His self-scathing comment lashed across her heart. How many times had he evaded capture in order to meet an illicit lover in her bedchamber? Why had she imagined this was something as shocking and novel to him, as well as for her?
She smothered the questions before they consumed her. It didn’t matter how many times in the past he had done this. At least he was with her now, and not with a strange, faceless woman. The knowledge eased the ache in her heart and she cradled his jaw with one hand, rubbing her thumb across his light stubble.
“Your talents,” she whispered, “are impressive.”
His lips quirked in obvious reluctance. “Don’t flatter me with pretty words, Antonia.”
“Why not?” She trailed her fingertips along the strong line of his jaw. “You flatter me most charmingly.”
His large hand covered hers. For a moment, she thought he was going to thrust her from him, but instead his fingers threaded through hers.
“No.” His voice was harsh. “I don’t. It’s one of my irresistible traits. I’m blunt to the point of barbarity.”
His self-condemnation caused her heart to squeeze. She took that final step and sank against the hard ridges of his body. “I have yet to see this barbarian of whom you so freely speak.”
Tension radiated from him, coiled and waiting to spring. Did he truly imagine that she compared him to the praetor—and found Gawain wanting? How could he be so blind?
How could she prove how wrong he was?
“That Roman.” Gawain’s breath seared her ear as he wound his arm around her waist and held her in a punishing grip. “Every time he looked at you he stripped you with his eyes. His lust polluted the air. He will not rest until he has you in his bed.”
Unease shivered along her spine at his words, but she forced it aside. She wasn’t as easily manipulated as Gawain appeared to think.
“I’ve no intention of sharing his bed. But I have every intention that you will share mine this night.”
She felt his body shake in a silent laugh and then he pulled back so he could look into her face. “I am enraged. How dare you attempt to mollify me with false promises?”
“It’s not a false promise. It is night, you are here and my bed is beside us.”
He glowered at her, even as his tempting mouth fought to smile. His frown lost the battle. “You are an enchantress. There’s no other explanation. What magic have you cast upon me, my lady?”
“A lady never shares her secrets.” And then she laughed at the absurdity of her comment, at the relief Gawain was no longer vibrating with repressed fury and the knowledge that, for a short time at least, she could hold him close and savor each precious moment.
He grunted and began to pull the pins from her hair. “As long as I’m the only one you enchant. I don’t share what is mine.”
A foolish frisson of delight ignited deep in her heart. She knew he spoke purely from lust when she—ah, she could no longer deny the truth. It was so much more than lust for her. But what did it matter if she hugged his words close and gave them a meaning he didn’t intend? “And am I yours?”
For a second he paused, his hand in her hair, his gaze boring into her as if he wanted to peel back the layers of her mind and read her most secret of desires.
“Yes.” His voice was raw, primitive and another delicious tremor claimed her sensitized flesh. “Tonight you’re all mine, Antonia. I intend that you’ll never forget what we shared together.”
There was little chance of that when Gawain had slid, unbidden, into her heart. She would remember him until her last breath.
“But will you forget, Gawain? Will I be simply another Roman woman you passed a few pleasant weeks with? Will you even recall my name a year from now?”
Somehow she kept her voice light, playful, as though she didn’t mean every word from the bottom of her soul. It would do no good for him to discover just how devastated she’d be if he forgot everything about her as soon as their liaison ended.
* * *
Gawain stared into Antonia’s ice-blue eyes, eyes that had captivated him from the first moment they had met. He knew they would haunt him until he continued his journey in the Otherworld, and perhaps their beauty would haunt him even there.
Forget her? How he wished he could be certain that he could. But every time that fucking Roman had fawned over her, pawed her and attempted to denigrate Gawain in her eyes, the tarnished truth had clawed through his chest.
She was more than a fleeting fuck. She always had been, but until this night, he hadn’t realized just how much she meant to him.
They had no future. He knew that. But the thought of her marrying the praetor, as she was sure to given her status and the Roman’s obvious interest, curdled his guts.
