He cursed. Anger clashed with lust in his eyes. The dark energy radiating from his lean body made Breena shiver. She was frightened—there was no sense denying it. She was also unbearably aroused.
The tunic’s last bow fell open. Her left sleeve slipped
over her shoulder. The garment whispered down her arms to her waist, baring her breasts.
She knelt motionless, the meager lamplight flickering across her skin. Rhys’s eyes devoured her; his hands trembled. And she knew—
knew
—with feminine certainty, that this time, he would not turn away.
A sudden rush of feminine power made her head feel light. A scant moment later, when Rhys touched her, all thoughts of advantage evaporated. His gaze had gone so dark she thought she might drown in it, like a swimmer lost in a night sea.
Jaw clenched, he lifted a shaking hand and touched his forefinger to the tip of her left breast. The pad of his finger was calloused. It scraped across her tender skin; a hot knife of pleasure sliced through her body. Her stomach clenched. It was all she could do to keep from crying out.
Rhys’s hand slid under her breast, weighing it in his palm. He did not watch her face, but his own hands. He rubbed her nipple again, with his thumb this time. His left hand soon began the same ruthless torture on her other breast. Fire flashed over her skin, heated her face. She did moan then, shamelessly. The expression on his face hardened into something like pain.
He urged her back. “Lie down.”
The mattress seemed to rise to meet her. With swift efficiency, Rhys tilted her hips and stripped off her tunic. He rose up, looking down at her. Not at her face. At her breasts, and at the juncture of her thighs.
“Open them.”
His command was low and hoarse. The abrupt order caused Breena’s womb to convulse. Wet heat flooded her thighs. She stared up at him. Rhys was almost a stranger to her now, so foreign and hard was his expression. She was trembling, newly aware of an aching emptiness inside her.
“Spread your legs, Breena. As you said you would.”
She swallowed hard, and obeyed.
He moved his weight to the bed, kneeling between her open thighs, but not touching them. The dark place between her legs throbbed. His gaze was fixed there. His face was flushed, and his breathing had gone shallow. The ache grew. She flexed her hips, more by instinct than by design.
Rhys made a sound low in his throat. He leaned forward, bracing one arm beside her head. His free hand covered her breast. His thumb and forefinger gently pinched her nipple. Breena’s breath hitched. The throbbing between her legs transformed to a deep, empty longing. A moan rose in her throat and escaped before she could strangle it.
Dear gods. She could hear Lady Bertrice’s snores on the other side of the door! “This…this is madness.”
Rhys sat back on his heels, studying her with hooded eyes. “I have known that, Breena, for a good many years. And yet, you did not have the good sense to believe it.”
“That is not what I meant,” she whispered.
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Yes, the good sense has been mine all along, in this as in everything else. I am sick to death of good sense. Of right. Of duty. Tonight, I find I do not care. I am beginning to believe there are some things well worth an eternity of Dafyd’s hellfire.” He paused, his lips twisting. His beautiful eyes had turned bleak. Her heart hurt for him. Suddenly, she understood that, in a way, he was as frightened as she.
“Raise your arms, Breena.”
He was not using magic, but he’d captured her in a dark spell nonetheless. She did not hesitate to do as he asked.
He closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them,
the misty gray of his irises had turned to iron. Wordlessly, he swiped her discarded tunic from the floor, and ripped a strip of linen from the hem. Before she quite realized what he was about, he’d looped the narrow length of cloth around her wrists. The backs of her hands brushed the carving on the bed’s raised end.
She felt the linen go taut. She tugged, and understood with a shock that he’d tied her to the bed frame. There was almost no slack in her bonds.
“What—?”
The heat of his mouth absorbed her confusion. His kiss was bold and deep. He leaned over her, his body blanketing her with heat, though only their lips were touching. His tongue invaded her mouth. Claiming. Tasting. Taking.
The effect was that of a spark set to dry tinder. Her body burst into flames. Waves of desire rolled through her, melting her muscles, her bones, her will—and even her fear.
Perhaps she should have been afraid. This aroused male animal kneeling over her was hardly the Rhys she thought she knew. That Rhys was gentle, kind, and possessed of a wry humor. Not angry, and consumed with a kind of violent passion she had not even dreamed could exist between lovers. It was a dangerous force. Like deep magic, she sensed it was a power Rhys could not fully control.
