Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Mordred
His eyes devoured her: full, heavy breasts straining against the sheer chemise, skirt bunched up around her waist, those generous thighs exposed to the cool air, auburn curls tumbling down her shoulders like a waterfall of copper. Desire pressed in on him from every possible angle.
“You would be utterly perfect,” Mordred murmured, his fingers on the curve of her ass, the taste of her still heady on his tongue, “if you were anyone else.”
The Druid girl could have called his bluff.
Instead, she sat up, one sleeve of her chemise slipping down her shoulder.
His chest went tight. They held each other’s gazes, time stretched taut as a drum.
Mordred wanted her to command him back to his knees.
To ride him until she cried out his name.
To take every last bit of pleasure his body could give her.
When she reached out and grabbed him by the waist of his trousers, Mordred let her pull him closer.
“Your tongue was acceptable,” Nyneve said, eyes glittering in the firelight. “But what about your cock?” She trailed one hand down his stomach toward his hard, throbbing want.
He slotted his hips into hers, lifting her chin with his fingertips. “Do not start something you have no intention of finishing,” he warned, his voice sounding stronger than he felt.
“Behave,” she murmured, flashing him a devious little smile. She slipped her hand between her thighs, sliding her fingers into that wet, hot dampness he had just eagerly lapped at. Mordred watched, unabashedly enraptured, as she let out a rough moan.
“See?” she asked in a strained voice. “I don’t need you.”
“No,” he agreed, tracing her jawline. “But you want me. And you hate me for it.”
Their eyes met for the barest of moments, and then she slammed her mouth into his, fingernails clawing across his chest. She caught his lower lip between her teeth, and Mordred groaned into her mouth.
The shadow behind his ribs throbbed like it did when he was in the heat of battle, covered in other people’s blood.
And just like on the battlefield, his mind went dark and wide and hungry.
Like any predator might, Mordred wrapped his arms around the impossibly beautiful creature and tossed her over his shoulder.
Then he prowled toward the back of the cottage, one hand sliding up her thigh.
Mordred pushed past the heavy curtain into Nyneve’s chambers and tossed her down on the pallet.
She gazed up at him, eyes wide, chest flushed, that clever little mouth of hers parted, like a moan was already gathering at the back of her throat.
If Mordred wanted to maintain a single shred of his sanity, he knew he needed to leave immediately.
Her taste would already live on his tongue forever.
He did not think he could stand to know what it was for her thighs to be wrapped around him, nails digging into his shoulders as she took anything and everything she wanted from him.
Letting out a long breath, he caged her in with his arms. “Tell me to leave,” he said breathlessly, “or show me precisely how much you hate me.”
This glorious, ferociously alive sorceress should stab him or punch him or banish him. Anything at all that might stop him from turning up at her door like a starving alley cat.
“Once,” Nyneve replied, a brow raised. “We do this once. To excise the madness inflicted upon us beneath the hill.”
He heaved in a breath, his chest meeting her breasts. A slow, dangerous smile crept across his face. “I will do my utmost as a knight of Camelot to be available whenever you might have use of me, Lady Nyneve.”
“I really do hate you,” she replied, slipping her fingers beneath the waist of his trousers and yanking him down on top of her.
Their mouths crashed together as she closed her thighs around his waist, gasping when she felt his hard length press against her belly.
His blood surged, pounding as loud as hoofbeats in his ears.
“Get on your back,” Nyneve commanded.
Without a word, Mordred wrapped his arm around her waist and rolled them both over. The sorceress sat up, straddling him. When she ground her hips against his, they both let out a strangled moan.
“Once,” she repeated, one hand fumbling with the lacing on his trousers before he reached down and did it for her.
Heaving a breath, he looked up at her and met her wild eyes. “You have already come undone once,” Mordred breathed, slipping his hand beneath her shift and finding the sweet, wet heat of her until the sorceress’s eyelids fluttered. “Do you truly want to limit yourself?”
“You’re impossible,” she said raggedly, planting one open palm on his chest. Then she shoved her shift aside and lowered herself onto him.