Antonia was in his arms, smiling up at him and driving him out of his senses with lust. It should be enough. With any other woman, it would be enough. But with Antonia he wanted more. He didn’t want her to blithely mention the short duration of their affair. A few weeks? Was that all she was willing to give him?
Savagely he flung her hair pins onto the floor and tugged her ringlets over her shoulders. Now she looked untamed, unregimented. Un-Roman. But it didn’t matter how she looked. Because her blood was still the blood of patricians and she belonged to the empire.
“Perhaps I’ll engrave your name on the inside of my torque.” He offered her a sardonic grin. “Then I’ll never risk forgetting our enjoyable encounters.”
For a moment, her lips trembled as though his words wounded. But perhaps it was a trick of the lamp light. Perhaps he had merely imagined it. Because her smile now was more blinding than ever.
“Do you engrave the names of all your conquests on your torque?” She traced her finger over the images of Lugus but her gaze didn’t waver from his. He almost told her yes, he did, but somehow he could not.
“The torque of my forefathers is sacred. I would never desecrate it in such a manner.”
Her finger slipped to his bare throat. Her light touch burned his flesh. “Have you ever been in love, Gawain?” Her voice was soft, persuasive, but anger flared that she dared to ask him such a personal question. Then he looked into her eyes and instead of idle curiosity, he saw those elusive, haunting shadows, and his anger fell to ash.
“Once.” More than two turns of the wheel ago and yet it felt like another lifetime.
“Was she of Cambria?”
He unclasped the brooch that held Antonia’s gown at the shoulder. “She was a warrior.”
The tip of her tongue moistened her lips. “Of course.”
He studied the precious gems encrusted in the brooch as it lay in the palm of his hand. He couldn’t fathom why, but Antonia’s response speared through his chest. And the pain was not for the loss of Morwyn.
Antonia’s gown pooled at her feet, leaving her clad in only a knee-length tunic. She looked oddly vulnerable, alone, as if the slightest harsh word from him would send her crumbling into dust.
Three things Morwyn had never looked in her life.
“She saved my life.” The words thudded in the air between them, shocking him. He had never spoken them before. Not even to Carys, and she and Morwyn had been the best of friends.
“Yes.” Antonia’s voice was faint and she was no longer holding his gaze. Instead she stared at his chest as her fingers unlaced his shirt.
He realized she didn’t understand. He tossed her brooch onto the end of the bed and covered her hand, stilling her fingers.
“No.” He wasn’t sure why it was important she understood. Only that it was. “The last time we saw each other she gave me a warning. That treachery awaited in the land of the Brigantes. If she hadn’t, if I had ignored her words, I would’ve been cut down by those I considered my allies.”
Antonia swallowed. “Then I owe her a great debt of gratitude. Because of her foresight you’re here with me now.”
Whatever he had imagined she might say it hadn’t been that. Incredibly, a laugh huffed from his t
hroat and he cradled her face. She was so fragile, not only physically but also in the way she had so little control over her life. The knowledge seared him and a wave of raw protectiveness surged through him. A sensation he had never once experienced while he’d been with Morwyn. “You’re so different from her.”
Her smile seemed strained. “Alas, it was thought more prudent for me to learn Greek than how to wield a dagger.”
“There you have me.” He began to slide her tunic off her shoulders. “I don’t know a word of Greek. Perhaps you should teach me.”
She shrugged free of her tunic and stood before him in all her naked glory. His cock thickened with anticipation. She was the most fuckable vision he’d ever seen in his life.
“I cannot imagine why you would wish to learn Greek.” She tugged ineffectively at his shirt and he obliged her by ripping it over his head and dropping it to the floor. “How do you speak Latin so well?”
Other Romans had asked him that. He’d always been aware of the incredulity behind the question, as though they distrusted the fact he spoke their language so fluently. But there was no such undercurrent in Antonia’s words.
