CHAPTER TWO #2
Emllyn had no idea how to respond. She wasn’t fighting him, but she wasn’t responding, either.
She lay beneath him, legs spread open, knees slightly raised, and arms out to her sides as he pounded into her.
Devlin began to suckle on her neck, her shoulder, tenderly biting her and causing her to shudder with newly awakening passion.
His fingers toyed with her nipples as he nibbled her neck and Emllyn could feel a fireball blooming within her loins.
She had no idea what it was, or what her body was responding to, but she knew that the fire seemed to increase with each successive thrust.
It was a feeling that intensified when he grasped her buttocks and ground his hips against her, grinding his body against her most private core and impaling her as deeply as he could with his enormous phallus.
He was buried fully in her slick body and yet still he tried to go deeper.
When he shifted his body and pulled her pelvis tightly against his, the fireball in Emllyn’s loins erupted with the iridescent burst of an exploding star.
Sparks flew as her body convulsed with ripples of pleasure.
Devlin felt her release, the strong pull on his manhood demanding that he release his seed.
It wasn’t difficult to answer the task; she had him so highly aroused that he spilled himself deep within her, feeling the greatest satisfaction he had ever known.
It was a long and powerful climax and when it died down, he realized that he was holding her tightly, kissing her shoulder and arm because they happened to be next to his head.
They were tender kisses when they should not have been.
He was overwhelmed with the feel and taste of her like nothing he had ever known.
Withdrawing his manhood from her tight body, he thrust two of his fingers up into her still-convulsing body.
“Feel me?” he whispered, his lips against her cheek. “Do you feel my seed as it settles into your womb? I am all about you, and within you, and you belong to me. Never ask me again what I intend to do with you; I intend to do just as I am now, until I die.”
Still gasping from her release, Emllyn heard his words.
She could feel his fingers inside of her, foreign but not unpleasant.
In fact, above her haze of passion and embarrassment, of shock and desire, she realized she rather liked his fingers inside of her.
He was stroking them in and out of her, dragging them along her thigh, before plunging back into her body again.
On the third such plunge, she groaned and trembled because she could feel the fireball starting again. Devlin laughed low in his throat.
“So you like that, you English vixen?” he murmured. “You are a whore after all.”
Emllyn’s eyes flew open. Quick as a flash, she hauled off and slapped him so hard across the face that his head snapped sideways.
Leaping off the bed, she made a break for the lancet window but Devlin was right behind her, grabbing her as she tried to throw herself from the window, three stories above the jagged rocks and crashing sea below.
He had her around the waist, her arms pinned, as she screamed and 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 his semi-arousal.
Grunting with pain, Devlin staggered to the bed and fell upon it with Emllyn sandwiched beneath him.
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.
“I hate you, do you hear?” she sobbed. “For everything you have done to me, 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 the whore for an Irish warlord who intended to use her for nothing more than breeding stock and pleasure.
It was a shameful and bleak existence. In that sense, he understood her reaction.
Torn between remorse and the reality of the situation he refused to apologize, but 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 really would throw herself 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 soft, warm skin 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. A dead captive is of no use to me.”
Emllyn’s weeping lessened at his odd statement and her eyes opened. She appeared somewhat bewildered. “What… what do you mean?” she sniffled. “What use could I be to you? I already told you that my brother will not care if you hold me captive. He will not pay your ransom demand.”
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, soft, and compliant once again; he resisted the urge to brush his lips on the soft skin against his cheek.
It was difficult not to feel his arousal once again.
“I will not ransom you,” he said, his voice low.
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. You have shown me no mercy at all.”
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 and going in search of his breeches.
“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 watched him bend over and pick up his leather breeches.
It took her a moment to realize she was gazing at his bare buttocks, white and firm things that rippled with muscle when he moved.
In fact, his entire body was stark white, whiter than any skin she had ever seen before, but there was such creamy beauty to it.
His red hair was a blatant contrast against the pale of his skin and as he pulled his breeches on, she averted her gaze because he was turning to face her and she was embarrassed by their nakedness.
She tried to put her arms more tightly about her body for both comfort and concealment.
“Why?” she demanded, feeling hollow and spent.
“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. Their activities on the bed had somehow sapped her strength and will to fight. She just didn’t have it in her at the moment. “What is it, then?” she asked quietly.
“Will you answer honestly?”
“Aye.”
Devlin eyed her lowered head as he fastened his breeches.
“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 immediately. 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?”
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.”