His patience at an end, Galen thrust out his hand. “Come. Give me the dagger. There is no profit to be gained in continuing this conversation.”
Refusing to do as she’d been ordered, Laoghaire wordlessly shook her head. However, given the look of uncertainty that suddenly flashed across her face, Galen surmised that she’d lost the will to use the weapon against him.
“If you give me the dagger, I will not physically harm you,” he assured her, suspecting that was the crux of his wife’s dilemma, Laoghaire well aware that once she gave up custody of the weapon, she would be vulnerable.
Again, she obstinately shook her head, this time tightening her grip on the dagger hilt.
“So be it,” Galen said quietly, before he pushed out a deep exhalation, giving every appearance of being a man who’d just met with defeat.
Taking the bait, Laoghaire started to lower the blade; which is when Galen suddenly lunged toward her mid-section and tackled her onto the ground. Stunned, she was incapable of mounting a defense as he grabbed hold of her right wrist and—with a quick twist—forced the dagger out of her hand. He then snatched hold of the blade and flung it out of her reach. With that done, he placed a hand under her chin, bracketing his fingers around her jaw to keep her head from thrashing about. Neither spoke as their ragged breaths mingled and collided.
In those pulse-pounding moments, the world around him—the dappled glade, the rush of water—immediately faded to the periphery, Galen’s attention, indeed, his sole focus, now on the provocatively beautiful woman sprawled beneath him.
Pinned to the ground by his much larger frame, Laoghaire frantically arched her back in a desperate attempt to throw him off of her; only to go noticeably rigid in the instant when she felt his fully erect organ pressing against her woman’s mound.
With a smug, manly smile, Galen adjusted his hips, firmly nestling his stiffened manhood in the cleft between her legs. While the gall of the woman infuriated him, his ire was trumped by a desire so potent that he had little control over it.
“Get off of me, ye great Norman cur!” Laoghaire spat at him, the angry heat of her breath hitting him full in the face. “Ye gave yer word that ye would not mistreat me!”
“Given the seriousness of your transgression, I have behaved with commendable restraint. Any other man would have killed you for daring to draw a dagger on him.”
Even as he spoke the words, Galen knew that he should, at the very least, give her a well-deserved thrashing. And yet he could not bring himself to raise a hand against her in violence. The fact that he couldn’t was like a thorn imbedded in his skin, irritating, painful even. No other woman had ever wielded such power over him, and that this one did unnerved him.
While one part of him wanted a serene and placid wife—not unlike Melisande—another part of him found Laoghaire’s proud belligerency highly stimulating. The thought of doing combat with her, even if it was only verbal combat, intensified his lust, giving it a harder, keener edge.
Motivated by a powerful yearning, Galen slid his hand down the smooth column of Laoghaire’s neck. When he cupped her breast, her nipple instantly beaded against his palm. Unable to stifle a groan of pleasure, he gave the soft mound a gentle squeeze, the caress meeting with a mewling whimper as Laoghaire peered up at him with a bewildered expression.
“I have been dreaming of rutting on you for ten days now,” he told her, his gaze fixed upon her mouth, the full, rosy lips beckoning him to kiss them. “Yield to me, Laoghaire. You are my wife and it your sacred duty to do so.”
“As if muttering a few vows before a tonsured priest would suddenly make me love ye.”
Peering into his wife’s eyes, Galen was taken aback by the intensity of her scorn. “You don’t have to love me, or even like me for that matter. You simply have to spread your thighs so that I can thrust my rod into you and plant my seed.”
In the next instant, Galen inclined his head forward. Surmising that he meant to kiss her, Laoghaire abruptly turned her head to one side, presenting him with a view of her cheek.
“No! I forbid ye to kiss me!”
“Damn you, Laoghaire,” Galen said roughly, while he grasped hold of her chin and jerked her head so that she was once again facing him.
At that close range she could see that his cheeks and jaw—darkened by several days’ growth of beard—lent him a saturnine appearance. To add to the sinister image, she could feel Galen’s fury in the very marrow of her bones.
“I am your husband,” Galen hissed at her. “I have every right to kiss you. Among other things, I might add.”
At hearing that succinct postscript, Laoghaire bit back a terrified yelp, suddenly intuiting that Galen meant to rut on her in the open. Like a stallion mounting a mare. That frightening thought—as well as the press of Galen’s arousal against her woman’s mound—subdued her into a frozen immobility. In those frantic moments, as she desperately grappled with the fact that there was a highly aroused male situated between her legs, she found herself incapable of coherent thought, unable to voice so much as a whimper of protest.
While she feared neither man nor beast, for some inexplicable reason she was terrified that Galen intended to mate with her. And though she knew what her wifely duty entailed, she nonetheless had a deep-seated fear that once Galen inserted his male organ into her woman’s body, he would then possess her, body and soul. No different from the devil having dominion over some poor wretch.
Clearly thinking the battle won, Galen slowly, and very purposefully, brushed the backs of his knuckles across her hardened nipples. Upon feeling a burst of sensation, Laoghaire fought the urge to squirm free of him.
“I really should punish you,” Galen remarked in an almost conversational tone, softly kneading her breast.
“Is that not what ye’re doing?” Laoghaire croaked, the words catching in her throat. Perhaps it was because her breasts were tender and slightly swollen from her menses; whatever the reason, she was stunned that his gentle caresses engendered a strange sort of pleasure. “Why are ye doing this to me? Ye know full well that I am having my flowers.”
“I care naught if your womb bleeds. I want to rut on you. Right here. Right now,” he informed her, making his desires plainly known. “Furthermore, I intend to map the whole of your body and claim it for my own.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” she protested, her voice little more than strained whisper.
Shifting slightly, Galen slid a hand over the curve of her outer hip. “After I fill you with my seed, then you can tell me what I won’t dare to do.”
