Chapter Two #2
Enraged, but also more aroused than she was willing to admit by what she considered his filthy description, Emllyn let out a scream of pure frustration as she tried to pull away from him.
“Stop!” she demanded. “I will hear no more!”
A lick of a smile creased Devlin’s lips.
He was rather enjoying her anger. “You will hear all of it, my fine lady,” he murmured, his hot breath in her ear causing her to shudder.
“My strokes within you would be long and powerful as your body begged for my seed. Your legs would open wider to me, your body would ache for me, and I would answer the call. The warmth in you loins would become a raging fire and my mouth… you would learn to love my tongue, lass… would feast upon you. When the fire in your loins became a raging inferno, it would erupt into a burst of sparks and your entire body would convulse with pleasure along with mine. My seed would go deep into your womb to find its mark. Here.”
He suddenly put his hand on her lower belly, pressing hard, and she gasped and bucked at his touch.
She wanted him away from her, but after what he’d just whispered into her ear, perhaps she didn’t want him so far away.
His words, hissed in rage and lust, had done something to her.
There was a fire in her now, one that made her heart race and her palms sweat.
He must have known that because he began to suckle on a tender earlobe.
“Do you feel me?” he whispered, teeth gently tugging at her ear as he gripped her belly.
“Do you already feel my seed as it settles into your womb? I will be all around you, and within you, and you will belong to me. Never ask me again what I intend to do with you, lass. Now you know. And you will like it.”
Stunned into an erotic daze as he suckled her earlobe, Emllyn heard his words but she couldn’t seem to do anything about it.
She should have been fighting him, biting and kicking, but she couldn’t manage it.
He’d used nothing more than words and his touch to convey his intentions, but he might as well have burned them into her flesh.
He was stirring things within her that she’d never felt before.
When he suckled on her earlobe firmly and she shuddered with delight, he laughed low in his throat.
“So you like that, you English vixen?” he murmured. “Mayhap you are a whore, after all.”
Emllyn’s eyes flew open. Quick as a flash, she balled a fist and hit him in the forehead so hard that his head snapped back.
That caused him to loosen his grip and she made a break for the lancet window but Devlin was right behind her, grabbing her as she tried to throw herself from the ledge, three stories above the jagged rocks and crashing sea below.
Perhaps she wasn’t truly trying to kill herself more than she was simply trying to get away from him, but the result would have been the same.
Now, he had her around the waist, her arms pinned, as she fought against him.
It was a vicious fight.
The mood, rather warm and sensual only moments before, was now brittle and fierce.
Although Emllyn’s arms were pinned, her legs were quite free and she ended up kicking him in the groin.
Grunting with pain, Devlin staggered to the bed and fell upon it with Emllyn sandwiched beneath him and the mattress.
He listened to her snarl and weep, so much fight in her soft little body that it surprised him. For an Englishwoman, she was tough.
And he was impressed.
“I hate you, do you hear?” she sobbed. “I will hate you until I die!”
Devlin lay atop her, his face pressed into her back between her shoulder blades.
She couldn’t get to him here but he knew what had triggered her rage – whore.
He had called her the lowliest form of female life, reminding her of what her foolish actions and bad fortune had brought her.
She was to be the whore for an Irish warlord who intended to use her for nothing more than breeding stock.
It was a shameful and bleak existence. In that sense, he understood her reaction.
Torn between remorse and the reality of the situation, unless he wanted to physically restrain her for the rest of their lives, he had to say something to calm her.
He was afraid if he left the chamber, she might try to escape in desperation and end up falling from the window.
He didn’t want to think of that sweet, soft body broken and bleeding on the rocks below.
It would have been a damnable waste.
“I will have a bath brought up to you,” he said, his voice calm and steady. “I will send up more than bread for you to eat and clothes to wear. You will feel better after you have had a chance to eat and dress warmly.”
Beneath him, Emllyn’s hysteria had dissolved into tears of shame and anger. “Why?” she sobbed. “Why give me comfort? Simply kill me now and be done with it.”
His cheek was against the warmth of her back. “I am not going to kill you,” he said. “You are my captive and I intend to take very good care of you. You are worth something.”
