He felt it now, the urgent desire to possess her, and for just a moment he did not fight it. He wanted her. And she wanted him. He’d tasted desire on her lips and felt it in the arch of her soft, supple body against his.
Why had he denied himself and her? What foolish point of pride had he been trying to make?
The beast inside him raged and he pressed a hand to his aching groin. Damn her for besting him in this private war they waged!
He spun abruptly on his heel and stalked to the door. He
took the narrow stairs two at a time, and before good sense could stop him, he stood on the fourth level facing the thick oak door to the tower room. Three days of agony. It must end now.
But what was he going to do?
End this torment she caused. Assuage this hunger that gripped him. Take what was his to take.
To the victor went the spoils. He was the victor; she was the spoils. He’d had enough of waiting. He placed his hand on the door latch, then froze when he heard a sound. Holding his breath, he pressed his ear to the door. She was speaking out loud.
“ … help me to do what I ought …”
No. She was praying.
“ … ’tis a sin. I know it is,” she went on in a low voice laced with emotion. “I am a sinner.” Then she moaned and Rhys swallowed hard. She was praying and yet that little sound she’d made incited him even further. God, but he was no better than his coarse, rutting father—to want a woman even as she was at her prayers.
He started to back away. When he heard the soft sound of her sobs, however, he froze. By the rood! She was weeping. But why?
Idiot! he chastised himself. You’ve taken her innocence and her freedom and have vowed to kill her family. What else could any woman do but weep?
What he was to do—that was the real dilemma. His hand tightened on the latch. He wanted to flee, but he could not. Then she moaned again, and without pausing to think, he pushed into the small chamber.
A single candle flickered in a flat dish and it nearly guttered when he swung the door open. The tiny flame nonetheless lit most of the small room with a faint golden glow, enough for Rhys to see Isolde jerk upright on her small pallet. Tears sparkled on her cheeks—her flushed cheeks. They glinted in her eyes as well, dark and wide and staring. Her hair was loose and long, a wealth of silken tangles, and she wore only her chemise. Her feet were bare as were her legs, until she hastily pushed the hem of her chemise down to cover them.
He stared, mesmerized. She was woman at her most basic,
hidden only by a single layer of thin linen, and he reacted as man at his most basic. If he’d wanted her before, now he was rabid to possess her.
“You … you came,” she murmured. “I was just thinking of you and … and you came.”
“You were praying.” Idiot words, he immediately thought. But his mind seemed momentarily disengaged. For some reason, however, his comment caused her face to go scarlet.
Isolde licked her lips and averted her eyes. She had indeed been praying, but it had done no good. Or perhaps it had. For he had come. She’d been thinking of him—dreaming of him—and remembering all the ways he’d touched her. And as if he were there, touching her again, her body had become inflamed. Though she knew it was wrong, she’d lain there upon the pallet and let her fingers find the places that most ached for him. She had touched herself, then hated herself for doing it. Then he’d appeared, the answer to her prayers.
Slowly she raised her gaze back to him. “You overheard what I was saying?”
He nodded. “But if you are a sinner, Isolde, I am ten times more so.”
She stared up at him from her place on the low bed. She saw how his wide shoulders filled the doorway and his powerful personality cast an aura over her. Had he come to sin with her? Her heart leaped with joy. Though she knew she should disdain him and send him away, she simply could not. He’d come at a moment when she most wanted him. For three days she’d pictured him in that doorway, filling the space with his warrior’s body, bending slightly to enter …
As if he divined her thoughts, he did just that. He bent his head slightly, then entered and closed the door behind him. It creaked and shut with a solemn thud.
Isolde swallowed hard. Like a creature with a life and will of its own, her body reacted to his nearness, to the sensual spell he cast over her. She had destroyed the mural he admired. But in the three days of her confinement for that transgression, she’d thought of nothing but that dragon looming over the wolf. The wolf she’d painted had not been afraid, and she was not afraid now either. At least, she was not afraid of him. Rhys
would not hurt her, not physically. But her heart … That he could shred—and would.
For a moment she hesitated. If she gave in to these fierce longings, she would regret it. Not tonight, perhaps. But someday.
But you will regret it far more if you deny him. You will regret it every day for the remainder of your life
. Though it was wrong, though it was a sin, Isolde knew what she must do.
He advanced toward her. Three strides and he towered over her. His night-dark eyes burned into hers, then raked her thinly clad form. She shivered with rising desire. He knew what she felt. He’d known from the very first.
“I’ve come for you,” he said, his voice low and hoarse. “You’ll not deny me.”
“No.”
“Do not say me nay, Isolde. ’Tis a useless gesture.”
She let out a sound that was half sob, half hysterical giggle. “I meant no, I will not deny you.”
If possible his gaze grew even more torrid. Isolde felt like a pagan offering, a virtuous maid given up to appease a vengeful God. Except that she was no longer virtuous. Certainly her thoughts prior to his arrival had been anything but virtuous. Without thinking she murmured his name. “Rhys …”
Like the dragon warrior he was, he swooped down upon her. As if her weight were nothing, he lifted her high and she let him. Held in his arms, his powerful enemy arms, she resigned herself to her fate, and chafed with impatience for it. Down the stairs they flew, the dragon and his captive. Into his lair, into the heavily draped shadows of the massive bed.
Then he loomed over her, the hot-blooded demon of her dreams, and she welcomed him.
His clothes were few; hers practically nonexistent. Something ripped but neither of them cared. They struggled; it was very nearly a battle. His strength was greater and he pressed her deep into the bedding. But Isolde’s strength was of another sort. She pulled Rhys into her and forced him to be gentle. He dominated her, but she tamed him.
