Claiming Her

She closed her eyes to better focus on the sensations running rampant through her body, the scalding pleasure brought by Aodh’s possession of her. Her hips began to thrust up more frantically, her head to toss more unevenly. Her gasps kept breaking off mid-cry, as each new twist of pleasure coiled through her.

Hard and fast now, their union ascended. Pleasure built in dizzying sweeps. She was cold and desperately hot. He slid his hand down under her body, cupped her bottom and lifted, holding her up and shifting their angle. A bolt of pleasure snaked through her.

He surged into her again, then again, and again, until the pleasure was intolerable, so intense it scorched. Her back arched, her breath arrested, poised at the edge of a precipice.

He bent to her ear. “You see, there is nothing we cannot do, Katy, you and I. Whatever you want, we will be.”

“Oh.”

“You are mine.”

Her head whipped back, her body jerked from within, then she exploded. “Yours.”

The climax picked her up and tossed her. Helpless in the smashing, churning pleasure, she could do nothing but fling her head, rock her body, and cry Aodh’s name, just as he’d said. He roared his completion then too, and the flood of male heat that surged through her coaxed her body to summit on another wave of pleasure.

They continued to move against each other until the last vestiges of climax were spent. Then he dragged himself off her and drew her to lay beside him.

She sprawled, stunned, her hips still rocking forward, as if a dream of arousal clung to her. He dragged her knee up onto his stomach to let her move against him, curled his hand under the sweaty length of her hair, and lifted it up, so cool air could brush over it.

She whispered her thanks, planted a messy kiss on his jaw, and her head fell back to the bed. Almost before it hit the sheets, they were asleep, sweaty limbs entwined, carnal lusts sated, for the moment, their minds protected from what this all meant. But of course it meant something.

It meant she was his.

Rardove was, in every way now, in the hands of a rebel.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

SHE WAS AWAKENED by the feel of his hand lightly stroking up her naked back, under the covers. The furs were warm, the fire was burning—he must have made it up, because it crackled and popped with fresh fuel. The furs wer

e silky across her body.

His hand slid up between her shoulder blades, and, still half in sleep, she stretched into his touch and pushed her leg out, long under the covers.

Aodh’s hand, warm and hard, tugged her knee up over his stomach. She curled into him like a cat.

Then he dragged her entirely onto his body, pushed his knee between hers, parting them, and with a swift, confident lift of his hips, thrust up inside her with a slippery, pressured push.

“Oh,” she breathed, still half in sleep.

“G’morning,” he whispered by her ear.

“Is it morning?” She tried to straighten.

“’Tis after midnight.”

“Morning,” she agreed dazedly, pushing up on her elbows. She shoved the hair back from her forehead and looked into the eyes so close to hers. The sharp angles of his warrior’s face, hardened by the world, were softened now, partly by a morning covering of facial hair on his cheeks, but mostly by the heated passion in his eye.

“I dreamed of you,” she whispered.

“And I, you,” he said quietly, but the resonate rumble sounded loud in the firelit room. He lifted his hips, pushed in a little deeper.

“Is this a dream?” she whispered.

“Aye.”

She bent her head and touched her lips to his. “It feels very real.”

“Does it feel very good?”