The sight of Nyneve taking his cock, her head tipped back, breasts heaving against her chemise, was quite possibly better than the intense pleasure flooding his own body.
The splintered cry she let out as she rolled her hips most certainly was.
She lowered her body to his, both hands tangling in his hair as she kissed him roughly, her tongue sliding into his mouth.
Mordred wrapped his hands around her hips and returned her kiss with the intensity of every single feeling the Druid girl had conjured within him since she came crashing into his life.
And then she rode him hard, her body glorious in the moonlight.
He felt his desire winding tighter and slid one hand up the back of her neck, gathering her hair between his fingers. With a twist of his wrist, Mordred pulled her mouth away from his long enough to speak.
“More, little thief. Show me all that hate of yours.”
Breathing in short, quick gasps, Nyneve put both palms on his chest and pushed to sit up straight, her breasts bouncing.
If there was any chance of using this moment to tease her or tempt her or control her, Mordred had already lost it.
He did not want it. He only wanted one thing: Nyneve exactly like this, taking her pleasure from him, her head thrown back in ecstasy.
A light sheen of sweat made her collarbones glisten in the moonlight, curls tumbling over her shoulder.
She looked like something not of this world. Something he was meant to worship.
“Gods, you are glorious,” he breathed.
“Don’t speak,” she replied, her words softened by the breathy moan that followed. She rolled her hips forward and looked down to meet his gaze.
He saw bloodlust and rage and desire in her eyes, blazing like fire.
She made him feel utterly mad and completely alive.
When was the last time he had wanted anything as badly as he wanted Nyneve to shatter on his cock?
She tightened her thighs, and he groaned, hands sliding up the barely-there fabric of her shift to cup her breasts.
“Mor—” Nyneve gasped, biting into her lower lip to stop herself from saying his name. “More. Fuck, I want more.”
“You need only command me,” he murmured, pushing up to bring his mouth to her breast, teasing her nipple through the chemise until she moaned louder and dug her nails into his chest. He hoped the little half-moons would brand him forever.
“Yes, Nyneve,” he urged, his lips moving against her skin. “Let go.”
Her rosebud mouth parted as she tangled her fingers in his hair.
Mordred melted into her touch for the barest of moments before she shoved his face to the side, covering his eyes.
He felt her coming apart before she cried out, her body going limp as she tumbled into him.
With a trembling sigh, she pulled her hand away from his face but did not move from where they were tangled together, her head on his chest.
Hesitantly, Mordred settled one palm onto the curve of her wide hips. When she did nothing but continue to breathe raggedly, he smiled. Her scent of river water and dangerous petals washed over him. Mordred closed his eyes, burying his face in Nyneve’s curls.
He had been an utter fool to believe he could resist her.
Four days passed as slowly as an entire moon.
All Mordred could think about was her. Even now, in the middle of a meeting with the king, his mind strayed to Nyneve.
The fire in the hearth, freshly lit by a servant with the arrival of dusk, made him think of her hot breath on his skin.
He had left her pallet sometime before dawn, but even days later, Mordred felt as though his mind and soul were still tangled up in her bed linens.
“We need to be in the throne room in only a few moments,” came the voice of Camelot’s king. “Let’s finish up, shall we?”
Mordred drew in a deep breath, forcing his eyes open. Arthur sat at his battered old table on the other side of the room, the parchment he had been skimming set off to the side.
“My liege, why do they look like an occupying force if they aren’t one?
” Mordred asked, his tone strained. This meeting was going poorly.
His usually nimble mind refused to focus, all his thoughts consumed by the Druid girl.
He should never have bedded her. Should never have learned the taste of someone he could not belong to, not in the way he so desperately wanted.
“Mordred,” Arthur replied with a sigh, sitting back in his chair and steepling his fingers.
The circles under the king’s eyes were darker than usual.
“The High Court infiltrated our citadel despite Merlin’s wards, appearing in my private chambers to make demands.
I will take any offer of support.” He reached for the heavy goblet set off to the side.
“Besides, the monks have no interest in violence and conquest. Not like us.” With an arch smile, Arthur raised the goblet in a mock toast to Mordred.