The rough wool of his breeches scraped the delicate skin on the inside of her thighs. He was fully dressed, while she was completely naked, open, and vulnerable. There was a seductive eroticism to that. She felt herself surrender to it.
His tongue plunged in and out of her mouth with sinuous rhythm. She imitated the movement, plunging forward when he retreated. She wanted desperately to reach for him with her hands. Paradoxically, the fact
that she could not—the knowledge that he’d rendered her captive—made her shudder with desire.
His breath whispered in her ear. “Lie very still. Try not to move until the pleasure becomes unbearable. And do not make a sound. Remember Lady Bertrice.”
“But—”
He stopped the word with a press of his finger. His eyes pleaded. “Please, Breena. Do this for me. Otherwise…I cannot be certain what I will do.”
She didn’t understand. Not completely. She nodded anyway. He kissed her again, more tenderly this time. His lips trailed from her lips to her neck, across her collarbone, down her chest.
His mouth closed, hot and urgent, on her breast. She stifled a gasp, and tried to control her trembling. His teeth and tongue, relentless, tightened the coil in her chest and belly. When his hands joined the blissful torture, she couldn’t help moving. Her head tossed from side to side, scrubbing the mattress. She pressed her lips together, and only just managed to stop herself from crying out.
The effort to be passive, when every nerve in her body screamed for movement, made the heat inside her flash hotter and darker. Her hips rose; she tried to still them. Rhys’s tongue lashed at her nipple; she stifled a moan.
His mouth traveled to her belly, his tongue tracing a wet line around her navel. His hands slid up the inside of her legs, pausing high on her inner thighs.
“Wider,” he said hoarsely.
It sounded more like a plea than a command. A shudder passed through her. Wordlessly, she did as he asked, then gasped as his fingers threaded through her curls and touched the wet, tender nub hidden within them. Dear gods! Her hips rose off the bed. She couldn’t stifle a cry.
“Quiet,” he whispered.
Fear of discovery honed the edge of her blissful torment. She nodded, and forced her body to go limp. Rhys’s head dipped, and his tongue found the spot that his fingers had teased only moments before. Waves of exquisite sensation washed over her.
Her fingers tangled in her linen shackles. She clung to the cloth strips, and somehow did not cry out. But she could no longer lie still—that was impossible. Her hips bucked in Rhys’s hands. His fingers dug into her buttocks. He lifted her toward his mouth, and she arched shamelessly, helping him.
His breath was hot. It seared her, branded her as his willing slave. He slid one finger inside her. Then two. She twisted, panting. Her skin flashed cool, then hot. His lips left her sated, then stoked her hunger anew. She needed…something.
He seemed to know just what it was. But he would not give it to her. He lifted his head, and took his hands from her body. She felt the loss in her heart.
He stood beside the bed. She lay dazed, bound, legs sprawled rudely, looking up at him. She longed to erase the sudden bleakness in his eyes.
He scrubbed a hand down his face. “I do not think, Breena, that this is precisely what you’ve dreamed of all these years.”
“I might have,” she confessed, “if I had only known what to dream.”
She thought for a moment he would turn away. He did not. With precise movements, and shaking hands, he stripped off his shirt. His boots came next. He reached for the closure of his breeches.
She watched him greedily. She wanted to touch him; wanted to strip him as he’d stripped her. To open her mouth on his skin. She could have done it. She’d tugged so hard on her bindings that the linen had
stretched. She could pull free with little effort. But she sensed he would not welcome that. Not yet. And so she waited.
He shoved his breeches over his lean hips. Her eyes went round at the sight of his phallus, thick and red and angry. Naked, he crawled over her on all fours. The blunt tip of his erection prodded her intimate flesh. Her belly spasmed. Instinctively, she arched her hips in welcome.
“Rhys…please…”
He did not immediately respond to her plea. With his torso supported on rigid arms, he stared down at her.
“Breena…” he whispered. “Tell me…tell me to stop.”
The light was dim; his face in shadow. She could not read his expression. Heat radiated from his body. His breath was heavy, and his chest damp with sweat. She sensed his deep yearning, and an even deeper reluctance.
