Claiming Her

Begin. How like him, to word it so. Everything about him felt like the edge of the cliff. Irrevocable, life-changing.

He cupped her face and claimed her with a kiss.

It was an openmouthed, unforgiving, conquest of a kiss, his hands holding her face, pulling her down to him. She returned it with full ardor, their tongues tangling. They paused only when he leaned her back with a muttered instruction, so he could sweep the chemise up over her head and fling it away. Then she was naked before him.

He made a dark sound of approval. Cool air washed over her breasts and no matter that she’d been bared to him once before, the urge to hide was the strongest thing in her. It came to the fore, and she began to cover herself.

“No, Katy. I want to see you.”

He took her wrists and gently lifted them, parting her arms, holding them up in the air, stretched out wide, so he could stare at her body.

The breath burst from her. She closed her eyes, unable to withstand the force of desire she saw in him. For she knew it was in her too.

“I’m going to take you now.” Threat, promise, warning, it was all those things, and her body felt as if he’d strung her up on bolts of lightning. “Hard and deep.” Her wrists hung in his hands as he leaned forward and flicked his tongue across her breast. “I’m not going to stop.” He grazed her with his teeth, and her head dropped forward. “Until you’re laid out, tossing your head and crying my name.” His gaze swept up. “And then I'm going to take you harder.”

Breath, blood, fire: in the end, she was a simple thing. Aodh had reduced her to her most elemental forms.

She lifted her head slowly, inch by inch, as if dragging it through honey. “I cannot marry you, Aodh.”

“To be honest, Katy, I’m not thinking of marriage just now.”

The words poked a hole through the mounting tension, and she laughed. And trembled, now scared beyond measure, far more than when the castle had been taken. A castle was stone and wood; it was meant to be captured. But Aodh had conquered her.

She’d thought herself insurmountable. A cold mountaintop.

Oh, but he’d summited her with hot kisses and cold insights. It was enough that he saw her, truly saw her. Even unto what had happened with the swords. Because she had so clearly wanted to fight, and he had seen that, and honored it—given her her fight—when no one else would.

He’d given her a map of the world.

He’d given her a prism of light.

Aodh even knew enough to lock her away, for it was her freedom she prized above all else. And he’d unleashed passions she’d never known were inside her.

He knew precisely where to aim, saw every chink in her armor.

Oh, what a formidable enemy he was, but he would be an even more dangerous ally. Lover.

“Just give me a chance,” he rasped.

“I will give you more than that,” she whispered, surrendering to it. To him.

At once, he slid his hand between their bodies, and began to unlace his breeches. Her hands followed after, greedy to feel the hard thrust of him. If she was going to do this thing, she was going to do it wi

th all her heart. All her body. Give everything she could short of treason, and take everything Aodh would allow.

With a muted curse he put his hands on hers, stopping her. He slid off the bed and stood, swiftly freeing himself of garments: kicked off his boots, tore off hose, tunic, breeches in swift sweeps, until he stood naked before her.

She felt blown back by the force of his hard, male beauty.

The entire left side of him was marked, down past his waist, just as she’d wondered. Hoped.

The inked lines roped from the back of his skull to the column of his neck, over his powerful shoulder and down his back and chest. They swirled like spells down his flat, ribbed stomach, over his hips, down the hard muscles of his thigh, through the hair of his shin and calf, all the way to his toe.

And rising up from the center of his magnificent, ensorcelled body, jutting out from the dark thatch of hair between his thighs, was a bold, thick erection, curving back almost to his belly.

Unthinking, knowing only that she needed to touch him, she began to drop to her knees, reaching for him.

He swept her back to her feet. “That is not a good idea just now, Katy.” His voice was a taut scrape.