Chapter 17 #2
She quivered—softened—and felt the hot pulse between her legs. Her hips circled, rubbing against him as she tried to ease the restlessness, the anxiousness, the urgency.
All she could think about was him inside her. Filling her. Making her his. Again.
Duncan was out of control. The hunger raged inside him, wild and ravenous. The taste of her passion was like ambrosia to a starving man.
He couldn’t get enough. He kissed her harder. Deeper. Drinking her in with his mouth and tongue. With every breath.
He’d forgotten how good she felt in his arms. How soft and feminine.
How she smelled like some kind of exotic flower.
The silky soft waves of her hair tumbled down her back over his hands.
He remembered how it had felt spilled out over his chest and he groaned, sliding his tongue in her mouth with long, insistent strokes.
Her kiss had taken him by surprise, but the flare of passion that burst between them did not. For ten long years this primitive part of him had been repressed, but one taste of her and the chains of civility snapped like a silken thread.
His body raged as hot as a blacksmith’s fire. Control a distant memory. The feel of her lush curves pressed against him was too much to take. The sweet feminine surrender an aphrodisiac too powerful to deny.
Every barbarian instinct in him urged to take her. To lift her skirts, thrust inside her, and make her his. Again. But this time he would never let her go.
It had been too damned long. He cupped her bottom and lifted her against him. Blood rushed to his already rock-hard erection, pushing him to near bursting. When she rocked against him, he pulsed and nearly came. Her body told him what she wanted.
Knowing it was going too fast, that he was being too rough, that he could hurt her, he gathered every last ounce of his control and tried to slow down. To tame the wildness.
But she wouldn’t let him, moaning her protest. She circled her hips against him insistently, rubbing, and kissing him with all the frenzy he’d tried to temper.
He growled, the last remnants of nobility ripped to shreds. His need for her drove him over the edge.
Breaking the kiss, he trailed his mouth down the long column of her throat.
Tasting the warmth of her skin, inhaling her fresh scent.
He loosened the ties of her cloak with one hand, and then opened the top buttons of her velvet doublet to kiss her chest. To slide his tongue below her sark along the edge of her stays.
She moaned when his tongue flicked the taut bead of her puckered flesh and gripped his shoulders as if her knees had just given out.
From the edge of consciousness he realized how dangerous this was—they could be discovered at any moment—but that only heightened the excitement, the urgency. Later, there would be time to strip her naked, to lick and suck every juicy inch of her, but right now they were both too ravenous.
His tongue circled the hard peak of her nipple, teasing, as his hand lifted her skirts and bunched them around her hips.
She sucked in her breath at the blast of cold air, but he didn’t give her time to protest. His hand found her heat.
His cock jerked at the erotic touch, at the soft silkiness sliding under his fingertips. He stroked her, a long gentle swipe along the slit of her womanhood.
“God, you are so wet,” he groaned.
She didn’t say anything, but made a soft sound in her throat and her body quivered.
He felt the dampness spread between her legs and couldn’t wait for her to come. For her body to contract and shudder around him, for her to cry out with pleasure as she shattered.
He slid his finger inside her. A slow thrust first and then more insistently. Circling, teasing. Rubbing that sensitive little spot until her breath hitched in short, demanding gasps.
He loosed the ties of his breeches. His erection sprang free, the cold air a relief to his red-hot skin. A drop of anticipation glistened on the tip. Hooking one shapely leg over his arm, he bent his knees a little to find the angle …
His stomach muscles clenched as the heavy head of his cock nudged damp swollen flesh. The muscles in his neck and shoulders tightened, straining against the urge to drive up high inside her.
He held her there just like that—flesh to flesh—and forced her to look at him. To see him. To know that it was he who was pleasuring her. That it was he who could make her feel like this. That she belonged to him.
The mindless surrender of her body was not enough.
Her gaze met his, half-lidded, soft and hazy. Her beautiful features slack with desire. “Duncan,” she said, her voice pleading.
