He mattered to her.
Maybe more than her own freedom.
CHAPTER TEN
WITHher still pressed to him, Tair began walking backward, leading her away from the pool and into his room.
As he walked, he kissed the side of her neck, just beneath her earlobe, and then worked his way down all the way to her collarbone. Hot forks of sensation raced through her and she couldn’t suppress the shivers of pleasure.
She knew where he was going, seeing his great bed with the silk coverlet from the corner of her eye. “Is this wise?” she whispered, forced to cling to him, her legs weak as he kissed the rise of her collarbone and then the small hollow at her throat.
“Yes,” he murmured against her skin, “very wise. I’m losing my patience with waiting to make you mine.”
His deep rough voice hummed and vibrated through her. Her head spun, dizzy from her shallow breathing and yet she couldn’t slow her pulse, her heart beating too hard and fast. Tally felt wild with desire and excitement. How was it possible to feel so much? She was exquisitely aware of his hands, his mouth, his warmth and frantically sucked in air as he cupped her breasts, letting the weight of them fill his hands.
There was something so seductive and yet so gratifying in his touch. She recognized him at a level that couldn’t be explained. But she knew him in some deep primal part of her, knew him as a man, and her man. And yes, she thought, arms wrapping around his neck, her skin alive, body rippling, she was his. His.
Tally pressed closer, impatiently unbuttoning his shirt to kiss the warm spice-scented skin that stretched across his chest, the warm fragrant skin just above the scars. She’d never been bold with men but Tair made her brave, Tair made her want to seize all the life she could and make it hers, including sex, if not love. And opening his shirt wider, she touched her lips to the scars marring his chest thinking this is where she wanted him to want her, carry her, here in his heart.
His horrible awful barbarian heart.
The heart she wanted more than anything.
He lifted his head to look down into her eyes. “You know you’re mine. You know there’s no leaving me. This is where you belong. You know this now.”
His words rushed over her, through her, even as his voice hummed in her veins and skin. It was hard to think clearly, hard to think of anything at all but getting closer, eliminating the last bit of distance between them. She needed him, not just his mouth and mind, but his body, his powerful fearsome body with the corded tendons and rippling strength, the biceps and quadriceps, the roping of muscle beneath bronzed warrior skin.
“I claim you,” he added, hands sliding down her back to clasp her buttocks, and hold her firm against his hips where his erection pressed thick and hard against her belly. “Don’t think you can change this. Don’t think you can run away now.”
Her eyes closed as she felt his fingers grasp her bottom, the pressure of his hands on her tender skin. His hands were warm and they made her feel hot and madly empty. She wanted those hands on her everywhere, wanted those hands to take her, and even take her apart like a tower of children’s building blocks and then put her back together again.
“You won’t run away,” he insisted, hands moving between her legs, touching her lightly, intimately.
She shuddered and nodded blindly. Nothing he said registered. Everything he said registered. He’d become all, primal and sexual and male. Her male. The one that made her shiver and shudder. The one that had set loose this firestorm of need. As he touched and stroked she arched, breasts crushed against his chest, hips swaying to a silent tattoo of hunger, a hunger she desperately needed him to appease. “Yes,” she choked.
“Yes, what?” he demanded, bending her back over his arm to look at her, see her, the woman he would soon possess as only he could possess.
“I won’t run away,” she said, voice husky, feeling her breasts tighten at the rush of cool air, her nipples ruche, peak.
Tair couldn’t fail to notice her response and his gaze dropped appreciatively, resting on the ripe swell of her rose-tipped breasts.
Tally had been eyed by men before, but it had never felt like this. This was ownership, a claiming that burned all the way to her soul.
His dark head dipped, thick black hair hiding his face as his mouth touched her breast and then her nipple, his lips parting to take the aching peak into his mouth, against his tongue and teeth. He tugged at the sensitive flesh and she moaned deep in her throat as he licked, bit, teased until she was trembling, her nerves taut, tauter. She was melting and craving and needing and shuddering Tally pressed herself closer.