by Annie West
The cool slap of the high footboard against the back of her legs brought her up short. As did his puzzled expression.
‘Tamsin?’ He stood where he was, only reached out one arm to her. Like the rest of him it was powerfully corded with muscle. