He growled against her flushed cheek. “Never dare me, Morwyn.”
“Gallic barbarian.” She kicked off her leather footwear and pulled her ruined gown from her shoulders and allowed it to puddle around her feet. His gaze remained melded with hers. “Now you strip for me.”
He tore off his chain mail and dropped it onto the floor. Her breath lodged in her throat and her glance slid from his to rivet on his chest. But he made no move to remove the tunic, and with an impatient gasp she reached for him, to finish the job herself.
Swiftly he gripped her wrists in one large hand before she made contact and jerked her arms above her head, her bracelets tumbling down her forearms. Before her startled mind could fathom what he thought he was doing, he marched her backward and she had no choice but to comply or be dragged.
“Unhand me.” It sounded more like a plea to continue than a demand to acquiesce. The half smile he offered her suggested he thought so too.
A strange tenderness threaded through the sharp lust spearing low in her belly. She craved his smile. How insane to find such a natural expression so captivating.
Except on her Gaul it wasn’t natural. He rarely smiled. And when he did she had the incomprehensible urge to savor it, like a gift from benevolent gods.
The backs of her legs hit the edge of the bed. “Sit.”
From sheer habit she opened her mouth to disagree, because nobody gave her orders. But instead she merely expelled a noisy breath and sat as gracefully as she could manage with her arms still extended above her head.
He kneed her thighs open and stood between her parted legs. Yet still his gaze remained locked on hers. As though her face was the most arousing and fascinating part of her body, despite the way she was open for his most intimate of inspection.
And, inexplicably, that knowledge sent tremors skittering across the skin of her lower belly and the sensitized flesh of her breasts.
“Now will you strip for me?” Her voice was husky and she twisted her wrists but his grip didn’t relax. She trailed her feet up his rock-hard calves, balancing precariously as she explored his rigid thighs, bracing her weight on her captured hands.
Slowly he leaned forward and she could do nothing but go with the momentum. Flat on her back, legs hooked around him, she glared up at him. His smile was pure decadence, wiping years from his face, and she struggled to recall why she was angry with him.
What did it matter if he refused to relinquish control, when he smiled like that? Entranced despite herself, she stared at him, his face so close to hers. Towering over her like a conquering warlord, pinning her to the bed as if she were his captive spoil of battle.
“Have you forgotten?” His smoky voice curled deep within her as potent as any Druidic aphrodisiac. “I need to examine the veracity of your claims.”
She squirmed helplessly, digging her heels into the tops of his thighs, but he refused to lower himself onto her, to alleviate the pressure between her legs.
“Then make haste.” Her fingers flexed and clawed but still she couldn’t escape. “You torture me with your tongue.”
His lips all but brushed hers. “Not yet. But I will.”
The promise in his words lanced through her heated blood, tightening muscles and shortening breath, and erratic gasps fanned his face. Again he smiled, clearly well pleased by her reaction, and slowly he loosened the grip on her wrists.
“Don’t try to escape.” His fingers trailed the length of her arms and caressed her shoulders. She remained prone, unable to move a muscle, as if his words hypnotized.
She had not the slightest inclination to escape. She even forgave him for not stripping first, because that could come later. After he had fulfilled the promise glinting in his mesmeric eyes.
As if her silence satisfied, the tips of his roughened fingers continued to trail over her heated skin to the curve of her waist and the flare of her hips. Slow and maddening and unbelievably erotic. A featherlight touch she could feel all the way in the deepest recesses of her soul, as if flesh and psyche melded beneath his exploration.
“Back up.” There was the faintest undercurrent of a tremble in his command. His control wasn’t as absolute as he would have her believe. And because of that she obeyed, bracing her feet against his hips and pushing back onto the bed, until she sprawled across the mattress, legs spread in helpless abandon.
The palms of his hands glided over her thighs, her knees, her calves. Air hissed between her teeth and she dug her fingers into the mattress. Still his eyes never left hers. As if he wanted to watch every tiny reaction his touch evoked. As if that was of more import to him than examining her blatantly exposed pussy.
