Chapter Eighteen #2
He lay back with a sigh, his forearm over his head. ‘I just wanted to. I wanted to bring you comfort, and I was trying to get you to think well of me, to stop hating me.’
‘I don’t hate you. It’s just that you didn’t have to lie with me.’
He frowned. ‘I never meant to force you, but I had to, or your friends would have suffered and ….’
Lowri put a finger to his lips. ‘No, you mistake my meaning. What I am saying is that you could have said ‘no’ to the marriage, walked away and left me to my fate. But you saved my life, and Donnan’s and Rory’s, too. I have never acknowledged that, have I?’
‘Believe me, ‘twas not such a sacrifice. But tell me this. Did you just let me have my way because I was angry?’
‘No. I am not afraid of you or your anger.’ She put her hand on his chest. ‘I just don’t understand why you would do that if you were so angry with me?
‘I wanted to drive Butcher out of your head. The thought of you liking him makes my heart rage.’
‘’So you were jealous?’
‘Aye, and I don’t like that feeling. It is like a rot in my guts. And I’ve wanted to taste you ever since we stood before that priest.’
She lowered her head again. ‘Don’t say such things.’
‘It’s the truth, so why should I not say it?’
‘You can say it, but how can I ever believe it? You hated being married as much as me.’
‘Aye. But I don’t mind it so much now.’ Cullen smiled, and the little smile she threw back at him gave more relief than spurting his seed inside her.
It meant he had won Lowri’s good opinion in some small way, and if he had to spend his life between her legs to keep it, he would. It’s not as if it would be a chore.
Lowri let the warmth of Cullen’s chest seep into hers, for it was comforting to be close to another person.
But if Cullen’s lovemaking – if you could describe that thing he had done with his mouth in such a way – was meant to calm her, it had not.
Lowri’s heart was galloping out of her chest, and she was raw with pleasure.
His warm mouth had been so gentle at first, but then insistent, demanding, mastering her.
Lowri had been helpless under such an onslaught.
She never thought a body could feel so much.
How could she want to sob her heart out and laugh with joy at the same time?
Cullen’s breath on her tender womanhood had sent fire through every nerve in her body.
Even now, she felt the shadow of the shuddering jolts of pleasure that rolled over each other, like waves crashing to shore, raw and intense.
Her legs still shook, and she had died a little inside at the beauty of it, as if her heart had exploded into tiny shards of joy.
‘We need to stop going around in circles, you and I,’ said Cullen. ‘Let us get some pleasure out of this life. We can’t go on the way we have been, lass, tearing at each other like animals in the same trap. I think the best revenge on my father is for us to be happy, don’t you?’
He gave her that warm smile, and her heart broke a little. Lowri raised herself onto her elbow. ‘I agree. We cannot go on the way we have.’
They could not, because something inside Lowri had shifted.
She had thought to control Cullen by making him want her.
But now, he controlled her, for she yearned to feel that rush of desire, that animal hunger again.
It was like a sickness had been planted in her soul, her heart, between her legs.
She was wanton, lewd, a slave to her need.
If she searched her soul, she had begun to want Cullen, to anticipate his taking her in darkness with a degree of pleasure.
But now, it was much worse. She had started to need him.
‘No more shameful couplings in the dark, Lowri,’ he said. ‘I am in earnest. I will not have you if you do not want me.’
‘Alright.’
‘If we are to get a bairn between us, best it is conceived in love.’
‘Love?’ she said, looking down at him.
‘I meant affection, respect, or just desire, if there is nothing else between us.’ He leapt out of bed like a scalded cat. ‘I almost forgot. I have something for you.’
Lowri was not fooled. He was covering his embarrassment at saying the word ‘love’ when he did not mean it.
Cullen rummaged in a sack and threw a bundle of red at her. It was a dress - costly and exquisite, not that such things had ever interested her much. But it meant he had thought of her and brought it to please her. It was a kindness she probably did not deserve.
He stared with a strange, hungry look on his face when she held it against herself. ‘Shall I put it on?’
‘No, for you’ll only have to take it off again.’ His words sent a chill down her spine and had her pulsing with anticipation. Cullen leapt back into bed and cast the dress aside. He kissed her. ‘I can go again, if you can?’ he said.
‘I can go again too,’ she said, hoping that the rush of pleasure at him saying it did not mean she was fool to her bones.
The night was long and spent with Cullen’s body all over hers.
Lowri woke at first light to a gripping pain in her belly.
Surely her exploits could not have been so violent that she had hurt herself.
She glanced at Cullen. He was on his back, the blankets thrown back to reveal a slab of muscled chest, pale skin and a thin river of brown hair running down his flat belly.
If she put her mouth to that river, she could follow it down and put her mouth to other things. After all, he had tasted her.
Lowri chided herself. The idea was too deviant for her to try it. Besides, her belly hurt. She eased out of bed so as not to wake Cullen and went outside. She put her hand between her legs, and her fingers came away bloody.
Her courses had come. Damn. How could that be?
She had given herself to her husband in every way imaginable, and in a few ways that shocked and shamed her.
Now, she could not lie with Cullen and feel that big, muscular body slamming into hers.
She went back inside, and it was only then that the thought hit her.
She was more disappointed that she could not lie with Cullen than that no bairn was coming to secure her friends’ release.
Cullen sat up. ‘Where did you go?’
‘Just outside for some air.
‘Come back to bed.’
‘No. My courses have come.’
He gave her a weak smile. ‘Then we shall just have to redouble our efforts in future. Come here for me to hold you.’
‘No, I must walk off the pain.’
Her words were a little sharp, and they must have insulted him, for his face changed and his tone became stern, all the gentle intimacy of the night, gone. ‘Do not wander off again, Lowri. Butcher has seen you, and from now on, he will covet you relentlessly.’
‘I don’t want Butcher.’
‘It does not matter what you want. That man always gets his way eventually, by charm or violence.’
‘No man will ever own me or my body. I am not for sale. Let us be clear, Cullen.
‘As you like. But from now on, wherever I go, you go. And be minded, lass, some places I go may not be to your liking.