by Eliza Knight
“I am not normally a patient man, but I’m willing to make an exception for ye.” Where the hell had that come from? Bloody fool he was. He might as well hand her a sword and present his neck.
“I wish ye’d stop being so nice to me.” She blew out a puff of breath in an attempt to clear her unruly hair from her face. It didn’t work.
“I am not being nice. I am being…” What was he being? For nice was a probably a damned good description of it. “Diplomatic,” he decided to go with. “Ye’re the daughter of Santiago. I am conveying ye to him, and so I must make certain ye arrive in one piece.”
She snorted. “That’s where ye’re wrong, Thor.”
“Oh? Ye’d prefer to be delivered in pieces?”
“Might as well.” She tossed her arms up, exasperation in her tone and creases in her brow.
To say he was confused would be an understatement. “Explain.”
“Neither of us have proof that I am who I say I am.”
Thor narrowed his eyes, stood from the chair but did not approach her. “What is your meaning?”
“I could be lying.” She started to pace, a telltale sign that she probably was in fact lying.
“Ye could.”
“And ye”—she jabbed her finger at him—“would risk both our lives?”
“Where is this coming from?” Thor crossed his arms over his chest, trying to sort through her words and expressions to figure out what the bloody hell she was talking about.
Her pacing increased, and he feared she may get a splinter in one of her tiny pink toes at the speed she was going. “Santiago, if he’s as ruthless as ye say he is, he could believe I’m not his child, that this whole thing is a ruse and ye, and your men could be killed.”
The very idea that she didn’t trust him to keep her and his men safe was a worse punch to the ballocks than the one she’d given him upon boarding his ship. “Ye dinna have faith in my ability protect me and my men? To protect ye?”
“I dinna know ye.” Suddenly, her pacing ceased, and she pursed her lips.
This time, Thor did move. He crossed the cabin in a few strides and caged her against the wall with his arms. “Ye know me, lass.”
Their eyes locked, breaths heaving, mingled. Her chest rose and fell with speed against his own. God, he wanted to kiss her, to remind her that he knew her. That he knew her better than anyone else.
“Ye dinna know—”
He cut her off. “Aye, I do know ye. I know ye’re stubborn and full of fire. I know ye’ve a mean right punch, and when backed into a corner ye’ll resort to nasty tactics.” He crossed his knee up over the other, blocking the blow she meant to his manhood. “Just like that. I know there’s passion in ye. Loneliness, too. Dinna say I dinna know ye, for I know ye better than anyone else.”
“Am I so obvious? So plain? So thin that my insides seep like sieve?”
“Nay.”
“Dinna lie.”
“I’m not. I know ye, because I am like ye. Because in ye, I see a part of myself.”
She snorted. “Ye see a means to exact your revenge. Dinna think for a minute I dinna I know exactly what ye mean by giving me away.”
“I’m not giving ye away.”
Beautiful green eyes squinted in question at him. “I implore ye, Thor,” she said, her voice hoarse, “if ye know me so well, dinna trifle with me. I am more fragile than I look.”
“I know.” He pressed his body against her, unable to help himself from getting closer. Blood pooled in his groin, and he longed to make her his.
She was more potent than the finest spirits, more addictive than seeking treasure.
A tear rolled from the corner of her eye, and he brushed it away with his thumb. Ballocks, but he wanted to kiss her. To show her with his body just how much she meant to him. What was this feeling coiling hot in his chest? This need to absorb her?
“Tell me your true name,” she whispered. “If ye really mean all the things ye say, tell me what ye’ve never told anyone else.”
Without hesitation, he spoke, “Thornley MacLeod.”
“Thornley.” The way she said it, so smoothly on her velvet tongue, had him melting inside.
How many years had it been since he’d heard someone speak his name? Not since he was a lad. When he’d been found by the king of the Devils of the Deep, he’d only given the man his nickname. “Thornley is dead, love. I am only Thor now.”