“I do not want you to stop, Rhys.”
His head dropped, his forehead almost touching hers. His hair fell forward, brushing her temple. She wanted to slide her fingers through it. She wanted to scrape her palms on the heavy bristle covering his jaw. She wanted to tell him how very much she loved him. All of him. The dark as well as the light.
But she did not say it. She was afraid words of love would cause his misplaced guilt to surface, as it always had in the past. So she did not move, and did not speak. Neither did he. As the moments spun out, she thought she would go mad with wanting. How long could Rhys hold himself just…
there
…at the entrance to her body?
“I have tried to stay away,” he said at last.
“Why?”
“You were…” He hesitated.
“I was too young. I know that. And far too bold. But Rhys, I have not been too young for some years now.”
“Then perhaps…perhaps I am too old.”
“You are not yet thirty.”
“Old in spirit, then. I have seen more than a man four times my age. Cruelty, injustice, bigotry, perversion. And I cannot turn away from any of it, no matter how much I wish to.”
She bit her lip. “You are alone far too much.”
“Aye,” he said simply.
“Rhys…look at me.”
After a long moment, he raised his head.
“You don’t have to be alone any longer. Not ever. You have me.”
Turbulent emotion trembled through his long, lean body. A drop of water splashed on Breena’s shoulder; with a sudden shock, she realized it was a tear. Rhys was
crying.
Her heart turned over. He buried his head in the crook of her neck. A sob shook his shoulders. She let her wrists slip free of the linen strips and, hesitantly, touched his crown. When he did not flinch away, she threaded her fingers through his hair. She nuzzled him until he turned his head. His mouth found hers. Their lips met, and clung, in an achingly tender kiss.
“Come inside me. I want you so.”
“Ah, Breena…I do not want to hurt you.”
“It would hurt me more, Rhys, if you were to pull away.”
He let out a breath. A sigh of surrender, perhaps. His body tightened, the head of his shaft slid through her folds, seeking welcome. She opened to him, planting her feet and arching upward.
“Bree—” With a flex of his hips, he slid inside.
She experienced an instant of sharp, burning pain. A gasp escaped her lips. Rhys froze. “Gods.”
For long moments they lay that way, joined in body, breathing as one, hesitant to deepen the union. The sensation of being stretched, and filled, was very odd. But not unpleasant. The pain was already fading. A feeling of buoyant expectancy had replaced it.
She wriggled her hips. Rhys raised his head and looked down at her.
“Are you…uncomfortable?” His voice was strained.
“No. But I know there is more than this.”
She thought she saw the ghost of a smile on his lips. “You are right,” he said. “There is this.” His hips thrust forward. “And this.” He drew back.
“Oh!” The sensation was like nothing she’d ever known. Or had even dreamed of. It felt as though he caressed her soul.
He moved again, his hands sliding under her bottom, lifting her, guiding her. She caught his body’s rhythm, and matched it, lifting her hips as he thrust downward. At last she touched him freely, a banquet of pleasure at her fingertips. Her palms stroked his shoulders, his flanks, his buttocks. He groaned, and dropped his head to her neck. His tempo quickened.
He became her world. The only solid thing in a universe of shifting, rolling pleasure. It came in waves, lifting her, urging her, ripping away her defenses, until every protection on her soul was gone. And she did not care, because it was Rhys.
Rhys.
She was making love with him at last.
The wild pleasure grew, and crested, driving every thought from her head. It was as if her body was made of pure sensation. Pure bliss. And yet there was more. She could sense it.
Rhys’s soft urgings caressed her ear, his accent growing rougher as his own control slipped. “Aye, lass. Let go. Let it come. Let the end take ye.”
It snatched her away hard and fast, hot pleasure slicing through her like the sharpest of blades. She shattered, a thousand bright lights flashing behind her eyelids. Rhys’s mouth covered her, drinking in her cry. He moved inside her, harder, faster, until his own body stiffened, and she felt his seed spurt, warm and welcome, deep inside.
He collapsed atop her, his weight straining the ropes under the mattress. She wrapped her arms around him and tried to still the pounding of her heart.
“I love you, Rhys.”