Chapter 10 #2
pebbling. He doffed his tunic and embraced her so they were
standing skin to skin, her breasts pressed against the hard warmth
of his chest. She wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her
head on his shoulder, content to absorb the living heat of him, to
run her hands up and down the length and breadth of his back, feel
the contours of his muscles as he ran his big, tactile hands up and
down her bare back. She buried her nose into the crook of his neck
where it met his thickly muscled shoulders and breathed in the
scent of river water and soap, of rain, sweat, and leather.
He nipped the skin of her shoulder and she
shivered. She lifted her head and met his hazed gaze, felt the
rumble in his chest. He stepped back and took her by the hand,
gently pulling her down to the bedrolls, where she lay on her back
and he lay on his side, propped up on his elbow, his eyes raining a
soft heat that spread from her face to her breasts to her
belly.
“Damnation, Ali,” he said, his voice echoing
the same need throbbing in her core. “Tha thu
braegha. You are beyond beautiful.”
She reached out a tentative hand and ran it
down the length of his arm, stopping at the waist of his breeches.
“Ni ye hen piaoling. So are you.”
One hand under her head and the other on her
back, he pulled her onto her side and kissed her senseless, tasting
and tangling his tongue with hers. He trailed his lips and tongue
down her throat to her breasts and took one nipple into his mouth
as he rubbed tantalizing circles around the other with his
thumb.
Alina gasped and moaned as he licked and
suckled first one breast and then the other. She grasped his
shoulders and arched her back to give him more. Gently, he pushed
her onto her back and kissed his way down her belly, and she fisted
her hands in his hair as he ran a fingertip along the waistband of
her breeches. She went still as he pulled the end of her stays with
his teeth, untying them.
Kissing her belly, he pulled her breeches
down her legs, rubbing his soft beard along the insides of her
thighs and nipping her tender skin. She whimpered as he sat back on
his heels, desperate to feel his mouth on her again, and then he
pulled off her boots, and yanked her breeches down over her knees,
her calves, her feet, and tossed them aside with a hungry grin.
He stood and untied the stays to his
breeches, and Alina watched, enthralled, as he pulled his breeches
down and kicked them off, his erect cock springing free. It had
been one thing to ogle him through the spyglass, and quite another
to see all of him up close.
She bit her lower lip, glad they’d agreed not
to have intercourse. She knew a woman’s body was made to fit a
man’s, yet staring at Roark’s thick, engorged cock, she wasn’t sure
how. He knelt at her feet and lowered his naked body over hers and
Alina stopped thinking. All she could do was feel.
The length and the solid weight of him on
her, skin on skin. The hard heat of his cock against her belly. His
mouth on hers, on her breasts. His hands moving over her, caressing
her breasts, roaming down her back and cupping her backside,
running his fingertips down the backs of her thighs and up the
insides. His fingertip pushing through her thatch of tight curls
and touching her intimate flesh.
She moaned.
He covered her mouth with his and swallowed
her moan, rubbing delicious, tortuous circles around her flesh.
Alina moved her hips with his hand, her need building, to what end,
she couldn’t have said. She only knew that she wanted, she
needed…something. All feeling and thought had gathered between her
legs.
Roark slowed his circles and pressed his
finger to the nubbin of flesh where all her sensations had pooled.
He tapped the nubbin with his fingertip and Alina lifted her pelvis
and pressed it into his hand, moving with his finger, his hand,
until her muscles tightened and convulsed and ripples of intense
pleasure flowed through her, leaving her spent and panting as she
gazed at him in awe.
She smiled, boneless, weightless, sated, and
he grinned, slow and easy. “My passionate lady owl,” he
rumbled.
Alina wrapped her arms around his neck and
pulled his mouth down to hers. “Tell me how to bring you to your
release, sir stag,” she whispered hoarsely against his lips.
“It’ll be my pleasure,” he rasped. He rolled
onto his side and placed her hand on his cock, closing his eyes and
groaning as she gently wrapped her fingers around it.
“I don’t know what to do,” she confessed.
Roark opened his eyes, heavy-lidded with
desire. “Touch me, pet me, rub me,” he told her. “I’ve dreamt of
this, of you, so many times, your touch alone is about to undo
me.”
Alina unwrapped her fingers and ran them
lightly up and down the length of his cock, amazed at how hard,
warm, and responsive he was to her touch. How his cock wasn’t some
separate entity, it was a part of him, his flesh and blood, full of
his seed, his life force in her hand.