A tiny warm hand pressed to his heart. “He is there. Right here, hiding. He shapes ye. Just like everything I wish I could forget shapes me.”
Why did what she say have to make so much sense?
“I have to confess. Before ’tis too late.” She glanced down at where her hand pressed to his heart. “I am not Santiago’s daughter.”
“Ye are.”
“Nay.” She shook her head, sadness turning her lips downward. “I’m not.”
“Ye’re only saying that to get me to turn the ship around. Ye’re afraid to face your past.”
She shook her head. “Nay, ye’re not listening to me, Thornley. I lied.”
There she went distracting him by saying his name. “What do ye mean?”
“I wanted the coin to start a new life. They were going to hang me in Edinburgh. I needed to escape.” She shrugged. “Boarding your ship and pretending to be someone I was not was the simplest way to get out of the port and gain some coin in the process.”
“Do ye know the identity of your father?”
“Nay.” Her fingers played with the ties of his shirt.
“Then how can ye say for certain it is not he?”
“Because I dinna believe in coincidences.”
“Lass, did ye ever wonder why I believed ye? Why the men of the brethren believed ye?”
She looked up at him startled. “Aye.”
“Because ye look like Santiago. Ye have his hair, his eyes. Ye have his mean streak.” Thor couldn’t help but add this last part with a chuckle. “I believe ye’re his. And so does everyone else.”
“I canna risk your lives.”
“By doing what? This is who we are, lass. Even if I knew for certain ye were not his daughter, I’d still be sailing to the meeting point. A chance to gut Santiago has always been my mission.”
“And what if I am his daughter, and I dinna want ye to kill him?”
“Is that what ye want?” He stared intently into her eyes, realizing that if she asked him not to, he wouldn’t go through with it. “I could just take a limb, or an eye, if that is what ye wish.”
“Why do ye hate him so much?”
Thor told her about how he’d been taken prisoner by Santiago some years back. Tortured and tossed into the sea to be eaten by sharks. He didn’t share with her about his childhood. “I escaped.”
“On the backs of dolphins?” she asked skeptically.
“Aye.”
“Impossible.” She rolled her eyes.
He grinned. “Living proof.”
“I’d have liked to see that.” She was pinching her lips, trying not to smile.
“Maybe ye will. Maybe I’ll do the same to him.”
“So ye’re saying this is simply an eye for an eye.” Her pert nose wrinkled. Something must have flickered in his gaze, because she narrowed in on him, intelligence sparking in her eyes. “’Tis more than that.”
“Would ye have me bare my entire soul to ye, lass? I’ve already told ye my name.”
“I’d never ask anything ye werena willing to give.”
“And what about ye? I’ve told ye something no one else knows. Tell me something. What is your deepest, darkest fear?”
She chewed her bottom lip, looking over his shoulder as she searched her mind for something to share. “I fear I will die without knowing love. And I dinna just mean the love of a man.” A sad smile crossed her lips. “I never knew the love of a mother or a friend, either.”
Thor’s heart might have broken at that moment. Aye, his family, his entire world, had been ripped from h
im, but in its place, he’d been given a new one, his brothers. Without the brethren, where would he be?
Leaning close, he pressed his lips to her forehead, breathing in her light floral scent. “Santiago… He ruined my life.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck, and pressed her lithe body tighter to his. “He took life from ye and at the same time he gave it to me,” Alesia whispered, her lips pressed to his chin. “Maybe there is such a thing as coincidence.”
Thor pressed his lips to hers, kissing her softly. “Whether there is or isna, I’m glad ye snuck aboard my ship.” He traced the line of her jaw with his fingers.
“Me, too. But where do we go from here?”
“Do ye still want to escape me?” There was a hitch to his tone that he knew was a telling sign he hoped she’d say nay.
There was a long pause as she struggled. He started to back away from her, allowing her any space she might desire, but she held on to him tighter. “I dinna. That is why I boarded this time, too. I had plenty of opportunities to run at Cruden Bay, but…something held me back.”
“My life is dangerous. Ye were trying to leave that behind.”
