“Bite me.” His feral command thudded through her head and she relinquished his nipple and looked up at him. He was staring at her, eyes glazed with lust, and he was no longer smiling. He looked in pain.
As she continued to gaze at him, mesmerized by the sight of her warrior lover poised on the edge of civility, he bared his teeth.
“Stop laughing and use your teeth on me, woman. Or I shall be forced to once again touch you.”
She realized she was smiling. She also realized she couldn’t stop. It might be an ephemeral illusion, but the feminine power that surged through her at both the look on his face and the agony in his words was exhilarating.
With slow deliberation, she returned her attention to his magnificent chest. She’d had no idea a man’s nipples could become aroused in such a way, or that they might be as sensitive to touch as a woman’s. Experimentally she lightly captured him between her teeth and his strangled groan thundered through her mind.
Encouraged, she sucked him between her lips and her nails dug into him as his heady essence of raw masculinity flooded her senses. His uneven breath dusted the top of her head and the erratic rise and fall of his chest enhanced the sensation of him inside her mouth.
She nibbled kisses across his chest, his light dusting of hair tickling her nose and lips and jaw. She flicked her tongue across his other nipple and then, daringly, sucked hard on his flesh.
Through the pounding of blood at her temples, she heard his seductive growl. The vibration sank into her veins and teased her pussy. Her hands gripped his hips as she slid sensuously down his body, no longer able to keep any distance between them, her sensitive nipples scoring a fiery trail along his rigid flesh.
Her nails scored across his taut buttocks—his arse—and with a breathless gasp she sank onto her knees. His mesmerizing erection filled her vision and her fingers tightened involuntarily as she gripped his behind.
“Antonia.” The word was tortured. She knew he wanted her attention but she couldn’t drag her fascinated gaze away.
“Yes?” It was a throaty whisper, and clinging onto his arse with one hand her other glided over his hip.
“You are an enchantress.” He made it sound like an accusation but still she couldn’t look up at him.
“Yes,” she breathed, because if he wanted her to be an enchantress, then she had no objection. Her finger trembled as she finally touched his rigid shaft, and the heat radiating from him scalded her enslaved senses.
“I’ve imagined you on your knees at my feet.” His words were ragged. She held her breath and trailed her finger to his root. Merciful Juno. She gazed at his testicles in mute, reverential awe. Gawain’s finger strayed across her face, as though he couldn’t help himself. “The reality surpasses any of my fantasies.”
She wanted to tell him that her fantasies also were surpassed, but it was impossible to speak. All she could do was admire the vision of masculine perfection displayed before her.
Her jagged breath sounded loud in her ears as she tentatively cradled his heavy balls. His fingers jerked against her face and then he twisted stray curls around his knuckles, sending darts of pleasure across her scalp.
“How long do you intend to torture me, enchantress?”
She licked her lips and breathed in his evocative, masculine essence. A heady, addictive scent of reined-in desire and impending sex. Ripples of need teased her damp cleft and without conscious thought her fingers tightened around his taut sac. If he expected a coherent answer, he was going to be disappointed.
Finally she released her death grip on his arse and dragged her fingernails across his hips, thrilled by the way her touch caused him to shudder with repressed desire. With infinite care, she curled her fingers around him, her breath hitching, heart hammering at her daring. He was so hard and hot and thick. She could feel his blood thundering beneath her palm, the sensation so arousing and astonishing she forgot how to breathe.
“Gods, Antonia.” His hoarse voice penetrated her swirling senses but not enough for her to respond. “Take me now.”
She dragged her gaze from his magnificent rod and looked up at him, her breath ragged. He gritted his teeth in a semblance of a smile and without warning plunged his hands through her hair, gripping her head in a merciless vise as he jerked her forward.
Her open mouth smashed against the length of his erection and she attempted to rear back but Gawain’s hold on her was absolute. Panic flared and she loosened her grip on him, flattening her palms against his thighs as he inexorably shifted their positions to his masculine advantage.
The familiar scream of denial lodge in her throat and a fetid wave of revulsion washed through her. Blindly she raked her nails along his thighs, her body rigid, her mind reeling.
No. No…
“No.” Her voice cracked and she sucked in a strangled gasp of air. She was no longer plastered against Gawain’s length, and although his hands held her head, he had forced her to look up at him.
She couldn’t look at him. She squeezed her eyes shut and wrapped her hands around his wrists in a vain attempt to loosen his grip.
“Antonia.” His harsh voice whipped across her mind. She redoubled her efforts to escape before he forced her to—before he tarnished every memory they had made together.
“Release me.” Her jagged command sounded pathetic to her ears and inwardly she shriveled. “I refuse to do it. You cannot make me.” Except she knew only too well that he could make her. He might not have the right to force her to his will by virtue of a marriage contract. But he had the strength and he could overpower her in the blink of an eye.
Her stomach churned. Merciful Juno, please do not let me disgrace myself in front of him.
“Look at me.” His demand was absolute and against her will her eyes opened. He was kneeling in front of her, a savage gleam in his eyes, and to her infinite shame, she began to shake uncontrollably. His mouth tightened in obvious distaste and his grip on her relaxed, but not enough for her to escape. “Fuck the gods, Antonia. What’s wrong?”
