“I’m not asking for promises,” she said quietly. “All I want is you.”
Heart pounding, he unlaced her arms from around his neck, took her by her shoulders, and set her away from him. He tried to steady his voice as he said, “No. I don’t want to do this.”
She looked as though he’d struck her. Her eyes scanned his face, searching for any weakness. He forced his expression to stay hard, unyielding. He could almost see her mind filter through his words, analyzing what he’d said.
His heart wrenched as her face flooded with shame and humiliation.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice trembling. “I thought you wanted…,” The words drifted away. Her cheeks burned scarlet, like two vivid handprints against a pale canvas. She could barely speak through the emotion strangling her voice. “No, it doesn’t matter what I thought.”
She flew to the door, gathering her cloak in one swift motion.
Hell, he’d made a mess of this. Alex grabbed her arm to stop her. “Meg, you misunderstand. It’s not that I don’t want you—”
“Please,” she stopped him, precariously close to tears. “You don’t have to say anything else.” She tried to smile, but her lips trembled. “It’s obvious that I jumped to the wrong conclusion.” Her cheeks burned with humiliation. “Look at you. Look at me. I’m sure things like this happen to you all the time, women throwing themselves at you,” she said with forced brightness.
Her wobbly composure broke him.
He swore, pulling her against him. He wanted to shake her for pushing him. Curse her for forcing this between them. Damn it, how could she doubt his desire? He took her hand and brought it between them, showing her how much he wanted her. “God, don’t you feel what you do to me?”
Eyes startled, she nodded.
“You don’t know what you are asking for, Meg. Go back to your room.”
She shook her head and tentatively molded her fingers around him. Almost stroking him. He groaned as the dark sensations rushed through him. His stomach muscles clenched, and his cock pulsed with need.
“No,” she said, refusing for the final time.
His control snapped. To hell with it. He’d tried to warn her. He was done denying what had been building between them from the first moment he’d seen her across the battlefield. The time for reckoning had come. She was going to learn just how much he wanted her.
He kissed her savagely, wildly. Finally unharnessing the violent passion that she aroused in him. He kissed her harder, punishing her with his mouth for what she was doing to him. For how she made him feel. For being the right woman at the wrong time. But if he’d hoped to scare her, he was wrong. Meg welcomed his fervor, returning it with her own.
There were no secrets left between them—or their bodies, at least.
She’d pushed him too hard. There was only so much torture a man could take. The warmth of her hand around him was it. Alex would not let himself think, even though a part of him knewexactlywhat this meant. Right now he was beyond thinking. His body craved hers, in a way that he had never before experienced. This was about possession. He moved with one purpose, to make her his.
She belonged to him. Forever. And somehow, nothing had ever seemed more right.
He wanted her.
Meg should be shocked by the intimate placement of her hand, but instead the proof of his desire seemed to shatter the final barrier between them. She wanted to feel him, she wanted to touch his body. To sever all secrets between them.
So she gave herself over to him, holding nothing back. She believed in him, trusted him. If he would not listen to her words, she would show him with her body.
The power, the vehemence of his kiss, told her what he could not. Her heart burst with pleasure. Passion that she did not know she possessed broke free.
The stubble of his beard burned her cheeks as his mouth slanted over hers. His hands pushed through her hair, forcing her head back to deepen the kiss. There was nothing gentle about his movements. But despite the raw energy of his passion, there was still something deeply tender in the primitive nature of his need. She, Meg Mackinnon, had shattered the mask of indifference. Her heart swelled with love for this amazing man.
She lifted her hand to rest on his sprawling chest, savoring the excited pounding of his heart under his thin shirt.Shewas driving him crazy, and it emboldened her like nothing else. Her hands roamed brazenly across his chest and back, tracing the hard edges of his body, pressing him closer, molding their bodies together as one.
His mouth moved across her jaw and down the curve of her neck as his fingers quickly worked the laces of her gown and stays. The beautiful emerald brocade gown that she’d chosen with such care to entice was soon lying in a puddle around her feet, until all that remained covering her nakedness was a thin sark.
His mouth lowered, moving down to the sensitive skin above her bodice. Deftly, he loosened the tie to bare her breasts.
“God, you are beautiful.” He admired her with his hands, cupping her and then skimming down the curve of her stomach and hips like a sculptor. His mouth was achingly warm as he found her nipple. He sucked, and a needle of sensation shot through her body. She loved the brush of his rough chin against her skin as his tongue swirled and nipped, until each tip hardened into a tight bud. Molten heat flooded her body; her senses were drowning in desire. The area between her legs shivered and hungered, craving—no, demanding—fulfillment.
In her eagerness, her hand unknowingly grazed his waist, over the swollen round tip of his erection.
Alex flinched, sucking in his breath. Beneath his shirt, the muscles of his stomach rippled into taut parallel bands.