And when his straining manhood pressed against her belly, at once both threatening and promising, Isolde arched her body
against him, heedless of that threat. She wanted the promise he held, the promise of relief and pleasure and unimaginable joy.
This time there was no pain, only heat and fullness and an inexplicable sense of connectedness. It felt good and right, and without warning, the sob she’d suppressed broke free.
“Rhys,” she gasped, clinging to him.
He answered her with a kiss, hard and demanding. He claimed her mouth even as he claimed her body. He wanted everything from her, and meant plainly to take it. But she wanted everything, too.
As he began the fierce rhythm of possession, Isolde met each powerful thrust. He was the dragon, to be feared. To be fought. But she was the wolf and she had her own strengths. Their bodies wrestled, sliding slickly together. Their breath mingled—gasps, groans, and long, low sighs of pleasure. He was driven on and on, tireless and desperate, and he lit her with fire.
Isolde clung to his wide shoulders, damp now from their exertions. Her arms circled his neck. Her fingers tightened in his hair. Her legs circled his hips. Then, as if all his power were suddenly vested in her, she felt the monumental wave begin.
He must have felt it, too, for his thrusts grew faster and even deeper than before. Suddenly she was afraid. It was too much for her. He must stop—
“Isolde,” he panted. “Isolde—”
Then with a fearful cry, she succumbed to the wave. It crashed over her, sucking her down, lifting her up. It washed over her, leaving her gasping, shaking. Practically insensible. But still, she heard his shout as the wave caught him, too. She felt every wonderful, terrifying shudder, both his and her own. And when he had flooded her with passion, then collapsed spent upon her, she hugged him as tightly as her trembling arms could manage.
In the shattering aftermath, however, she refused to think. Instead she lay beneath him, damp and hot, despite the winter cold. He had slain her with his passion, and enslaved her, it seemed. But for now he was hers, and right or wrong, she would not let him go.
The room cooled around them. The small fire died to embers. The one candle sputtered, then drowned in its own pool of melted wax, so that they lay in a comforting darkness. Then Rhys groaned and pushed up from her, and Isolde took a deep, greedy breath.
“My pardon,” he murmured, rolling at once to the side. But his arm stayed tight around her so that he took her with him. Lying atop him was an astounding experience. He was big and hot and hard. Yet they fit so well together. When she shivered from the chill, he tugged a thickly woven wool blanket over them, and though it was scratchy, Isolde did not mind. Her skin felt excruciatingly alive to every touch and every texture. Yet each sensation felt good. She felt good and sated and so utterly exhausted.
When she awoke she lay on her side with her back to Rhys who curled around her. His arms were strong and safe, and she could easily have succumbed again to the lulling security of sleep. But she blinked and forced herself awake.
What had she done?
He was naked against her, so the answer was more than clear. But why had she done it? That was less clear. How could she have lain so eagerly with her enemy?
Behind her Rhys shifted in his sleep and his knee insinuated itself between her legs. He sighed and his warm breath heated the back of her neck. Then his right hand moved and the knuckles grazed the bare peak of one of her breasts. At once Isolde’s body tightened in arousal. Every part of her from breast to belly, as well as the entire surface of her skin, shivered into readiness. He brushed the taut nipple again, a deliberate, provocative movement—
He was awake.
The heat in her belly became an inferno.
“Do you like that?” he whispered into her hair.
Isolde could not answer, not with words. But the breath caught in her throat, and she grew warm all over. Hot. He seemed somehow to understand. His knuckles kept up that slow stroke, a faint grazing of first one rigid peak, then the other.
“I can continue this all night, Isolde. All night. All day. Would you like that?” He nuzzled through her tangled hair
and kissed the nape of her neck, and all the while kept up the tortuous, seductive movement of his knuckles.
“I … I like it,” she confessed, hardly aware she’d spoken the words out loud.
He pulled her closer, pressing against her naked backside. She felt the clear outline of his rigid manhood against her and she shivered with anticipation. Was he going to join with her again? Heavenly Mary, but she hoped so! She should be ashamed to feel that way, but to herself, at least, she could not lie. She wanted more of this man. This one and no other. She needed more of him.
His knuckle gave way to his thumb and when a small excited groan slipped from between her lips, he groaned, too. Without warning, he flipped her onto her back, and suddenly he lay between her legs.
In the darkness she could see little enough. But she saw his eyes and the faint glitter of light and heat in their midnight depths.
“How I would like to keep you forever, Isolde. Hidden away in this tower. In this room. Away from all others. Just keep you for my own pleasure. And for yours.”
Then his mouth found her peaked nipples and she cried out in pleasure, gripping his shoulders. She dug her fingertips into his flesh as she lifted her hips in silent supplication. She was hot and ready. In truth, she was frantic to have him inside her.
But he was far more patient than she. While she panted and cried out and bucked beneath him, he concentrated on her breasts, cupping them in his hands and teasing them with his lips and teeth and tongue. He wet them, blew upon them, then nibbled and drew them deep into his mouth. It was a torture and a pleasure, an unbearable delight.
But though Isolde tugged frantically at his shoulders, trying to draw him up and over her to relieve this terrible need he roused, he would not relent. Only when she truly thought she could bear no more did he finally move lower, pressing those same kisses and erotic caresses down her ribs to her navel and belly. But his hands continued to stroke and tease her nipples and breasts.
Then his mouth moved to the place between her legs and Isolde gasped. Momentarily panicked, she tried to twist away
from his seeking lips. But he caught her by the waist and kept her still. “Don’t fight me, Isolde. Don’t fight what you feel. Let me caress you. Let me show you how sweet it can be for you. How powerful.”
“But … But I can’t—”