She tried to regulate her erratic gasps, but failed. Gawain wasn’t Scipio. Gawain had never raped her, and he wasn’t forcing his shaft down her throat. He was asking her why she was behaving like a—
A useless, frigid encumbrance.
No. Her former husband had called her that whenever she displeased him. But with Gawain, she wasn’t frigid. With Gawain sex was everything she had always dreamed it could—should—be, and with this Cambrian warrior she had nothing to prove by way of producing a live, healthy son.
Her galloping heart slowed, her breath became less torturous. And still Gawain held her head and looked at her with that wild, intense expression on his face.
He had no idea why she was so panicked. The last thing she wanted to talk about was why, but she owed him an explanation.
“I’m sorry.” Sorry for making a fool of herself. Sorry that Gawain had seen this side of her. When their affair ended, would this be all he recalled of their time together? “I cannot—I won’t take you into my mouth.”
* * *
Gawain stared into Antonia’s panic-glazed eyes and forcibly relaxed his fingers. Sick disgust pounded through his gut at the knowledge he’d frightened her with his demand. But gods, she’d been on her knees before him. Her uneven breath had caressed his cock and he’d been certain that, within moments, she’d intended to wrap her delectable mouth around him.
His fingers trailed along her face. She didn’t pull back with distaste, so he cradled her jaw.
“I’d never make you do something against your will.” His pride was injured that she had even imagined such a thing and yet it dug deeper than mere pride. It speared to the elemental essence of who he was, and what Antonia thought he was. She had said he was no barbarian. But her reaction now proved otherwise. The question formed before he could prevent it. “Why would you think such a thing, Antonia?”
Her grip around his wrists relaxed, but she didn’t release him. Instead her thumbs
gently caressed the back of his hands but he wasn’t certain whether she was even aware of her actions.
“I’m sorry.” Her whisper tore into him. Why did she feel the need to keep apologizing? He was the one who was sorry. And he was the one who couldn’t spit the words out. “In my heart I know you would never force me, Gawain. It wasn’t you. It was just the memory of—of other times when I had no choice.”
The disgust surged through him once again, but this time melded with impotent fury.
“You were forced to do this?” He enjoyed—more than enjoyed—a woman sucking his cock deep into her mouth. But the pleasure was mutual. The unsavory image of Antonia on her knees, being forced to accommodate a bastard Roman’s lust hammered through his mind. “Who forced you?”
Not that it made any difference. He’d never be able to exact retribution. But the need to know clawed through his gut.
She looked at him, an odd expression on her face as though she found his reaction completely incomprehensible. “My former husband.”
The savage urge to hunt down her former husband, hack off his raping cock and shove it down his throat pounded through Gawain’s head. He fought against the rabid rage thundering through his veins yet couldn’t rid himself of the insidious feeling that Antonia, a child of the empire, was as much a spoil of war as any of his enslaved countrymen.
And, as such, both deserved and demanded his protection.
He stared into her beautiful eyes and recalled the haunting shadows he’d glimpsed the first day they’d met. Had he discovered the reason for her fleeting moments of melancholy?
“And you’ve never tried to purge the memory of his actions with one of your lovers?”
Inexplicably, she blushed. And while the sight entranced him, it still confused him. But at least she was no longer shaking in fear or trying to push him away.
“No.” Her voice was so hushed he could scarcely hear her. “I may have misled you in this matter.” She broke eye contact and stared at his chest. “You are the first lover I’ve ever taken.”
Her words punched through him, a physical jolt. He was her first? Her only? Why hadn’t he realized?
But there had been many clues. He’d chosen to disregard them. The way she’d acted the first day they met. Her enchanting moments of innocence that he’d imagined were simply part of her practiced seduction.
The only man beside himself that Antonia had known was her husband. An inconsiderate Roman bastard who’d made her perform an act she hated. And he, Gawain, her first lover, had just attempted to make her do the very same thing.
He wasn’t often speechless but he couldn’t think of a thing to say. Silence stretched between them and finally Antonia looked up at him, and the wary expression on her face speared through his chest.
He might not have a clue what to say to her, but he needed to say something. “I am honored.”
Her fingers twitched around his wrists, as though she wasn’t sure whether he mocked her or not. He clawed through his paralyzed brain to find something that would reassure her. And could think of only one question.
“Why did you choose me?”
“Oh.” Her hands slid from his wrists but before she could do anything else, he captured them and pressed them against his chest. She frowned as if she didn’t understand his action but that was no surprise. He didn’t understand this overwhelming need to comfort her either. He just knew that if he didn’t, he risked losing her.
Losing her? She was only a Roman noblewoman. He was only fucking her because she was willing and available. Except the thoughts were hollow and instead of reassuring him of the fleeting duration of this liaison, it left him feeling somehow… uneasy.
“Oh?” Gently he shook her captive hands. “Why, Antonia?”
