“What are you doing, Rose?”
“Do . . .notstop.”
Their breaths mingling in the darkness, she tasted blood on her lip where she had bitten down. Not to displace the pain but to welcome it. She set her heels into the soft ground and lifted her hips to push against him, forcing him deeper. Pain anchored her. Reminded her who she was.
His breathing had slowed. He raised his head slowly.
His features were lost in the darkness.
Perhaps for just a moment he had forgotten she was Lord Hereford’s daughter. But she had forgotten nothing.
That it should hurt. That it should be Roxburghe who hurt her was just in her mind.
She would not make herself vulnerable.
But she was.
He proved that much as his body began to move, filling her completely, and he took her, lifting and stoking the fire. And then they were each taking from the other.
And the humming grew louder in her head. Did he not feel it, too?
Beneath her fingers, his shoulders bunched with his movements. Her nails dug into his back. There was no proof against the pleasure he gave her. She could not turn it away.
No words were spoken between them. There didn’t need to be.
Only the sound of their breathing answered their need. His possession burned unchecked through her body.
She did not want to be vulnerable. But in the end, it was her very vulnerability that made her shatter. But it was still dark.
And for her, darkness had always been safe.
By the time pale shafts of light penetrated Rose’s consciousness, she was already half awake. She awoke to a burning soreness between her thighs and the smell of him on her body. The place beside her was empty.
Only the sound of a rushing stream and birdsong intruded on her thoughts. That and the rough abrasion against her skin where Roxburghe had scraped her tender flesh with his kiss. A cloak lay over her. She still wore her shirt, and it covered her to mid-thigh. But she was still practically naked, and in daylight, she felt more vulnerable than ever before.
She pushed up on her elbow. A low-hanging mist hovered over the ground making the trees ghostly in the morning light. She looked for Roxburghe, half holding her breath.She could see neither him nor the horse he’d stolen from the dragoons. Her hand went to her thigh.
He had done a fine job stitching the ugly gash. The scar would be thin. Though why should she care? She expected no man would ever see her legs.
She crawled out of the shelter, dragging the cloak, and limped to some dense brush to relieve herself, watching the camp through wispy willow branches surrounding her for any sign of Roxburghe. She was tender in the most private of places where he had touched and done things ... impossible things that made her cry out with the pleasure of it. She closed her eyes.
Nothing had ever consumed her so utterly as last night. She should be more shocked at herself than she was, and wondered if something was wrong with her that even now her heart tripped. She wanted a cold bath, as if clean water could scrub away the passion as easily as it could the blood. There was a tremor in the cadence of her thoughts.
Blackbirds circled the treetops and she had the sudden unpleasant image of carrion-eating crows. She combed her fingers through her hair. She began to feel like the only surviving human in a world gone insane, completely alone in this foreign wilderness forest. She recognized nothing.
Then the faint wicker of a horse caught her ear and she limped down a path, stepping through the trees to see a stark blue pond as still as glass in the morning sunlight. The black gelding stood hobbled in a patch of grass. She drew a deep breath and started to make her way to the animal, with no thought of where she might go unclad and hunted ... and lost. Only that she would be free.
Roxburghe suddenly strode into the clearing. He saw her by the rocks and stopped, then wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, looked from her to the horse.She sensed more than saw the amusement in his eyes as he approached. She had been melded with him all night, perhaps more than his body had imprinted itself upon her senses. She could feel him inside her head.
He held a self-made spear crowned by her dirk tied to the stick with a band of cloth. Three nicely sized trout were impaled on its tip. He wore no shirt, as if he had just come from the water. His wet hair carelessly brushed the tops of his bronze shoulders. The sight of him caused a deep intake of breath.
Fully clothed, Ruark Kerr was impressive. Unclothed, he could stir a rock to life. He was large and strong, wrought from muscle and flesh and a smattering of hair that narrowed like an arrow from his abdomen to disappear into the waistband of his breeches. Hair the shade of the stubble that darkened his jaw.
Last night he had been clothed when he had lain next to her. Then she had awakened in the throes of a dream, and Roxburghe had been there in the darkness. She had found more than succor in his arms.
Now his silence played at the hunger he had awoken in her.
A wolf howled just then. Hugging the cloak to her torso, she diverted her attention to the trees. This place, her feelings, everything was unfamiliar to her.