“There was a Gaul in our clan who spoke perfect Latin. He taught us all.” No need to explain that the Gaul had also been a Druid with Roman blood in his veins.
“Hmm.” She appeared distracted by his torso and he flexed his muscles for her viewing pleasure. The breathy sigh she emitted stoked his male pride to new heights. She was always so appreciative. “I could speak Greek to you now, if you wish.”
He buried his fingers in her glorious hair as she began to strip him with tantalizing concentration. “I would rather know what you say to me in the throes of passion, Antonia.”
She gave a breathless laugh as she sank to her knees, exposing him to her avid gaze. He gritted his teeth, forced his fingers to relax against her head. His fantasy of Antonia sucking his cock into her wet mouth would remain only that—a fantasy.
It didn’t stop the tortured groan from escaping, though.
Her hands slid along his thighs and down the back of his calves. Her uneven breath teased his flesh and his erection throbbed with unfulfilled need. She was so cursed close. He imagined the tip of her tongue sliding across his wet slit, imagined her lips wrapping around his swollen glans.
Involuntarily he tightened his grip on her head and battled the primal urge to jerk her forward. To force his shaft between her parted lips and take her as she knelt before him. Did she think he was made of stone? Did she deliberately tantalize him with every ragged breath she took, every teasing stroke of her fingers?
“Stand up.” His command was guttural and he emphasized the urgency by tugging on her hair. She looked up at him, a vision of feminine innocence and earthly desire. A combination that should be impossible, that should never exist. Yet Antonia embodied it all without a trace of artifice or manipulation.
Then she smiled. It wasn’t a smile of triumph that she could drive him so easily to the edge of his endurance. It was a smile that speared through his chest, paralyzed his lungs and hypnotized his enslaved gaze.
He’d never seen such a smile before. It illuminated her face in the glow of the lamps and in that moment, it would be easy to believe she possessed immortal blood. Surely no mere human could look so bewitching?
“Your body enthralls me.” Her seductive whisper weaved through the heated air as she slowly, sensuously rose from her knees. “I want to worship every glorious inch of it.”
A tortured laugh escaped and he sculpted her shoulders, the dip of her waist and irresistible flare of her hips. “Another night, my lady.” In the back of his lust-fueled mind, the leering face of the praetor lurked, mocking him with the knowledge that, sooner or later, Antonia would belong to him.
His banked rage once again surged through his veins and pounded against his skull. Antonia was his. He would give her pleasure such as she had never before imagined. Would give her a memory that seared her senses forever; a memory that would never fade by the passage of time or become lost in the demands of a new husband.
He cupped her delectable arse, felt a delicious tremor claim her body. He leaned in close, her nipples hard against his chest, and breathed against her ear. “Tonight, sweet Antonia, I will make good on my promise and take your virginity.”
Chapter 17
Gawain watched Antonia’s eyes darken with desire, anticipation—apprehension. But not fear. She didn’t pull away but instead mimicked his stance, her hands splayed over his arse, and seductively meshed her body against his.
“I am ready.” Her whisper was breathless and stoked his ravening need.
“No.” He molded her smooth, rounded buttocks and she trembled in his embrace. “But you will be.”
She rose onto her toes and dusted her lips across his in a barely there kiss. Yet the softness of her mouth, the fleeting probe of her tongue, scorched an erotic tattoo through his chest and groin and wrapped around his balls in a thunderous embrace.
Her tender touch would be the death of him.
He took her hand and led her toward the bed. While he’d waited for her to return home, Elpis had shown him Antonia’s vast selection of scented oils. He’d picked one that reminded him of sunshine and spring and it waited beside the bed for easy access.
“How do you want me?” She glanced at him and the blush on her cheeks enchanted him. “I’m not familiar with…the right position.” Her blush deepened but she didn’t break eye contact.
Despite the rock-hard agony of his cock, he couldn’t help a twisted smile. He knew she wasn’t familiar with what they were about to do. It was the reason why she would always remember it.