Emllyn’s weeping lessened at his odd statement and her eyes opened. She appeared somewhat bewildered.
“I have already told you,” she sniffled. “My brother will not care if you hold me captive. He will not pay your ransom demand. I am worth nothing.”
Devlin could feel that her struggles had weakened. In fact, she wasn’t struggling much at all. She was simply lying beneath him, trembling. Warm and soft, he resisted the urge to brush his lips on the soft skin against his cheek.
A most strange reaction to a woman who was his captive.
“I will not ransom you,” he said, his voice low. “I told you – I will keep you for myself. You will bear my sons.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. He felt her sigh; the tears were gone and now there was despair in the very air she breathed. It was a hollow and bitter mood, all settled in about her. He could feel it.
“I do not want to be your whore,” she muttered. “Why could you not have simply killed me last night as you did all the other English? It would seem that you have shown mercy to the dead. I would like the same mercy shown to me.”
Devlin lay there a moment before taking the chance and letting her go. He sat up, watching her stiffly push herself up off the mattress. She recoiled from him but she didn’t try to run again. She was also quivering, with cold and emotion, and he gazed at her steadily a moment before standing up.
“If I ask you a question, will you give me the courtesy of an honest answer?” he asked.
Arms wrapped around her slender body, Emllyn turned to him. “Why?” she asked.
“Because I ask it. I would not lie to you so I do not expect you, as an honorable lady, to lie to me.”
She was tired. Too tired to fight with him anymore. All of the fighting they’d done, the wrestling and struggling, had sapped her strength. She simply didn’t have the will to fight in her at the moment.
“What is it, then?” she asked, averting her gaze.
“Will you answer honestly?”
“Aye.”
Devlin eyed her lowered head. “When you stowed away on your brother’s vessels, where did you think they were going?” he asked. “You knew his armies were sailing for Ireland. You knew it was a battle fleet. Did you not think they would find resistance the moment they arrived?”
Emllyn shrugged, her gaze still averted.
“To be entirely truthful, I did not,” she said.
“I knew they were going to battle… that Trevor was going to battle… but I did not think it would be so immediate. I thought mayhap a battle march once they reached shore… and there would be time for me to reveal myself to him.”
She was starting to tear up. He could see it. She sniffled and wiped at her eyes but he felt no pity for her.
“And then what?” he asked.
Her head came up, looking at him. “What do you mean?”
He lifted his eyebrows expectantly. “What did you intend to do once you revealed yourself to this man?” he wanted to know. “They have names for camp followers like you. They are, in fact, called whores, so mayhap I was not too far wrong when I called you one.”
Her features flushed red. “I am not a whore,” she snapped. “I love Trevor and he loves me. I want to be his wife.”
“Loved,” he emphasized, past-tense. “Your lover is dead. Did you not think that would be a possibility?”
Her tears came faster and she looked away again.
She didn’t reply for a moment, shaking her head and wiping at her eyes as if thinking all manner of terrible things about him.
“I suppose I did not think on it,” she finally murmured, her voice hoarse.
Then, she turned to look at him again. “Did you really kill all of the English soldiers or were you simply gloating?”
He gazed steadily at her. “Those who were not put to the sword drowned in the churning waters,” he said. “There are no more than twenty or thirty still alive, and those men are to be killed or sold for ransom.”
She looked at him, shocked. “But…,” she gasped, “but there were at least a thousand men, mayhap more. They are all gone?”
“I told you they are. Do you not believe me?”
Emllyn averted her eyes, unable to hold his gaze. She did indeed believe him and the knowledge sickened her. All those men… and Trevor!
“Trevor was a knight,” she said softly. “He comes from a fine family. May I… may I see the men you have captive to see if he is still alive?”
His jaw ticked. “Nay,” he said flatly, surprised at the ferocity of his reply.
She belonged to him and he wasn’t about to let her even think of another man.
He thought it was only possessiveness but was startled to realize there was perhaps jealousy there as well.
“Your lover is dead and you will put him out of your mind. He no longer exists to you.”