She splayed her fingers and rubbed them up
and down him, her own flesh heating again as he moved with her
hand. She wrapped her fingers around him and watched in fascination
as he pushed and pulled himself into and through her grip, gripping
firmer, tighter, as he moved faster, moving her hand faster and
faster until his body went rigid, his cock pulsed in her hand, and
he spurt his seed with a shuddering groan.
***
Roark kissed Alina’s bare shoulder. “It’s
stopped raining,” he whispered in her ear, grinning as she buried
her nose deeper into the bedroll.
He stood and pulled the blanket over her
shoulders, stretched his sated body, and went to the cave’s
entrance. The horses were huddled together under the overhang,
cramped but dry. The ground had standing puddles of water and mud,
and the clouds were dark and ominous. He figured it was somewhere
around noon, but with the sun hidden behind a wall of clouds, it
was impossible to tell for certain. He rubbed his beard and gave
the sky another look. They wouldn’t be riding anytime today.
Back inside the cave, he dressed and stared
down at Alina sleeping. Her lush, full lips that’d been wrapped
around his cock sometime around dawn, slightly open, her breath,
which had been panting and gasping in his ear several times last
night, quiet and steady.
Adjusting his randy cock, already half-hard
simply from looking at her, he went back outside and led the horses
to a patch of grass, letting them relieve themselves and graze
while they could. He stayed outside with them, enjoying the brisk
air and reliving the most amazing night in his life.
He’d been more right than he knew when he’d
said he and Alina belonged together, belonged to each other. The
widow had been a skilled and lusty lover, but his princess made
love to him with a pure, raw passion, which made up for any lack of
skill. She gave all of herself to him, body, heart, and soul, and
took all of him in return. Plus, she was a quick learner.
The horses raised their heads and pitched
their ears forward, and Roark turned to see Alina coming out of the
cave wearing only her boots and an otter skin cloak, her
waist-length hair flying around her in the wind, her lips red and
swollen from their near-constant love play since yesterday
afternoon.
“I, ah, I.” She motioned toward a briar of
bushes and disappeared behind it, smiling shyly as she came out and
up to Roark. “Good morning,” she said, and glanced up at the sky.
“What time is it?”
“Best I can tell, around noon.”
“Are you hungry?” she asked him. “Those beans
should be ready to cook.”
Roark reached out and hooked a finger in the
neckline of her cloak and pulled it down, exposing her bare
shoulder. “Famished,” he said, nipping the sensitive skin where her
shoulder met her neck.
“Ravaging’s more like it,” she chided.
He nibbled his way up her throat to her lips,
cupping her backside with both hands and pulling her close. “You’re
cold,” he said when she shivered.
“So warm me up.” She stepped back and threw
him a come-hither smile over her shoulder as she headed toward the
cave.
“I’ll be in after I let the horses graze a
little longer,” he told her. “I want to take advantage of this
break in weather.”
“No hurry,” she said, stopping at the cave’s
entrance. “It’s obvious we’re not going anywhere today.” She
grinned and flapped her cloak open and closed, teasing Roark with a
glimpse of ripe breasts, a trim waist, pale, creamy thighs, and the
dark triangle of hair at their apex. “I’ll start the beans.”
Their bellies full and their lust sated, they
sat together before the fire, Alina tucked into his side, her head
on his shoulder, staring silently into the flames.
“Are you all right?” Roark asked.
“Mm hmm.”
“Not regretting anything?”
She shook her head. “The only thing I regret
about all of this is the pain my parents must be going through
thinking I’m dead. Not knowing.”
Roark hugged her closer. “I regret putting
your parents through that. The only thing I regret more is putting
you through everything.”
She leaned her head back and met his gaze. “I
know it’s foolish of me, and we’re losing precious days of travel,
but I’m glad we had to shelter in this cave. I thought the fates
against me this whole time, yet the more I think on it, the surer I
am the only reason I’m still alive is because of you. Roger was
going to try to abduct me no matter what, and Leif, he’d have raped
me that first night on The Rover if not for you.” She
scooted around and faced him. “I think the fates brought us
together.”
“Why?” he said, aware it was him asking her
favorite question.
“Because we were meant to be together.
Nothing that feels this right can be wrong.”
Roark’s heart skipped a beat or three. “I
agree,” he said. “We were. We are. But for how long?” As happy and
content as they were right now, the reality was that their sojourn
here in the cave would only last another day or two. “Once we make
port and find you a ship, we’ll be a sea apart.”
“I know,” she said somberly. “I’ve known from
the moment Leif announced you were betrothed to Gwyneth our time