His need.
Kress began to take the aggressor role. He was more forceful in his kisses. Perhaps it was the wine or perhaps it was simply because he was having his first taste of her, sweeter than anything he’d ever known. He didn’t even realize when he rose to his feet, picking her up against him and carrying her over to the bed.
Cadelyn ended up on her back and Kress ended up on top of her, and the loose garments Jude had loaned her were coming off under his expert hands. There was never any question that they would. But his lips never left hers and before Cadelyn realized it, Kress had stripped her nude. Hot, desperate kisses rained down on her lips and face and neck as his smelly, damp clothing began to come off, too.
In little time, they were both naked.
Kress’ big body came down on her soft, slender form, enveloping her in his strength and heat. His mouth left her lips, devouring her flesh as he moved down her body. He tasted every inch of skin on her shoulders and arms, moving to her chest and depositing hungry kisses on her swell of her bosom. A big hand kneaded her right breast as his lips finally found a nipple, moving from one breast to the other. Any restraint he’d ever forced himself to have with her was gone.
He was no longer in control.
He shifted his body, now completely on top of her, and Cadelyn instinctively parted her thighs so he wasn’t crushing her. His lower body slipped between her legs as his upperbody covered her torso. He was such a big man that he nearly smothered her, though his kisses were tender and passionate. She was as delicious as he had imagined she would be, and as one hand slipped beneath her to grasp her buttocks, the other moved down her flat belly as his mouth began to move along her abdomen.
Cadelyn was in a haze of shock as well as passion. All of it was clouding her head. This was her first experience with a man and she was only thinking of her immediate needs and wants rather than of the consequences of their actions. She knew, through her haze of desire, how horrifically dangerous this was for him, but she was selfish. She didn’t care. All she cared about was that need for love and acceptance from him, the only man she’d ever felt anything for.
Felt love for.
Aye, she knew she loved him. She couldn’t remember when she hadn’t. She wanted to tell him, but the words died in her throat as he brought her private core to his mouth. After that, the haze she was in became something surreal as bolts of pleasure began to overtake her body. She didn’t recognize herself any longer.
She wanted more.
Kress did, indeed, give her more. He turned into an animal as her musk filled his nostrils, sweetly assaulting his senses. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that he could not take her in the literal sense and he was hoping that this would satisfy the powerful attraction between them. He hoped it would ease his hunger for the woman enough to allow him to gain some semblance of control.
As his tongue licked her into madness, his hope that this tender assault would satisfy his needs began to fade. He could feel his desire building. Even when he manipulated her little bud of pleasure and felt her body convulse with her first release, itdid nothing to ease him. His lust was only growing worse. But he still knew, through the most powerful desire he had ever experienced, that he could not bed her in the literal sense.
I cannot bed her!
As Cadelyn lay gasping beneath him, he lifted himself up and straddled her torso. One muscular leg was on either side of her body and he placed his rock-hard manhood in the valley between her breasts. Round, smooth, and silky, they were magnificent. He collected her hands and together, they forced her breasts together to create a soft, warm passage for his great manroot.
Feeling her flesh close in around him, he thrust powerfully between her breasts. There was such tender heat surrounding him that it almost didn’t matter that he wasn’t buried in her Venus mound, that mystery of all womanhood that could make a man or break him. Gazing down into her beautiful face, he could see that Cadelyn was watching what he was doing, her curious fingers touching the ruby-red tip of his phallus. When she stuck a tongue out to taste him, as he had tasted her, it was enough to throw him right over the edge. With a grunt, he released himself onto the perfect flesh of her breasts.
It was over, but it wasn’t ended. Not in the least. Kress remained where he was for quite some time, feeling his wits return and feeling more contentment, and more trepidation, than he ever imagined possible. He’d just crossed the line into oblivion and there was no turning back.
He wasn’t even going to try.
Moving so his legs were between hers again, he lay on her but braced his weight on his arms as he tenderly kissed her. He knew he should say something to her but, in truth, he wasn’t sure what to say. All he knew was that he wasn’t sorry for something that was going to change the course of his life. He knew that without a doubt. This woman he’d tried so hard to ignore, to rebuff, todismiss, had managed to mark him as no one else ever had. The great Welsh princess with bloodlines more pure than perhaps any royal in England or Scotland or Wales had bewitched him completely.
He was hers.
Silently, Kress climbed off of her and went to the table where a napkin lay bunched up on the food tray. Picking it up, he went back over and leaned over Cadelyn, gently wiping his seed off her chest. He never said a word and he never looked her in the eye, yet he wiped her gently and tenderly. When he was finished, he tossed the rag into the fire and lay back down beside her.
Without uttering a sound, Kress collected her warm, nude body up against him and held her tightly. The storm still raged outside, but it was nothing compared to the storm in his heart. There was a tempest raging there, a tempest that was about to change everything he’d ever believed to be his life and his destiny. It was a tempest that told him what he held in his arms was more valuable than everything he’d ever worked for.
A storm was coming, indeed.
And it was coming for him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
She was snifflingand coughing.
He could hear her.
Achilles was in the common room of the inn they’d more or less confiscated, the one with the innkeeper’s daughter who looked like a street brawler. She was big and muscular and commanding, but she’d been humorous and helpful as the wounded from the skirmish were tended over near the enormous hearth.
But the coughing wasn’t coming from them.
It was coming from Susanna.