“I feel safer with ye than I’ve ever felt in my entire life.”
He gathered her back in his arms, vowing to never let go. “Saints, lass, but I feel the same.”
She laughed. “Was it my right hook?”
“Something like that.”
Alesia laughed harder, her head falling back, tendrils of her unruly hair coming loose from her braid and tickling his arms. Thor was pretty certain he’d never seen a woman so beautiful in all his life.
Without thinking, he pressed his lips to her exposed throat, drinking in the soft gasp of pleasure she emitted.
“I’m sorry, lass, I couldna help it.”
“Dinna apologize. I want ye to kiss me. To show me…pleasure.”
At last. How long had he waited for this moment? “Och, but I’m certain I’ve never heard a more enticing request.” He kissed her neck again, tracing a line with his tongue up the column to her jaw, where he nipped gently.
“How do ye make simple things so amazing?” she whispered.
“I dinna, sweet lass. But together, we do. Together we are fire.” His mouth sought out hers, and he could have sworn a spark lit between them.
Alesia tangled her tongue with his as they wrapped their arms around each other. Their kiss had begun soft, languorous, but just as quickly as a fire could leap into a mighty inferno, so did their fervor. As their mouths dueled and pleasure ignited, they tore at each other’s clothes. Thor walked them backward, dropping garments until they were falling onto the mattress naked.
She straddled his hips, her beautiful creamy skin exposed to him, tight, perky breasts tipped with twin cherry nipples. Thor was certain he’d never been more full of desire. It seemed right for her to be leaning over him. To give her the power over whatever went on between them.
He ran his finger from the dip at the base of her neck down between her breasts, watching her suck in a breath, the muscles of her belly tightening. Subtle bruises marred her flesh. Some fresh purple, some yellowed with age, a testament to the rough life she’d led.
Leaning up on elbow, he kissed each one and told her he would kill every last person that left a mark on her. She sighed, her fingers running through his hair.
“My beautiful, Alesia,” he murmured against her skin. “I want ye. Will ye let me have ye?” He gazed up at her, eyes locking.
Alesia leaned down low, pressed her lips to his and whispered, “Ye had me from the very beginning.”
Och, holy hell, he was going to make love to her, and he was pretty certain it would be the end of life as he knew it.
Chapter Thirteen
In all her life, Alesia had never felt any semblance of power. But with her body suspended over the muscular giant who stared up at her with such potent hunger, she felt like she was the most powerful woman in all the world.
She’d not been lying when she said he’d had her from the very beginning. The moment he’d ducked beneath the cabin door, and she’d stood there with seawater pooling at her feet and caught sight of his glittering blue eyes, the mischievous smile, he’d struck a nerve inside her.
She ran her finger down the wicked scar along the side of his face and tugged on the hair covering his chin.
“Does it bother ye?” he asked.
“All of ye bothers me,” she said with a teasing smile. “My body tingles whenever ye look at me, and when ye touch me.” She pulled his hand to her breast, her head falling back on a sigh as he stroked the pad of his thumb over her nipple. “I feel like I could fly.”
Thor leaned up on his elbow, his hot breath on her breast drawing Alesia to look down. She watched with fascination as his tongue darted in and out from between his lips to flick over her skin. Her nipple tightened at the touch, reaching for him. With every lick, a spark shot from her breast and arrowed down between her legs.
Men had used their mouths on her breasts before, but never had it felt like this. Her breath hitched as his tongue darted but then paused, hovering just a hair’s width from her straining flesh. Oh God, why did he tease her so? She waited, breath held until he finally swirled the velvet tip around and around and drew her nipple into his mouth.
How was she going to be able to hold herself upright when all she wanted to do was fall? Alesia threaded her fingers into his hair, widening her thighs over his hips, trying desperately to anchor herself somehow, when in her veins flowed liquid gold.
“Ye like this.” It wasn’t a question he asked, but a statement as he slid his mouth to her other breast to pay it equal homage.