“Your legs,” he said, as his palms once again skimmed her shins, “are as silken as your ribbons.”
She knew that. It wasn’t her legs she wanted him to examine. Even if every touch caused shivers of desire to spill across her skin in ever-increasing spirals of anticipation.
“Some Roman implements have their uses.” Not that she would admit such to anyone else. But the Gaul wasn’t anyone else. He was the one admiring her smooth skin, and what did it matter if she confessed to enjoying the unexpected session of indulgence in the baths?
He would never repeat her words to those who would despise her for such weakness. And it wasn’t as if she would ever have the chance to experience that foreign pampering again.
His fingers splayed against the inside of her thighs, but still he maintained eye contact. How did he exert such self-control? Were their positions reversed, she would be all but devouring his cock with her eyes and mouth.
The fantasy was so real in her mind she squirmed again and wrapped her hands around his wrists. He didn’t move, except for his lips, and his smile scorched what little air remained in her lungs.
“Patience is not one of your virtues, Morwyn.”
“I never claimed it was.” She sounded parched, as if she were dying of thirst. And she was dying, but of hunger. Hunger for his touch.
His hands slid farther up her thighs and she gasped frantically for breath. But still he didn’t touch her where she needed him. Still he didn’t look at her where she wanted him to look at her.
“Patience,” he said again, but this time there was a raw undercurrent in his tone. “Is overrated.” His intense gaze slid over her trembling body, lingering on her breasts, before focusing between her thighs.
She saw his jaw lock, felt his fingers tense, and wet desire thudded through her aching sheath. Slowly he knelt on the floor, never taking his eyes from her, and she braced her weight on her elbows so she could watch his face.
Breath hissed between his lips. “I’ve never seen anything so tempting.”
She flexed her internal muscles in an effort to contain the rapidly escalating lust. It didn’t work. “My near-naked pussy arouses you?” The strangeness, when she’d examined herself in the bath house, had excited her in a way she’d never before imagined. The realization her Gaul had never taken a woman with such a severely groomed pussy not only heightened her own desire but thrilled her in a way that, in a dark corner of her mind, shivered with unspoken danger.
He widened her thighs, opening her farther for his pleasure. The air chilled her damp inner lips, but only momentarily. His scorching gaze warmed her as rapidly as if he were a forest fire.
“Your pouting lips entrance me.” He grazed his thumb across her shaved flesh and she jerked, shocked not only by his intimate touch but by his smoky words. “Your musky scent intoxicates.” Both thumbs slid into her, but only by the merest degree, before he gently spread her for his further visual exploration.
Gods, no man had ever examined her so thoroughly. Her heart thundered against her ribs, the air evaporated from her chest and it hurt, an unbearable pain she couldn’t explain and didn’t want to ever end.
The tips of his thumbs caressed her. Up and down the length of her, just inside her, tantalizing. Maddening. Incredible.
“Your clitoris”—his lust-drench
ed voice spilled through her mind, igniting tremors of fire in her blood—“begs to be sucked.”
A ragged groan echoed in her ears and vibrated along her throat. She struggled to find the words she needed. “Stop talking.”
He lowered his head between her legs and looked up at her over the length of her body. “I thought you wanted me to talk more.” Despite the raw need in his voice, there was dark amusement too. “Changed your mind?”
Unable to remain upright any longer, she collapsed onto the bed. Disbelief pounded through her mind and she glared up at the ceiling. “Your timing could be better.”
Breath gusted against her exposed flesh, as he silently laughed. And then his tongue stroked over the swollen bud of her clit and exquisite streaks of agonizing pleasure convulsed her sensitive nerves.
“You taste of the springs of Cymru.”
Somewhere insubstantial, where reason still lurked, she knew it couldn’t be so. She had bathed in Roman essence, been sprinkled with Roman scents. But his words caused her clit to throb, her internal muscles to tremble and her juices to spill, and another incomprehensible groan fell from her lips.
His tongue slid inside her and she could feel him tasting her, as if she were an exotic fruit he had never before encountered. Her eyes closed and fists clenched and she tried to wind her legs around his head to keep him close and tight against her. But his elbows were across her lower thighs pinning her in place, and so she forced her languid arms from the bed and dug her fingers into his scalp.
“You like this.” Was he asking her a question or stating a fact? She didn’t know and didn’t care. All she wanted was for him to never stop. His tongue stroked inside her wet channel, flicked her sensitive lips and swirled around her swollen clit. And his hand splayed across her lower belly, applying additional sensual pressure, and gods, if he didn’t stop soon, she was going to come inside his mouth.
With a strangled gasp she dug her nails into his head. “Stop.” It wasn’t what she meant but she didn’t have the breath to explain. And so she attempted to drag him up but he refused to be dragged. Instead he sucked her clit between his lips, a kiss so intensely arousing starlight streaked across the indigo of her mind, shattering the remnants of her control.
Her hips bucked and he cupped one rounded buttock, holding her while he continued to lick and suck and kiss as if he intended to murder her by eroticism. Her body pulsed and her sheath convulsed as he thrust his fingers deep inside her while his tongue cradled her trembling clit.
Wheezing gasps rattled her chest but before she could drag her scattered senses together he was on top of her, bracing his weight on one hand while the other clawed through her hair. His eyes were wild as he stared down at her, and as his cock nudged her wet entrance she lifted her heavy legs and wrapped them around his waist.
He rammed into her, thick and long and right. So right. As if this joining with this man was something she had been searching for all her life, without even knowing for what she had searched.
The thought was insane but still it lingered, like a flickering candle in the darkness of her mind. And when he came, hammering her into the mattress with every glorious, brutal thrust, the feeling didn’t dissolve but bloomed, like a deadly pestilence.
Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew it was wrong. But it made no difference. Because being with her Gaul felt so unequivocally right.
***
Morwyn stirred from the depths of a blissful, dreamless sleep. The room was silent, but beyond her closed eyelids red light tinged, as if a lamp still burned.
She cracked open one eye, expecting to see her Gaul asleep next to her. The bed was empty. Without knowing why, a frisson of alarm snaked along her spine, as if his absence was a portent of unknowable disaster.
Stealthily, although she still couldn’t fathom her cautiousness, she opened both eyes and blinked to bring focus. On the other side of the room by the single lamp sat her Gaul with a rolled parchment. As she watched, he carefully removed, with apparent expertise, the wax seal and proceeded to read the contents as if he had every right in the world to do so.
Chapter Nineteen
The sun was sinking onto the western horizon, and Morwyn knew all she should feel was elation that soon she’d once again be in Cymru.
But the overwhelming emotion thudding through her veins wasn’t relief. It was a confusing maelstrom of dread and loss. Grief.
Because once they were back in the land of her birth, she would have to leave her Gaul and find Caratacus.
“Not long now.” The Gaul’s familiar smoky voice drifted by her ear as she leaned back against his chest. How different the journey home had been from the one to Camulodunon. Had it truly been scarcely six days since they had met?
Sometimes, as they galloped across the British countryside or lay sated and entwined in the black heat of night, she had trouble recalling how her life had been before that encounter.
A ragged sigh tore through her lips. Once she joined the rebellion, she would forget him soon enough. Yet a hard knot deep in her chest ridiculed her conviction.
The Gaul would not so easily be wiped from her memory.
“Morwyn.” One arm was around her waist, holding her close, as if he could exert perfect control over the horse by using only his legs. “I promised to see you safely back to your kinsfolk.”
Had he? She couldn’t recall. “There’s no need. I can find my own way.” Except that wasn’t true. She didn’t know the way, and what made her assume she would have better luck on her own when even with her fellow Druids the Briton king’s hideout had remained elusive?
His arm tightened. It was a blatantly possessive gesture but strangely she wasn’t offended. Perhaps because before this day ended—or, at most, first thing in the morn—she would leave him forever. And never again experience the sensation of being held so securely in his arms.
“I would see you safely home.” There was a dangerous thread in his voice, as if he would accept no dissent. She threaded her fingers through his, trying to ignore the sharp pain that sliced through her chest.
His sense of honor would never allow her to leave by herself in territory he considered hostile. He left her no option but to steal away when he least expected it. Unable to even exchange a fitting good-bye.
“If you insist.” She injected a touch of impatience in her tone so he wouldn’t become suspicious. But the words were like stale blood in her mouth, foul with the knowledge she lied.
“I’ll be unable to escort you until my next leave of absence. Only a few days. Not long to wait.”
She smothered the foolish hope that leaped in her breast. It made no difference whether his intent was to accompany her home in the morn or another moon. There was no village and she certainly would never allow him to escort her to Mon.
Besides, her destination was unknown even to her. Unless . . .
A thought stirred. He was taking her to the settlement that surrounded the Roman fortification in Cymru to which he was attached. If she stayed a day or so, she might pick up gossip to assist in her search for Caratacus. Perhaps—although she knew it highly unlikely—even discover another Druid.
“You expect me to live in a barbaric Roman barracks?” She shot him a mock-disgusted glance over her shoulder and knew instantly it was a mistake. Because he smiled at her, the smile that lightened his face and caused his eyes to crinkle. The smile she’d grown used to over the last few days, but now it caused an ache to unfurl deep within the region of her heart.
“No.” He sounded amused. And no longer attempted to hide it as he had when they had first met. “I’ll find you lodgings in the town.”
Despite the entrancing sight of his smile and intriguing knowledge of how so much more relaxed he appeared, irritation spiked at his easy assumption that she would have no qualms about accepting his protection.
“I’m more than capable of securing my own lodgings, Gaul.” She could barter one of her bracelets. They were of excellent craftsmanship
and would fetch a good price, and it wasn’t as if she required accommodation for more than a night or two.
His smile faded and expression hardened. A silent sigh echoed through her mind at the transformation. Once again he reminded her of the day they had met in the forest.
“I know that.” A thread of irritation heated his words, as if he’d taken offense at her remark. “But the old ways are changing, Morwyn. No matter how you wish otherwise, the Roman ways are infiltrating. It’s not safe for a woman alone to secure lodgings. But if they know you’re with me, no one will dare touch you.”
An angry buzzing filled her head, as if a swarm of bees sought escape. Beyond the waves of fury pounding against her skull, she knew he had intended no insult. Had merely been telling her the way things now were.
But it didn’t seem to make any difference to her tongue.
“If I had my dagger, no man would dare touch me without permission.” She was of noble blood, of Druidic descent. And a warrior. The notion that she was now considered unable to defend herself twisted her stomach and caused bile to rise.
She didn’t need a man to protect her. Not even her Gaul.
Especially not my Gaul. He was part of the reason she was no longer safe in her own homeland.
“I don’t doubt you.” His voice was grim. “I’m telling you how it is in the town. And . . .” He hesitated for a fleeting moment. “It’s not only the Romans and auxiliaries I’m referring to.”
He meant her people were following the invaders’ culture and attitude. She clenched her fists, and realized her fingers were still entwined with his. She considered jerking free. And then expelled a long, measured breath instead.
She was fighting this battle with the wrong man. Enemy auxiliary he might be, but he had never treated her with disrespect. Except for that one time. She froze the recollection from her mind. That was different. Although she wasn’t sure why, just that it was.
“My people”—she knew her voice cracked, knew he had heard it—“have lost their way.” Because those they had looked to in times of need had abandoned them. First to the magical spiral, and then to the Isle of Mon. Could she blame them for turning their backs on their way of life, when all their leaders had vanished?
Captive (The Druid Chronicles Book 2) Page 16