Why she would always remember him.
“Lie flat on the bed on your stomach. First I’m going to seduce you until you can barely recall your own name.”
“I can barely recall it already.” She flashed him a smile that constricted his chest, but obediently did as he’d commanded. With her head cushioned on her folded arms she continued to gaze at him with a look on her face he could not decipher.
She looked at him as though she looked at one of her heathen gods. As if he were her world.
He expelled a jagged breath and straddled her hips. When had he started to care how she looked at him? When had he ever cared how a woman looked at him?
In the past he’d only cared about Morwyn. And she had never looked at him in the way Antonia did.
He brushed her hair from her shoulder. A golden chain was around her neck and she hadn’t removed any of her bracelets. The lamp light gave her skin an ethereal, golden glow and for a moment he merely stared, mesmerized, at the smooth perfection of her back. Gently he trailed one finger along the length of her spine and a delicate shudder rippled over her. He leaned over her and kissed her sleek shoulder, savoring the scented haven of her skin and the way she quivered beneath his touch.
His cock throbbed in exquisite agony against the small of her back and her constricted wriggles and uneven gasps were the most erotic sensations of foreplay he’d ever experienced. He captured her earlobe between his teeth and then nibbled kisses along the shell of her ear. “I imagined doing this while you sat so sedately at the praetor’s table.”
“I’m thankful you had the willpower to restrain yourself.” Her breathless response and the way her lush lips curved in a smile caused him to almost lose what little restraint he retained. “Although I wondered if you had even noticed me. You scarcely looked at me all night.”
He branded her flushed cheek and aristocratic jaw with hard, possessive kisses, bracing his weight on one forearm so he wouldn’t crush her. But gods, the silken warmth of her back and curve of her buttocks as their bodies melded all but incinerated his reason.
Not noticed her? She had filled his vision the entire night. “If I’d looked at you, your father and the praetor would be in no doubt as to exactly what my intentions were toward you.” He scraped his teeth and the tip of his tongue along the fragrant flesh of h
er throat and a delicious tremor claimed her. “Your reputation would be in tatters, and I would be hanging from a tree.”
She stiffened. “Don’t say such things, Gawain. Even in jest.”
He grinned against the curve of her shoulder and trailed his finger along her finely defined biceps. “Do not fear, sweet Antonia. I’d never do anything to besmirch your good name.”
She twisted futilely beneath him and finally gave up, but the glare she arrowed his way was still filled with dark alarm. “It’s not my reputation that I fear losing.”
His grin faded and an odd pain filled his chest. “Then you have nothing to worry about. I’ve no intention of ending my days in such a manner.”
Her rigid muscles relaxed and she sighed as she once again rested her head on her arms.
“I shall worry, regardless.” She whispered the words into her pillow, as though they were not for his ears. Her concern touched him in a way he couldn’t explain, didn’t fully understand, but again the overpowering, primal urge to protect her surged through his blood.
He raked his fingers through her hair, pulling her curls over her head and exposing the vulnerable nape of her neck. He kissed her there and she gave a delicate shiver, and his fist tightened in her hair.
The knowledge pounded in his mind, no matter how he tried to deny it. Even when their affair ended, he would retain this insane urge to protect her. It wasn’t something superficial he could cast off at will. It was bone-deep, insidious, and had permeated the fabric of his existence without him even realizing.
He relinquished his grip on her hair and forced himself upright. She lay before him, his virgin sacrifice, and the thought hammered through his mind. Taking a virgin had never interested him before but when it came to Antonia, the knowledge did something primitive to his reason.
With slow deliberation, he reached for the oil and saw Antonia raise her head to watch him. He poured the oil onto his hands and the delicate spring fragrance drifted in the heated air. It wasn’t an exotic concoction from the mystic East or a feted aphrodisiac from the dawn of creation. But as he massaged Antonia’s shoulders, the innocent notes of the scent enveloped them in a sensual cocoon.
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