18. No Need for Control
NO NEED FOR CONTROL
She didn’t want his kiss, and it fucking hurt.
But she was clinging to him, her mouth opening with long moans of ecstasy that sounded like invitations.
If he set his mouth against hers, it would be just right.
He licked her pulse instead, nipped her earlobe, and she urged him on with a roll of the hips, with nails down his back, wanting more.
He wanted more, too.
But she wasn’t ready for it.
He tore away from her. “Wait.”
“For what? Are you scared? Incapable… of more?” She ran her fingertips down his cock. “Or will you use the body that protects me to… pleasure me?”
He buried his face in her neck, inhaled deeply, wrapping the silken tangle of her hair around his fist. “I’m not scared, Guin. And you’ll find me… very capable. I… want you to be sure.”
“I am.”
“And I want you to know…” He lifted, planting his palms on each side of her head, gazing down at her.
“There’s no potion between us. Nothing forced or fake.
No lies, no glamours, no wrong names. This is Guin”—he cuffed her wrist with one large hand and placed her palm against his bare chest—“and Bran. Do you understand, lass?” His brogue was thick, and his shaft was thicker, and thicker than all that the need that drowned him.
She was wet and trembling between her legs, and she pressed her thighs together with a little shiver. “I understand.”
His tried to kiss her. He couldn’t stop himself from trying, but she turned her head as soon as he lowered, and he stopped before his lips touched her cheek.
A low growl. “Fine, have it your way. But every other way will be mine.”
“Yes.” Again she was moving beneath him, surrendering instead of commanding, releasing herself into his keeping.
He had laid still for her, letting her chain his hands to the bed when he could have broken her hold with a twitch of one muscle.
He had let her do as she pleased while she roused his body past need and into something cataclysmic.
The wanting he felt would rip him apart.
The wanting she’d been stoking in him since he met her, which had multiplied higher than he could count since she’d returned to Mayfair, would redefine him, fill him so completely he became something—someone else.
But it was his turn, and if he applied himself correctly, he could, perhaps, stoke a similarly mad desire in her, have her helpless and wiggling and panting and desperate for him.
As he’d always been for her.
Straddling her, he rose up so she couldn’t reach him, though she tried to, arms extended and fingers seeking to touch.
When she couldn’t, she dropped her arms limp to her sides.
He let himself see every bit of her in the now dawn-gray light.
Generous breasts and pert pink nipples, belly, hips, and thighs that made his mouth water, a fiery thatch of curls, the taste and texture of which he knew.
Not well enough. He’d remedy that soon. But first…
He flipped her, and she gave a breathless squeal, pinning her arms beneath her body.
Her hair whipped out to the side in many-tendrilled curls that shifted between gold and red like leaping flames.
He lifted one hank of it, kissed it, and set it aside before placing his fingers at the base of her skull.
The skin of her neck was pale and shadowed, and he called his heat to put a little warmth into her.
Even though she was already hot. He wanted her sweating for him.
Her muscles went languid, and he placed a kiss at the base of her neck, stroked his hand down her spine, lips following until he got to that luscious outward curve of hips and arse, which demanded a more thorough inspection.
He lifted from her again, pleased when she whined to have him back.
“Be patient, lass.” He studied the voluptuous outward curve of arse and hips and thighs. God, he tightened even more.
“Bran,” she whined when he didn’t touch her. “Please.”
He smacked the side of her arse, light, playful, and she yelped. “You said every other way is mine, remember? You agreed.”
“Yes.” A breathless word.
He kissed where his palm had slapped her, sprinkled little love bites on the cheek while she made little sounds of pleasure in her throat. He chuckled. “You have a fine arse, lass.”
He grasped her hips and flipped her again, gazing down at her heavy breasts for a delicious moment before cupping them in his hands.
“But these are even finer.” He pushed them up, squeezed them, teased the nipples.
She was not a slender woman, and he looked on every generous inch of her with hungry delight.
And she threw her head back. Her skin seemed to glow as beads of sweat popped up across her collarbone. He licked them away.
He was growing hotter and harder, and she was reaching for him, touching everywhere, and he couldn’t hold out a moment longer.
He wasn’t tender about it. There was nothing gentle in him when he took up his place between her heavenly thighs and thrust into her. She gasped as he slid all the way home, his name caught in her throat.
Grinding his teeth to nothing, he pulled out and thrust back in, building her pleasure, erasing his own mind once, twice, three times before he lifted her leg, kissed her calf, and hooked her knee over his shoulder.
“Oh!” Her eyes widened then narrowed in helpless abandon. “Oooh.”
In and out, slowly, again and again before he lowered her leg and rested his body on top of hers. Her lips curved sweetly and, still sunk deep into her, he rolled them so she was on top of him. Her body went where he put it, but she looked at him with a funny expression, a questioning one.
“You were a lot less athletic last time.”
He’d thought he had forever last time. Forever to know her and learn her preferences, forever to test her body from every angle. Forever to see what they were capable of together. Now he knew forever didn’t exist with her, and he had to make the most of every fucking moment.
He couldn’t say all that to his lass. So he said, grasping her waist and arching his hips up into her, “I’m making up for every love elixir I swallowed. Every bottle I emptied was a new fantasy. And I’m going pour every single one into you.”
Light enough in the room now to see her blush, and that red stealing across her cheeks and breasts made him a very satisfied man.
“Now… Up and down, lass.”
And she did as he said, rolling her hips as she did so with little stuttering shrieks. She was a vocal kitten, and she liked touching him, playing with his muscle, stroking her fingers through his chest hair, eyes hazy with lust as she forgot herself.
He forgot too.
He flipped them again before he could come, turning her onto her belly once he had her on her back.
“Cruel man.” Her words mumbled against the mattress.
“If I am cruel,” he said, leaving the bed, trailing his hands down the back of her legs, “it is because I need to please you.”
“You do.” Words sighed in such hushed tones they almost didn’t exist.
He dragged her slowly toward the edge of the bed.
“I want to have you in every way.” And nothing suggested there would be more moments like this one.
“Better a small taste of every angle of heaven than a prolonged single view.” He was losing control, though.
He’d been a monk so long, he knew how to chain his desires, but the chains had broken two positions ago, and he was only a man.
And the woman he wanted as he’d wanted no other had surrendered herself to his touch. He was only mortal.
So when her hips hit the edge of the bed, legs dangling down the end, her toes steady on the floor, he stepped between them and slipped into her wet warmth from behind. She gasped, arching up, and he grasped her hair, bending her farther into the curve.
“Yes,” she breathed.
He had to know, so as he slid in and out of her, he leaned over and whispered in her ear, “Is this our only time, lass? Do I have to make it last forever?”
She released a guttural cry as he hit home hard. “No! You’re safe now. More, oh Bran, I need more.”
Safe now?
Whatever that meant didn’t matter.
There would be more.
No need for control, so he let it go and gave into the beauty of her body, the heat of his need, and the perfection of them together.
He pumped in and out, curving one arm beneath her to stroke her clit again and again until she cried out, muscles clenching around him as she came again.
And that was enough. He came, too, hard and fast, and he pulled out at the last second, spilling his seed on the bed.
He collapsed to the other side of her, and without a single push or pull or urging from him, she curled herself into his chest.
As the first slant of yellow light crept across them, igniting a sliver of golden glamour across his chest and arm, he pulled her to the head of the bed and beneath the blankets.
More shadows there. Still himself. Still Bran holding Guin like he’d always wanted.