‘I must. Give yourself to me, Lowri,’ he mumbled. ‘I want to taste every inch of you.’ Her thighs squeezed his head, and she began to squirm. ‘Oh, Cullen, I...oh, don’t stop. Please, Cullen.’ Lowri peaked under his mouth, digging her nails into his scalp, crying out his name until her breath left her body in a drawn-out, ‘Ahhhhh.’
A fierce pride took Cullen. He had won a battle with Lowri. She lay limp under him, her eyes closed, full mouth open and panting. Cullen wiped his mouth on his forearm and surged inside her. She was smooth, warm and welcoming, and within moments, he found a release so powerful that he grew dizzy with it.
Cullen rolled off Lowri and gathered her to his chest. ‘You are trembling, lass.’ He looked down and saw shiny tear tracks running down her face to her hair. ‘Did you not like it?’
She bent her head down when she answered so as not to meet his eye. ‘I did like it. Couldn’t you tell?’ she whispered.
Cullen took her chin in his fingers, tilted her head up, and kissed her long and deep. Her fingers slid into his hair, and her mouth was open, inviting him in.
She broke away first. ‘Why did you do that, give me pleasure?’ she said.
He lay back with a sigh, his forearm over his head. ‘I just wanted to. I wanted to bring you comfort, and I was trying to get you to think well of me, to stop hating me.’
‘I don’t hate you. It’s just that you didn’t have to lie with me.’
He frowned. ‘I never meant to force you, but I had to, or your friends would have suffered and ….’
Lowri put a finger to his lips. ‘No, you mistake my meaning. What I am saying is that you could have said ‘no’ to the marriage, walked away and left me to my fate. But you saved my life, and Donnan’s and Rory’s, too. I have never acknowledged that, have I?’
‘Believe me, ‘twas not such a sacrifice. But tell me this. Did you just let me have my way because I was angry?’
‘No. I am not afraid of you or your anger.’ She put her hand on his chest. ‘I just don’t understand why you would do that if you were so angry with me?
‘I wanted to drive Butcher out of your head. The thought of you liking him makes my heart rage.’
‘’So you were jealous?’
‘Aye, and I don’t like that feeling. It is like a rot in my guts. And I’ve wanted to taste you ever since we stood before that priest.’
She lowered her head again. ‘Don’t say such things.’
‘It’s the truth, so why should I not say it?’
‘You can say it, but how can I ever believe it? You hated being married as much as me.’
‘Aye. But I don’t mind it so much now.’ Cullen smiled, and the little smile she threw back at him gave more relief than spurting his seed inside her. It meant he had won Lowri’s good opinion in some small way, and if he had to spend his life between her legs to keep it, he would. It’s not as if it would be a chore.
Lowri let the warmth of Cullen’s chest seep into hers, for it was comforting to be close to another person. But if Cullen’s lovemaking – if you could describe that thing he had done with his mouth in such a way – was meant to calm her, it had not. Lowri’s heart was galloping out of her chest, and she was raw with pleasure. His warm mouth had been so gentle at first, but then insistent, demanding, mastering her. Lowri had been helpless under such an onslaught. She never thought a body could feel so much. How could she want to sob her heart out and laugh with joy at the same time?
Cullen’s breath on her tender womanhood had sent fire through every nerve in her body. Even now, she felt the shadow of the shuddering jolts of pleasure that rolled over each other, like waves crashing to shore, raw and intense. Her legs still shook, and she had died a little inside at the beauty of it, as if her heart had exploded into tiny shards of joy.
‘We need to stop going around in circles, you and I,’ said Cullen. ‘Let us get some pleasure out of this life. We can’t go on the way we have been, lass, tearing at each other like animals in the same trap. I think the best revenge on my father is for us to be happy, don’t you?’
He gave her that warm smile, and her heart broke a little. Lowri raised herself onto her elbow. ‘I agree. We cannot go on the way we have.’
They could not, because something inside Lowri had shifted. She had thought to control Cullen by making him want her.But now, he controlled her, for she yearned to feel that rush of desire, that animal hunger again. It was like a sickness had been planted in her soul, her heart, between her legs. She was wanton, lewd, a slave to her need. If she searched her soul, she had begun to want Cullen, to anticipate his taking her in darkness with a degree of pleasure. But now, it was much worse. She had started to need him.
‘No more shameful couplings in the dark, Lowri,’ he said. ‘I am in earnest. I will not have you if you do not want me.’
‘Alright.’
‘If we are to get a bairn between us, best it is conceived in love.’
‘Love?’ she said, looking down at him.
‘I meant affection, respect, or just desire, if there is nothing else between us.’ He leapt out of bed like a scalded cat. ‘I almost forgot. I have something for you.’
Lowri was not fooled. He was covering his embarrassment at saying the word ‘love’ when he did not mean it.