She shifted on her knees and then sighed. “I wanted to experience sex with a man of my choosing. Until I met you, I had never found one who,” she hesitated for a moment, “appealed to me.”
Once again words failed him. Antonia knelt before him, naked and at his mercy in a squalid tavern room, her hair tumbling from its jeweled restraints around her shoulders. She was only a Roman noblewoman but in this moment, he knew her heritage meant nothing to him.
All that mattered was that Antonia was a woman and she had chosen him to be her first illicit lover.
He stood, tugging her to her feet. “Do I still appeal to you, my lady?” He injected a faint note of mockery, but only to disguise just how much her answer meant to him. He wasn’t ready to end their liaison yet. Somehow he would show Antonia she had no need to fear that he would ever force her to do anything she wasn’t more than willing to experience.
The actions of her fucking former husband would not dictate when or how this affair ended.
A smile illuminated her face, as though his question had, inexplicably, eased her mind. “You more than appeal to me, Gawain.” Her voice was breathless, and the knowledge that she hadn’t said those words to countless other men in the past heightened the seductive web her whisper spun around him. “Do I still appeal to you?”
He pulled her against his body so that she could feel how much she still appealed to him. “What do you think?” He wound his arm around her waist, and her chilled flesh caused him to silently curse. “You’re cold.”
She wriggled, and her erect nipples teased his chest as she slid her arms around him and held him tight. “I’m not cold where it matters.”
He laughed and stepped back to the bed. “I would not have you cold at all.”
“Then you had best warm me up, my Cambrian warrior.”
Her what? Her Cambrian warrior? He grinned down at her, even though she’d called him by the hated Roman name.
“I’m your warrior, am I?” He lay on the bed and pulled her down on him. He wouldn’t have her silken skin touch a common tavern bed.
“Yes.” She flattened her hands against his shoulders as she straddled his hips and smiled down at him in triumph. “And I am about to conquer you.”
He molded her firm thighs and sculpted the curve of her arse and dip of her waist. Her eyes were dark with lust, her pink lips parted and her hair, half contained, half tumbling in disarray, gave her an air of irresistible ravishment. He battled the primitive urge to impale her and make her his. “Then conquer me, enchantress.”
Chapter 13
Antonia gazed down at her wild Cambrian warrior. He had a half-smile on his face and his hands captured her waist in a touch so light it would take no effort to pull from his embrace. Yet his touch warmed her, not simply her chilled skin but sank into her blood, the very marrow of her bones.
She had no wish to pull from his embrace. As the tips of his fingers caressed the sensitive curve of hip and waist, a strange pain spiraled through the center of her breast. His reaction to her refusal to accommodate his desires, his obvious disgust with her former husband when she had gathered the nerve to confess, staggered her.
Her personal experience was limited but she knew, from feminine confidences, how dearly men enjoyed such practices. That Gawain hadn’t insisted she continue or, almost as horrifying, ridiculed her, caused the odd constriction consuming her chest to weave deep into her heart.
Slowly she leaned toward him and brushed her lips across his. He trailed a seductive path along her back, across her shoulders and down her biceps. Tiny rivers of fire ignited beneath his touch, causing heated tremors across her sensitized skin.
With a breathy sigh, she speared her fingers through his hair, and combed the dark blond length across the rough bed cover. His bronzed skin, foreign looks and the untamed air that radiated from him all combined to give the impression of a savage barbarian of a conquered land. She’d told him once he was no barbarian, but she hadn’t fully realized the truth of her words.
Rome prided herself on being superior to all her provinces, the cultural center of all nations. But it had taken Gawain, a native of this far-flung corner of the empire, to show her the kind of respect she’d never received from her
own husband, a patrician who could trace his lineage back to the founding of that great city.
She wound his hair around her fingers, grazed her cheek against his jaw and flicked the tip of her tongue over his pierced earlobe. He tasted as divine as a mighty god of Olympus and the absurd thought made her smile.
“What amuses you, my lady?” His deep voice sent desire rippling through her. She nibbled kisses across his shoulder and his arms wound around her, imprisoning her.
“You amuse me.” She shifted in his embrace, her nipples hard against his chest, her breasts aching for his touch. “You enthrall me.”
His body shook with silent laughter and she abandoned his shoulder to watch his face. He caught her glance and she thought she might drown in the dark depths of his amber-flecked eyes.
“Your honeyed words,” he said, as his hands stroked along her back, creating magical responses she had never dreamed might exist, “will get you far.”
Enchanted by the way he had twisted her own words back at her, she untangled her fingers from his hair and flattened her hands either side of his head on the prickly mattress.
“How far?” She breathed the sultry question against his lips as she provocatively glided her tender folds over his engorged shaft.
He gave an agonized groan and finally cupped her breasts, lifting them, pressing them together, rubbing his thumbs over their tortured peaks. She arched her back, filling his palms, delighting in the possessive way he held and stroked her body.
“As far as you desire.” The way he growled the words at her she wasn’t sure whether it was a threat or a promise. And when he pinched her nipples, sending sharp arrows of fire from her breasts to her pussy, she knew she didn’t care. Either way would be an unforgettable, ecstatic adventure.
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