The Conqueror

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and hung on, her mouth open for him, meeting every passionate lash of his tongue with one of her own, until there was no difference between breathing and kissing, no space between them; they were all a single length of hot touching desire.

It was an unyielding assault. Gwyn knew nothing but that her life was forever changed. The hard hea

t from his thighs burned against hers, loosing a firestorm of wet heat that slid down her belly and pooled between her legs. She entwined fingers in his hair, her mouth open, welcoming each lash of his wicked tongue. With breathtaking skill, he locked his hands around her hips and gently, inexorably, rocked her hips into his.

Throbbing, perfect, painful wanting washed through her. “Oh, no, Pagan,” she whispered, not meaning the no, only meaning she hadn’t known. She’d never known there was anything like this man.

Griffyn heard his name and didn’t heed the no. Her body was moving in a subtle, instinctive rhythm and told him which cue to attend. He plundered her willing depth, plunging his fingers deep into her hair and dragging her head back, lashing her harder and deeper, coaxing her body to bend back for him, which she did, trembling, ready, until their bodies touched from chest to knee, and it surged desire through him, hot and savage.

Reckless with passion, he kissed down the side of her neck and as he did, he pushed his hand up under her skirts, sliding his calloused fingertips up the back of her silky warm thigh. Then, God save him, she bent her knee in response to his touch, and the move pressed the hot cradle of her into his erection.

A tremor of bone-jarring desire crashed down on him, stunning him. He hadn’t expected this. She was nothing but an accident. A brief chivalrous impulse amid a lifetime of blood and swords and hatred. She was nothing.

Nothing, mayhap, but he wanted her so badly it hurt. He felt like the unseen shelf his life had rested upon was being kicked out from under him. Silk and hot skin, feminine heat and panting desire, funny, intelligent, and brave beyond imagining, whispering his name, needing him.

Why did that matter so much?

The question cartwheeled so loudly through his mind, it bounded into the realm of consciousness and brought him to his senses. Using every shattered fragment of self-control he’d cultivated through years of long-checked vengeance and knocking knights off their horses, Griffyn loosed his hands from her hot body and took a step back.

“I can’t seem to stop doing that,” he muttered.

She swayed at the abrupt release and stumbled, righting herself by way of a desperate grab at a well-placed tree limb. He made a conciliatory move forward but the look of horror on her face brought him up short. Her hand grabbed the dark wood, clutching it as if she were on a sinking ship.

A waterfall of black hair fluttered by her face before falling over her slender shoulders. Loose sprays framed her face. One was caught in her mouth. In the shaft of moonlight splashing between the tree limbs, she looked like a nymph, a magical sprite, achingly beautiful and completely unnecessary.

“I should not have done that,” he muttered as gently as his lust-ravaged body would allow. His blood was thundering, his groin pounding with an ache he could barely withstand. “Again.”

“No,” she agreed.

Planting his hand on Noir’s withers, he dropped his head. He’d lost his mind, his reason, and his sense of honour, all within a few hours of meeting the woman, and the costs were escalating, up to and including capture and death if Marcus d’Endshire or Aubrey Hippingthorpe discovered his whereabouts.

The path they now used, and the fortress to which it led, was hidden, but not so well hidden that a few soldiers nosing in the bushes couldn’t stumble upon it. Not so well forgotten that a few questions to an aging villager could not point them to a crumbling stone fortress steeped in Saxon lore and ancient blood.

And now he was taking her there, to his lair of rebel spies. Like a fool. Like a dimwitted drunkard. Like a man in love, his brains addled by too much affection and too vivid images of bedtime romps. Which he was not. None of these.

So why was he doing it?

Because of the smile.

He dragged the heel of his palm across his forehead. His erection was still throbbing, his heart still hammering inside his chest, the remnants of a desire so potent he could taste it. Hot honey. She would taste like that. She had.

He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. “I am sorry, Guinevere. You needn’t fear me in such a way ever again.”

“I’m not afrai—”

“Can you walk?” he asked coldly.

She drew back. “Quite well, thank-you.”

He looked at her doubtfully. At the moment, balance seemed a credible accomplishment. Her hair lifted in the winds that surged amid the tree trunks, and her torso angled distinctly sideways. Her face was intent and childlike as she tried to smooth the wrinkles from her once-fine gown, and the whole scene sending a wave of such lust and unexpected tenderness washing through him that he felt weak.

This was madness. Enchanted she was, aye, like a demon, and he was furious for being cast in her spell. He reached for the anger like a drowning man.

“So what is it to be, mistress?” he asked curtly.

Chapter Twelve

Gwyn continued brushing off her dress, her mind reeling. His question made the world tilt. Said in that husky, masculine rumble, hard-edged and taut with restraint, it didn’t speak of what he had done, it bored straight into her soul and whispered of what he was going to do.