“Aye,” she moaned with wonder.
“Ye sound surprised.” Flick. Swirl. Suck.
Alesia could barely form words around her hiss of breath. “Everything about ye surprises me.”
“Oh?”
“Aye.” She tugged at his hair and instinctively rolled her hips, pressing the heat between her thighs down onto him, searching for… Ah, aye, there it was.
Thor’s firm, swollen length answered her searching touch and pressed unyielding to the softness between her legs. Alesia couldn’t help but moan and grind against his thick arousal again. And again, it felt so good. What was this sparking pleasure, this delicious heat that spread through her?
Large fingers gripped her hip, his thumb pressing to the bone and the rest of his fingers spreading over her flesh, searing her, branding her. “Gentle, lass, else it is all over before we’ve really begun.”
“How do we make it last?” she asked, not wanting it to stop, but knowing from past experience if a man was as hot and bothered as Thor was, he would soon be pushing inside her, and then she’d be cleaning herself up.
He flashed her a wicked grin that was full of sensual promise, and she nearly fell off him from shock.
“I’ll show ye.” In one swift move, he had her on her back and was looming over her, his hair framing his face, and that wicked grin—the one she could kiss all day—returned to lips.
“Nay, not so quick,” she whined, feeling completely comfortable in telling him that.
“Oh, it willna be quick, my leannan troda. Not quick at all.”
Had he just called her his beloved fighter? Before she could wrap her head around the endearment, he pressed his lips to hers, that steely part of him rubbing tantalizingly against her slick sex, but rather than worry, she trusted.
Actually trusted.
The notion was completely foreign to her, and freeing at the same time. When he gripped her hands and put them over her head, deepening their kiss, she allowed it. She let herself fall into the kiss, not away from it. Unlike her other bed partners, when she tried to forget where she was and who she was with, Alesia was completely absorbed by Thor. Her Thornley.
She didn’t want this moment to end. Ever.
Thor kissed his way along her jaw, enveloping her in pleasure and the masculine scent of him. She watch
ed the way he moved over her. The way the muscles rippled from him holding up his weight on either side of her. When he whispered in her ear how beautiful she was, how he didn’t think he could even be as happy as he was at that moment, she felt like she was soaring through the clouds, well above the sea.
All the worries of the past twenty years, her fears over the meeting with Santiago, melted away.
This was his doing. Their doing.
As much as she’d teased about coincidences, maybe there really was more to it than that. How was it possible that she could have met the one man who had the power to make her see life in a different way?
Her thoughts fell away as he kissed lower, laving at her breasts before trailing hot kisses over her belly. She sucked in her breath, falling deeper under the spell of pleasure. Thick hands spread over her thighs, urging her to let them fall open, and she complied, peeking through eyes she’d not known were closed to watch as he settled himself between her legs, his mouth inches from the dark curls that covered her sex. He winked at her and licked his lips like he was about to dine at the most exquisite of feasts.
Alesia knew what he was going to do. No man had ever done such to her, but she’d been around the wharf and brothels enough to know exactly what was about to happen. The women spoke of pleasure to die for.
And she wanted to die from it. Wanted to feel the smooth heat of his—
She didn’t have to wait. Thor spread her folds with his fingers and flicked his tongue out over the tiny pink pearl that sent a shot of white-hot pleasure thundering through her.
“Oh my,” she moaned, gripping the sheet on the mattress, and staring down at him.
His eyes locked on hers as he did it again, and she jolted. This was magic. Utter magic. Alesia watched him thrill her with his mouth until she could barely breathe, then she fell back on the bed, her back arched, eyes squeezing shut before popping them back open to watch. She didn’t want to miss a single moment of this. She wanted to remember what he did, but the pleasure of it was so intense, it was difficult to comply with her own desire.
Pleasure won out. She writhed with his ministrations, shifting between clutching the mattress and his hair. He growled against her throbbing flesh as he quickened his pace. And she thought she must have died, sunk to the bottom of the sea and been captured by a god.