“Roses,” he said with hard authority. His voice was darker when he continued. “You didn’t heed my command. I said, come to me.” He might have been teasing me, but he was also testing me. He touched his finger to my lips.
I bit at his finger, just missing it as he jerked it away,and his eyes turned stormy. He grabbed me with his hard-muscled arms and pulled me to him.
“I give myself to you, warrior,” I said.
“You’ll not—”
“Whether you marry me or not,” I said, interrupting him. I didn’t want to hear about my purity, not in the heat of this moment. I had a confounding and whole-souled desire for him to dirty my purity with his blood, his sweat and more.
He frowned. “What’s your meaning, Roses? You’ve already said aye to me. I’ll not take nay for an answer now.”
“I said I’d marry you,” I said, and my voice sounded out of sorts. “I’m yours already. But why must you wed me before you’ll—” I faltered, too innocent and ashamed and desperate to explain what I wanted from him. I wanted all of him. I wanted him inside me, to take me and make me his, fully. To burn together, with him, now. A wedding seemed a far-off dream, months of planning, hours of separation to make acquaintances and carry out arrangements. And here I was letting my hopes and dreams get the better of me, even considering details like planning and arrangements. A wedding, if it was even a remote possibility, felt a million miles away from this moment.
And the question lurked loudly in my mind: Why would he bed other women and give them his loving when he refused me?
I felt the sting of tears moisten my eyes.
Wilkie saw my tears, and his expression was pained, stricken. “Roses?” He looked into my eyes with total concentration, as if he might see the reason for myanguish written in their depths. “What’s the matter? Why do you weep?”
I could barely speak. My words came out muffled and sodden. “You don’t want me like you wanted them.”
He held my shoulders, and the look on his face was one of disbelief, then slow understanding.
“You want to give yourself to me... You think I don’twantyou? Isthatwhy you weep?”
I was still frowning at him, but I nodded just a little.
Wilkie exhaled a small, incredulous laugh. He kissed my face, little tickling kisses at the corner of my mouth, my cheek. He kissed my eyelids softly, once, and again, so my tears wet his lips. My tears seemed to have struck something in him, some animal desire or protective allowance. There was a new edge to his kisses that thrilled me and scared me, as well. Something in him had turned, and there was a new desperation and a heightened ferocity in his manner that made my heart beat faster.
His hand brushed across my breasts, easing the soft fabric down to frame them from below and plump them slightly upward, exposing them to him. He swirled each nipple between his fingers and thumbs, gently tugging and kneading. His touches grew in their strength until they were very nearly painful, scalding me with prickling, deepening heat. “I can’t have my Roses weeping like this, when I can soothe away her tears so very easily, if this is what she wants me to do.” He sucked my nipples carelessly, one, then the other, only briefly tasting, almost manic in his lightness.
“I want you,” I whispered. I had never uttered a truer statement.
He kissed my cheeks and then my lips, and I couldtaste the salt of my own tears. He rid himself of his unbound clothing. His hands fumbled roughly with the ties of my dress, which he loosened. Then he bunched the folds of material up to my waist and attempted to remove my dress. “Take this off or I’ll rip it off.”
Not wanting him to ruin Ailie’s carefully made creation, I peeled the dress over my head. Seeing that I wore nothing underneath, Wilkie fairly purred with the discovery. I was naked with only my hair covering me. But I was facing him, and I no longer cared if Wilkie discovered my tattoo. I wanted him to. I would make a point of showing him. I began to turn my body, but he held me and laid me back onto the bed, insistently, kissing my breasts but not lingering, kissing a line down my stomach and lower. “You want me toproveto you that I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life, Roses. Is that true, aye? Because I just can’t take this anymore.”
I gasped as he licked into my sensitive flesh, wetting me with his soft strokes, speaking soft words against my skin. “If you insist on doubting me, Roses, if you absolutely insist on breaking down every defense that I have with your tears and your plush, wet, ripe beauty, then that’s what I’ll have to do, lass. Isthatwhat you want from me? Proof?”
I could only sigh a soft response, already falling, burning, wanting too much.
“And you’re ready for me to prove my love for you as I take you fully, completely, entirely as my own?” As though to emphasize his question, he licked deeper into me, using his fingers to gently open me to his insistent, exploring tongue until I cried out his name in a whispered moan.
He climbed up my body, rubbing himself against me, supporting his weight above me, positioning himself.
“You want me to take you likethis,Roses?” I could feel his immense shaft pushing gently against my entrance. His size and his strength gave him total control, and my body, too willing, throbbed with desire as he held himself just touching me. I was afraid and drowning in desire for him, and the combined effect brought a fresh wave of tears, which still spilled to wet my hair. He reached with his hands to roughly spread my legs wider.
“I’ve waited with you, sweet lass, because once I’m inside you, you must understand, I’ll have no choice but to spill my seed. We’ll be forever joined.”
I tipped my hips up to him ever so slightly, easing him closer, until he was pressed strongly against me.
He began to rub the head of his shaft along my intimate folds, then deeper, only barely inside me, finding a subtle rhythm in the controlled movement. My inner muscles clenched on the emptiness. I thought I might die from raw need.
“I’ve never once spilled my seed inside a woman,” he said, and his voice was low, almost crooning, as he continued to rub me with his body. “I didn’t want to be bound to them in that way and beyond that moment.” My body was responding to him, and his caresses became silky and honeyed from the wetness he inspired. “With you, Roses, I won’t want to separate myself from you. I’ll want to possess you completely, and you to possess me. I want to burn with you, to feel you pulse around me as I fill you with everything I have to give. Is that what you want from me?”
I ran my fingers over the coiled muscles of his back,clinging to him, scratching into his skin to pull him closer.
“You’re too sacred,” he continued, and his voice was husked with emotion. “You’re the one. My sunlit angel. My Roses. Mine.”