A pure shot of masculine satisfaction surged through him, but he needed more. He wanted all of her—body, heart, and soul. The need to hear her say it outweighed even the lust raging inside him. “Tell me you want this, Jeannie. Tell me you want me.” Only me.
Her eyes widened, she appeared startled as if out of a dream. “I—”
She hesitated.
His body chilled, sensing the words before she spoke. The bite of disappointment snapped down on his chest like a spiked steel trap.
Jeannie fought to hold on to the passionate haze that dulled her senses—the shimmery effervescent wave, the tingling, the frantic quickening of her pulse—but it slipped through her fingers like water through a sieve.
The moment was gone and unwanted lucidity forged a path of cool rationality in her mind.
Her body throbbed with complaint at the sharp curtailment of pleasure. It felt as if she’d been brought to the very edge of paradise only to be shoved forcefully back to earth.
An irrational burst of anger hit her. Why did he have to do this? Why did he have to force her to acknowledge what was happening? Why couldn’t they just forget about everything else and let desire take over?
She stilled. For the same reasons she couldn’t just say, “Yes, I want this. Yes, I want you,” and give over to the pleasure he wrought within her.
They’d both changed. They were no longer careless youths to be swept away by passion. She better than anyone knew the consequences of that.
She pushed herself away from him, horrified by the madness that had come over her. By what she’d nearly done. “I’m sorry. I … I can’t do this.”
His face was a mask of pained restraint, every muscle tight. His eyes pinned her, biting into her with a searing intensity. “Why?”
The dull hollowness of his voice made her chest pang. She’d hurt him.
Tears burned behind her eyes. She looked up at him, trying to find the words to explain. “I don’t know.”
“You want me.”
She didn’t bother trying to deny it. How could she when her body still wept and trembled from his touch. She’d always wanted him—only him.
“But something is holding you back,” he said. He caught her arm and held her to him, his face dangerously close. “What are you hiding from me, Jeannie? Does it have something to do with your husband?” She didn’t say anything, fear clamping around her throat. “With your son?”
He was holding her so close, looking into her eyes, and he saw it. The flare of panic in her gaze she could not hide.
“It’s your son you are protecting.” His eyes searched her face. “Why?”
Jeannie’s heart raced as she wrestled with something to say, with some kind of explanation to steer him from the truth. Everything she’d fought so hard to protect seemed poised on the very precipice of disaster. She was scared to open her mouth, fearing the truth would somehow slip out.
“How could I possibly hurt your son?”
Anger welled up inside her. Though she’d gone to every effort to prevent him from doing so, part of her wanted him to guess. His genuine perplexity, his blindness, grated, shattering her already frayed emotions. Tears broke free as the pressure of all she’d been keeping inside finally burst.
“Don’t you see that your very presence here is a threat to him?
If you implicate my husband in this plot against you who do you think will take the blame?
You can destroy my son’s future, everything I’ve fought so hard to protect,” she lashed out, coming dangerously close to the truth, but for the moment not caring.
Her accusation took him aback. “He’s a child.”
She scoffed. “Do you think that will matter to your cousin or the king?”
His silence said it all. Giving voice to her fears was a relief, she realized. It hadn’t been the entire truth, but enough of it to feel as if a weight had been lifted.
After a moment, he dragged his hands through his hair and said, “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Would it have mattered? Should I have trusted you?” She challenged. “Did you trust me?”
Their eyes met, each knowing the answer.
“And this is why you’ve refused to help me? To protect your son?”
She sensed the urgency in his voice, as if her answer was somehow very important to him. “What should I have done? Help you destroy him?”
“I would never allow that to happen, Jeannie,” he said, tilting her chin and forcing her gaze to his. For a moment his expression was devoid of the anger that had hardened it only moments ago—almost tender. “The boy carries no blame for what happened. I swear to you he will not be harmed.”
“How can you make such a promise?”
“I can do nothing about your father, but I will ensure that your husband’s name is kept out of this.”
She sucked in her breath. Her eyes scanned his face, seeing only cold resolve. “You would do this for me?”
He nodded. “Aye. You have my word.”