His body pressed forward, urging her back, as the desire became too much to bear. It felt like a weight pressing him down.Touch her. Take her. Make her yours. It hummed through his blood, zipped along every one of his nerve endings, and seemed to have taken command of every bone in his body.
He was breathing hard now, his heart hammering in his chest and ears, his skin hot and too damned tight as need pounded through every muscle and vein in his body. She was practically under him, her body stretched out beneath his. He wanted her so intensely, his body was shaking with it.
Everything about it felt so right. But somewhere in the depths of his lust-crowded brain, he knew it wasn’t.
He’d taken precisely one woman’s maidenhead in his life and had regretted it ever since. Then, he’d been a seventeen-year-old lust-starved lad whose weak attempt at honor had been rather handily disposed of by a few soft pleas and tender words of love. He was an experienced man now who knew better—and the right order of things. Cate deserved a wedding, a husband, and a marriage bed. Not a frantic, lust-hazed coupling at a vulnerable moment. He was supposed to be comforting her, not seducing her.
With a mumbled oath, he pulled away. “We have to stop.”
She blinked up at him, looking half-ravished and eager for the other half—not a good combination for a man fighting for control. “Why?”
“It isn’t right. Your maidenhead belongs to your husband.”
Christ, he sounded like an old man, or a stern guardian—neither of which sounded right at the moment. And if the crushed look in Cate’s eyes was any indication, she’d taken his attempt to do the right thing wrong.
Still, he might have been able to hold to his honorable intentions if she hadn’t reached out and pushed him right over the edge.
Fourteen
“Your maidenhead belongs to your husband.”
Gregor was the best archer in Scotland; it was no surprise that his arrow struck with cruel precision.
Cate had thought he’d put the ridiculous idea of her betrothal behind him. How could he kiss her like that and still mean to marry her to another man?
He must be the most stubborn, thickheaded man in Christendom! And perhaps blind as well, not to see what was right in front of him. He cared about her—loved her even, though she knew he would run to the nearest battlefield if she told him as much. He showed his feelings in the way he looked at her, in the way he held her, and yes, in the way he kissed her. A man could not kiss a woman with that kind of tenderness and passion and not be at least a little in love with her. She didn’t care how good he was at lovemaking, or how many women he’d had in his bed.
Admittedly, she wasn’t exactly an expert on the subject, but she’d be willing to stake her life on it—and her virtue as well.
Cate wasn’t going to let him pull away. Not this time. She was out of patience. She wouldn’t let him marry her off to another man.
Sitting up a little, she reached out and put her palm flat on his chest. Emboldened by the hard slam of his heartbeat that seemed to jump up and meet it, she looked him squarely in the eye. “No.”
He appeared too momentarily stunned to reply. Knowing it wouldn’t last, she took a deep breath and did the one thing she instinctively knew would put a decisive end to further argument. She let her hand slide down over the warm, hard ridges of stomach muscle to the tie at the waist of his braies.
He sucked in his breath, his eyes dark and predatory, watching her every movement like a hawk daring a mouse to come into his range.
She dared. With a deep breath for courage, she lowered her hand, curving it around the thick column of his manhood.
Oh…my. She might have gulped, but the swallow stuck in her throat.
Every muscle in his body seemed to tense—an impressive feat for a man who seemed to be built of little else. The low hissing sound that came from between his clenched teeth nearly made her pull away, but she didn’t. Instead, she felt a strange flush of what could only be called power—femininepower. The feel of him in her hand, so strong and thick, and surprisingly hard, knowing she’d made him that way, gave her courage.
“No,” she repeated. “I want you, and I know you want me, too. I don’t want you to stop—I want you to finish what you started on the practice yard. I want you to be the one to show me passion. I want you to make love to me.” She looked into his eyes, which seemed to be glowing brighter than the fire. “Make love to me, Gregor…please.”
If someone had asked her for the perfect response to her plea, she would never have thought the sharp curse that came from his mouth would have been it. But somehow the word fit, and not just because it rather crudely summed up what she was asking him to do. Somehow it seemed to encompass the intensity of emotion that he was keeping bottled up and she was forcing free. Somehow it seemed to capture the harshness of his desire, and the base depth of his need for her. And somehow that one wicked word seemed to strip away the last vestiges of pretense and civility, revealing the raw, primitive hunger that he would no longer deny. With that one word, she heard his helplessness, his surrender, and knew that no matter how exceptional a warrior he might be, this was one fight she was going to win.
His mouth was pulled into almost a grimace, the arms holding her had turned as rigid as steel, and every muscle in his body seemed as tight as one of those bowstrings for which he’d become famous. Yet he was so impossibly gorgeous in the candlelight, it make her chest squeeze.
“You don’t fight fair, sweetheart. I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t know if I can give you what you want.” She held her breath when he paused. “But God knows I’m going to try.”
Cate sighed with relief. She didn’t know what promise he was making, except to know that he’d just made one. He didn’t give her time to ask, for no sooner had he finished than his mouth was covering hers in a kiss that left no doubt of his intentions.
He did not intend to woo or entice, he intended to have her, and the knowledge bloomed inside her until warmth and happiness filled every part of her body.
Drawing her hard against him, he claimed her mouth with bold, demanding strokes of his tongue that sent shudders of white-hot need rippling through her body, crashing over her in hard waves. She was drowning in sensation, being dragged under in a riptide of heat and desire. He was kissing her like he could never get enough of her. Kissing her like it meant something. Nay, like it meanteverything. She returned the kiss with increasing fervency, until it seemed they had dissolved into one another, their mouths, their tongues, their bodies becoming one.
Passion consumed them both—the same as before, yet different. It was just as incredible and just as powerful, but this time there was nothing holding back. It came on her hot and heavy, demanding and unyielding.
