The Conqueror

The length of his mail-clad body stilled, then he turned and strode back to within inches of her. He swept up the hair by her ear with the edge of a warm, calloused hand, and leaned in. “Smile.”

Something hot flashed through her body. “Sir?”

“Smile for me.”

He could have said anything. In that husky voice, his long fingers brushing back her hair, his breath warm on her skin, he could have said he was a traitor to the king and she would have smiled. And when she did, slowly, hesitantly, a corner of his own mouth crooked up in reply.

“I have been recompensed,” he murmured.

Something hot and cold and shivery came down like a rainstorm through her body. Every breath she tried to take came rushing back out again. She could hardly listen to his next words, with his muscular body pulsing heat onto hers, his lips just by her ear, whispering words that were all of sense, nothing of the animal arousal he’d just awakened in her.

“Take care here, Raven. Don’t talk too much. Don’t ask too many questions. Hide that silly pouch of silver and whatever you’ve got in the other one.”

He ran his index finger briefly along her jaw. It was a careless gesture, but it made the hot-cold chills explode like fire through her blood. She reached out and her fingertips brushed his mailed forearm.

“Don’t go. Yet. Please.”

And like that, deep inside of Griffyn, something that hadn’t moved for a very long time suddenly shifted.

He grabbed her hand and pulled her outside, propelling her behind Noir, using the horse as a shield between them and the huts. His intention was clear, and he barely dared breathe, waiting for her refusal. Let her pull back the slightest bit and he would step away, forget the whole thing, interpret her unsteady breathing as fear, her trembles as exhaustion.

But Go

d, he prayed silently, please let her move not so much as an eyelash.

Why was his blood hammering so? Why was it hard to draw breath? He had barely touched her on two occasions, touches so innocent he could have performed them in a crowded room and barely brought a gasp. Why?

Because something about this small, courageous wisp of a woman was plunging into recesses of a desire he’d never known existed, and his arousal pulsed hot and hard and inassuagable inside him, all from the feel of a curving spine and the sight of a delicate, dirt-stained face.

Without a thought for custom or destiny or anything other than the green-eyed angel pressed against his horse and panting, he bent his head to taste the trembling lips. Sliding his thumb slowly down her neck, he brushed his lips over hers.

Her small intake of breath, like velvet on air, made him stiffen into a thick, hard rod. Catching hold of his breath, he pressed the tip of his tongue against the seam of her lips, pushing them open ever so slightly.

Gwyn threw her head back, stunned by the bolt of wet heat that blasted through her body. A slow-moving shudder rippled behind, quivering between her thighs, lashing pleasure through her blood. His tongue slid in further, coaxing her to open for him, taking long, slow sweeps of her, mining an unknown passion that was pulsing heat between her legs. She dimly realised she was embracing him, had her arms around his neck and was pulling him down. Ever gallant, he responded, cupping her face with one hard, gloved hand. He locked his other hand around her hip and tugged, coaxing her closer, his thumb pressed against the rounded flesh of her abdomen, coming dangerously and head-spinningly close to the place where hot, wet heat flashed inside her womb.

“Oh, Pagan.” The wasted whimper slid out of her, a moan, a ministration, a murmur of something she didn’t even know how to dream about.

Without thinking, which was no part of what she was doing, she pushed her body into his. Breasts, belly, hips, everything arched up into him. An invitation.

In a single, confident move, he dragged her up off the ground, tight against him, so her toes scraped the earth, his mouth hungry on hers. He pushed the flat of his hand against her belly and slid up her ribs until his thumb rested just under the swell of her breast.

She threw her head to the side, crying out. She had no idea what she might have done next if Noir hadn’t shifted just then, away from the pressure.

Griffyn did, though. He knew exactly what he would have done to her, starting with her parted lips straight down to her curling toes. But when Noir shifted, that woke him up. His hand shot out and grabbed the reins.

He dragged his head up a bare inch and found her eyes almost closed. Only a thin glitter of green was visible. The rest of her face was suffused with incipient passion: red, parted lips, panting chest, flushed cheeks.

A breath of air never tasted before.

He let her go as if burned, released her onto obviously wobbly feet, his breath ragged, his very blood burning. Had he just almost ravished a noblewoman as if she were a strumpet, backed her up against his horse and gone to lift her skirts? Had he truly abandoned his mission on the eve of its execution? What had he become? A distractible man? A desirous man? A fool?

Never before, and never, ever again.

Groin pounding, heart thundering, he wiped his palm over his mouth. “That was wrong of me, Guinevere,” he muttered. “I was foolish, and I am sorry.”

She kept her eyes downcast. “You were not the only fool.”

“I have never—” He wiped his hand over his entire face this time. “I was wrong. Please forgive me.”