The Libertine (Taskill Witches 2)

“I cannot help it, my emotions are tender.”

“Good.”

She felt the swollen head of his cock throbbing against her deepest point, and it made her whisper his name, over and over, her release imminent.

He pulled back when he felt the depth of her response. “Oh, Chloris.”

Then he drove her on, riding her slow, hard and deep, until she began to pant aloud. He arched up his shoulders with effort. She bore down, meeting him, and the release came sudden and sweet and hot and wild, flooding her groin with pleasure. When she clenched on him, her core rippling, he groaned, jerked inside her and spurted hot and copious, equaling her release. Chloris held on to his shoulders with weak hands, shuddering.

When he drew away, it was only after he had kissed her for as long as he could stay inside, and then he stood up and laced himself up, before he lifted her in his arms and set her upon his lap. “There, now that we are reacquainted, did you think on our matters of the heart?”

“Long and hard.” She laughed and rubbed her face against his.

“And you see it, don’t you, this will always be the way between us. This is nature’s way, the most powerful vitality there is, and when it grows this way between two lovers who are meant to be together, it is immense and undeniable.”

She nodded her head, clinging to him. That first time in the bluebell glen, when she had wanted to turn him away but had begged him to fulfill her, was close in her mind. There was regret, but it was nothing in the face of her growing desire for him. She’d woken the next day longing for more, longing to be in his arms again.

For the first time she let herself believe this was right.

“When you first came to me we met as if strangers, both driven by different needs in our union. The draw between us was powerful even then, and because of that I fast grew to care about you and nothing else mattered, not your cousin nor what he thought, or how well I could fox him by seducing you.”

Chloris drew back. Her breath caught.

Lennox, whose passion had clearly undone him, cursed when he realized what he had said.

“You...you are saying that you seduced me in order to upset Tamhas?”

Even as she said the words, her heart ached. More fiercely than all the pain and loss she had experienced over these past few days, a knife ran deep in her heart. She shifted, climbing off his lap.

Lennox hung his head. “For a while, I thought that was why you had gone from Saint Andrews, that you had thought on it and realized.”

“I left because he threatened to punish your people.”

“That is what he is like. You have seen it. He detests my people, you know he wanted to run us into the ground and have us burned at the stake. I cannot help that I reacted to that.” He reached out for her.

Chloris pulled away. “But you...you made a fine show of your talents, in order to get to me, because of him.”

“It is how it started, but soon discovery was the last thing I wanted, because most of all I wanted you.”

She stared at him, remembering how it had been, her mind going back to that very first evening when she had asked his assistance. He had questioned her, and when he saw her with Jean his mind was made up. He had set out to ruin her in Tamhas’s eyes. That is why he was so driven, why he pursued her even when she wasn’t sure if she wanted to go ahead with the ancient ritual he described. “The ritual to increase my fertility, was that even real?”

“Of course it was real.” Dismay filled his expression. His chest rose and fell rapidly, and he ran his fingers through his hair and cursed beneath his breath. “What we do cannot and should not be taken for granted. We can summon the gifts of nature to share with others but we must do it with respect.”

“I thought you wanted to help me.”

“I did.” Wild-eyed, he rose to his feet, opened his arms out at his sides and faced his palms upward. He bowed his head, but still he held her gaze, and his eyes shone with unruly fire. He spoke beneath his breath, strange words.

The fire she saw in his eyes leaped from his palms, too.

It was so sudden and so powerful that Chloris backed away, astonished.

When she did, he put an end to it, closing his hands and extinguishing the fire. “I love you, Chloris. What I showed you there is as nothing, compared to what flares in me when I am with you.”

And I love you.

Determinedly, he continued to plead with her. “Please understand, Chloris. There was some temptation in seducing you because of who you are, but that became insignificant for me very quickly, I assure you.”

Chloris looked at him with fresh vision. She could not bring herself to think of being without him, but she saw that his cause had been far from the pure, nurturing thing that he had described when he spoke of the ways of his people, in tune with nature and the seasons rather than the Church and its rules. No, she was torn between what she felt, and what she saw before her—a man who she did not know well enough.