her free with ease and dumped her onto the bed and glowered at her.
She was a sight. A glorious sight with her hair all a’muss, her bosom heaving, her lips parted, her eyes ablaze. She perched on the mattress, clearly poised to run again, glaring at him.
“I told you.” A gruff, feral snarl. “I told you no’ to run from me.”
“Go to hell, McCloud!”
He wasn’t sure what infuriated him more, her defiant expression or her words. Or his blood was simply running high. But the provocation she presented was more than he could resist.
He took hold of her arm and yanked her to her feet, then sat on the bed himself and flung her over his lap. His palm landed on her upturned bottom. The smack resonated.
“Noooo!” She writhed and thrashed on his lap.
She shouldn’t have. She really shouldn’t have.
Her resistance enflamed his ire.
He smacked her again, and again. But spanking her through the muffling folds of her skirts was not nearly satisfying enough. He yanked them up.
She warbled a shrill, incomprehensible howl.
He ignored it.
When his hand fell again, it was with the satisfying splat of flesh to flesh.
Even more satisfying was watching his handprint rise in glowing red on her alabaster ass.
She stilled. The sound emanating from her throat was something very different.
A low, wild cry. One he’d heard on several occasions.