His grip tightened. ‘No, Maren. You have set a fever in my soul. It is burning me up, lass, more than you could know. We are kindred spirits, you and I.’
‘I am sure you have said the same words to many a lass, so I cannot let you take me to bed, Bryce. It would be the end of me.’
‘If I take you to bed, ‘twill be to make love to you, Maren.’
‘Love.’ She gave a bitter laugh, hoping he would relent. ‘You are not driven by love.’
Bryce swallowed hard and frowned. ‘Aye, maybe not love, Maren, but affection and admiration, and you are too stubborn to see it.’
‘You are a liar,’ she gasped, backing up against the side of the bed.
‘Aye, sometimes,’ he replied, tearing his shirt off over his head with one hand.
Her knees felt weak at the sight of his chest - hard pads of muscle and bronze hair running down to the top of his breeches. Maren tore her eyes back to his. Such compelling eyes, so blue, so intense, now that he was in his passion. She wanted him with a savage hunger that swelled her throat and melted her loins.
Bryce pushed her backwards, and she fell onto the bed. He climbed on top of her, hitching her skirts up and sliding a warm hand up the outside of her thigh. Maren was too weak to stop him.
‘You are a seducer and…and a villain of the first order, and you cannot be trusted,’ she cried.
‘Aye, and nor can you,’ he said as his lips pressed to hers, and his fingers found her, making her moan. ‘And this villain wants you, Maren.’ She melted against his hand as it moved over her, as if knowing exactly where to press, where to circle, to make her lose her wits.
All day had been worry, horror or shame, and Maren wanted to forget, if only for a moment. She could succumb to the lure of manly beauty, strong hands and pleasure. Desire was a wolf in her loins, tearing at her resolve, her good sense. It drove out wit and reason, and all that remained was surrender to her baser urges.
Every man in her life had been a brute, a monster who intimidated, abused and took from her. Men only knew how to command, not understand, force, not negotiate, as if she had no mind of her own and could not bargain on equal terms. But Bryce Cullan was a far more dangerous breed than that. He coaxed, he teased, and he flattered.
And worst of all, he knew how to be tender and gentle.
And he was beautiful to look at - like a fine painting or one of those Greek sculptures, roped with coils of muscle. He made Maren feel soft, as though she were melting inside, and when he looked at her in a certain way, sincere and with desire swirling in his blue eyes, it made her heart clench a little. Maren longed to tear his clothes from his hard body and taste his skin, pull him inside her body. But that would not do at all. Giving her virtue to Bryce might lead to her giving her heart, and she could not afford that folly, for he would discard her as soon as may be, and she would not suffer that humiliation at his hands.
His kiss moved to her neck, and he breathed, ‘We are thrown together for a while, lass. Who is to say it cannot be enjoyable? Life is too short to forsake your desires, and danger is always but a heartbeat away.’
Aye, life was indeed too short, and for her, lived on a knife edge. Could she not grab a scrap of happiness when fate offered it?
‘I can be kind, Maren, if you would let me,’ he breathed.
‘You are a blackguard, Bryce Cullan. What kindness could I hope for from you?
‘This, for a start,’ he said, suddenly spreading her legs wider and fumbling with his breeches. She gasped, eyes wide and mouth open, as he surged inside her, smooth, hard, and huge. ‘You need to know what it is to be made love to, Maren, to be wanted.’
Maren gasped as he pulled down her shift, her breasts cold in the evening air until his mouth found them, sucking, licking, biting gently. She was a long way from her wedding night, that invasion, that taking of her innocence. Now, her body welcomed it, closed around Bryce’s manhood as if it was meant to be at one with her. Maren wrapped her legs around his back and pulled him further inside. He could never be close enough to satisfy her need to be at one with him.
Bryce groaned and surged against her, sending waves of joy deep inside her belly. Their kisses became a heated duel for mastery. His hand fisted in her hair. Maren dug her fingers into the iron flesh of his back, clawing at muscle and bone as she began to float over the edge of control.
She stared up at the ceiling, jerking back and forth with each thrust Bryce made inside her, and suddenly everything floated away on a tide of wanting, replaced by a hot, pulsing pleasure such as she had never felt.
‘Oh, please, Bryce. Please,’ she wailed, dying a little inside with the desperate, sad ecstasy of her release. She was falling, out of herself, her life, everything lost to this one moment of frantic, hungry joy.
Bryce’s fingers gripped her hips hard as he pulled her limp body up to meet his downward thrusts, and he cried her name into her hair. Their panted breath filled the room as their bodies entwined.
‘A strange feeling came upon me when we lay down in the woods,’ said Bryce hoarsely, pushing inside her unprotesting body.
‘What,’ she said.
‘I fear I could love you, lass,’ he breathed into her mouth.
Her passion built and overflowed. ‘No,’ she cried, surging against him. Bryce gripped her hard and pinned her down as their bodies joined in an explosion of pure feeling.
Bryce collapsed on top of her, his body sliding against hers, with sweat and lust gluing them together. Maren squirmed against his manhood, lest the ecstasy slip away before she could hang onto its pulsing little death throes. She could only stare, wide-eyed and smiling, at the roof beams. Who knew lying with a man could be so wild and heady?
