The Savage

When Lance wrapped one strong arm around her waist and lifted her up, Summer caught at his shoulders with a little whimper, her nails digging into the corded muscles beneath his shirt. She felt the burning heat of him jabbing at the softness of her inner thigh, the fierce strength of him demanding entrance.

Finding it, he thrust upward into her hot, silky sweetness.

She made a wild sound in her throat, clinging as Lance impaled her on his thick shaft. Her entire body quivered from the pleasure and pain of it. Then he stilled.

She said his name in a raw, shaking voice and tried to move her hips, but he only held her more tightly, crushing her breasts against his hard, muscle-layered chest, grinding her hips against his, spreading his legs to control her.

She arched her back against the rough wooden wall behind her, oblivious of the discomfort as she tried to get closer. “Lance, please…”

“Please what, princess? Please you?” Deliberately he withdrew partway, making her feel an aching emptiness where his hot, throbbing tumescence had been. “Please me?” The muscles of his shoulders bunched and flexed beneath her clutching fingertips as he thrust slowly, making her sob in relief at the exquisite pleasure of having him fill her again.

“Yes…” she breathed feverishly. “Please, yes…” He was rigid inside her, and she trembled at the enormous pulsing size of him, but it wasn’t enough. She moved again, trying to meld her flesh to his, seeking release for the restless clamoring inside her.

Lance shuddered convulsively, grinding his teeth to hold back the deep primal sound rumbling in his chest. “Wrap…your legs around me.”

She obeyed—just then she would have done anything he asked—and clutched her arms around his neck as well. A gasping moan escaped her throat as he surged hard into her.

And then a violent hunger, primitive and raw, seemed to take control of her body. Her hips jerked spasmodically, her head thrashing side to side in fiery pleasure.

Lance seemed suddenly to feel the same wild urgency. He drove himself into her, big and hard, his powerful body trembling with angry need.

For a score of heartbeats they strained together in frenzied pleasure, Summer meeting the driving need of Lance’s body, matching her movements to his in frenzied abandon, her hips writhing under his pounding force. He was slamming into her with fierce rapidity, and she bit his shoulder, sobbing from the power of it, from the shock of the impact.

And then abruptly it was too much for her to bear. Her senses crested and shattered at the wild magnificence of his possession.

Lost in shimmering heat and blind ecstasy, she finally regained awareness to find his hips jerking in the final spasms of completion. His breathing was harsh in her ear and he collapsed against her as if he could scarcely support her clinging weight.

With what seemed a valiant effort, he turned with Summer and sank into the straw, depositing her limp body in the softness, moving with her to cover her body with his and bury his mouth in the curve of her neck.

Summer made no protest whatsoever. She felt dazed by what had just happened, and yet totally replete. He was hard and heavy and hot on her, crushing her down in the straw, but she wanted him this way, wanted the intimacy, wanted him still joined to her. She could feel the heat emanating from his body, smell the musky odor of sex mingling with the warm male scent of his freshly bathed skin, and it made her feel powerfully female and deliciously weak.

“Is your wound all right?” she managed to ask weakly.

His grunt she took to mean that he would survive, which was more than she might do. She might never get up again.

“You aren’t going to leave the ranch,” she murmured sleepily after another long moment.

Lance stiffened at the sharp pain of remembrance—and cursed himself again for his lack of control. He had taken her again without preliminaries, without gentling her body to arousal, treating her like the basest of whores instead of the lady she was. She hadn’t seemed to mind. Hell, Summer had seemed to want him as much as he had wanted her. But it was small consolation. She was more

than capable of pretending to be all hot for him in order to get her way—whatever that was at the moment, he wasn’t certain.

“You won’t have to sleep in the bunkhouse with the vaqueros,” she said more firmly, snuggling against him as if she wanted the closeness.

He was a long time in answering. “Your sister ordered me out of your house, or didn’t you hear?”

“So? Amelia doesn’t speak for me…or Reed, either, for that matter.”

Slowly he raised his head to stare down at her. “You’re telling me you’re willing to fight your sister to let me live there?”

A small frown appeared between her eyes. “I don’t think I can go that far, Lance. I have to think of her, too. Amelia is so terrified, she isn’t rational. But I won’t allow her to drive you away, either.”

His harsh features remained totally expressionless. “It doesn’t matter. A featherbed would be too soft for me, anyway.”

It did matter to him, she knew. It mattered desperately. Holding his gaze, she shook her head. “We’ll find someplace else to live.”

“We?” The word was wary, disbelieving.

“Yes, we. As your wife, my place is by your side. If you’ve been banished from the house, then I have been, too.” When he remained tense and still, she glanced around her lazily, musing out loud. “Perhaps we can move out here to the barn. This is nice, don’t you think?”