The Irish Warrior

He ran the tips of his callused fingers down her neck, stopping just in the valley between her breasts. “Is that an aye?” he asked, smiling.

How shameful, to have all her wits melted like ice by a single Irishman. Stewards from the royal household and chancellors from St. Mark’s Abbey had bent before her negotiating talents. Finian simply said Will you? and she’d practically wept her Yes.

He leaned forward to lay claim to her lips. She poked her index finger into his chest, holding him at bay.

“No,” she corrected. “’Tisn’t, actually. Why are you asking?”

He looked startled. He scratched his forehead. “Why? Ye’re asking why?”

Now here was a phenomenon; an intelligent man laid low by that simple query.

“For certes,” she assured him. “Why?”

“Why”—he looked around incredulously—“because ’tisn’t safe at yer brother’s manor.”

“Then why did you offer in the first place?”

“So ye’d have a choice,” he grumbled. “So I might be a modicum different to ye from other men.”

A modicum. She felt like laughing. He was like a star might be viewed through one of Bacon’s optics, brought close and placed in her palm. It was hopeless—she was in love with someone who had no need for the kind of fumbling attempts at affection she could bestow. Why would he need her?

And therein lay the truth: he didn’t. He might want her, but he didn’t need her, so it was only a matter of time.

She had no words to describe how she felt about him. When he smiled at her, teased her, listened to her with patient regard. And there were no words to describe how she felt when he touched her. When he looked at her with desire and affection mingled. It almost made her heart break.

And now he was offering it to her, giving her the chance to have him hand back her heart, broken anew, each morning, when she woke up and recalled he would never truly be hers. Had he not made it plainer than daylight? Only a fool would believe it wasn’t so.

He might wed, some day, for position and heirs. But it would not be for love. And it would not be to her.

He was distracting her, running his hand up her leg. He bent and brushed his lips over the vulnerable part of her neck, the center of her throat, where every swallow had to nudge by his lips. The blunt tip of his index finger slid over her thigh, and backward, brushing across the top of her buttocks.

“Is this about the dyes?” she asked outright, almost hoping it was. If so, it would be a black mark, a smudge on a man who was, to her, so gleaming bright it almost hurt her heart.

“No.”

“Then why?”

He finished the kiss she’d stopped him from before, and she didn’t stop him again. Up her neck he pressed kisses—small, hot raindrops—every so often followed by the smallest nibble, his teeth holding back their bite, just enough to raise shivers of pleasure across her breasts, hardening them. Then he moved to her lips.

His mouth slanted gently over her, his touch so gentle she felt his warm exhalation more than his kiss. As if they had all the time in the world, he kissed her, like she was a savory, a new taste for his lips and tongue.

He coaxed her mouth open and launched a slow, irresistible invasion, his tongue plunging deep in the wet recesses of her mouth. His hands slid over her hips and, with a confident tug, pushed her leggings down to midthigh. Then he positioned one knee between hers, his sculpted body and hard erection pressing against her groin.

“Staying, then, are ye?” he murmured against her ear—hot, masculine breath.

“You’re muddling my head,” she complained.

“I’ll muddle ye straight through to yer center. Stay with me.”

“Why are you asking?”

He shoved his muscular thigh up between her legs, pressing roughly against everything in her that was throbbing and wet.

“For this,” he growled. He sounded certain. She was. Certain she could not live without him.

He bobbed his thigh up and down and she arched to him, entwining her fingers in his hair.

“For this.” He kissed her earlobe, sending shock waves down her belly. She arched up into it. Shameless, and lost. “And this.”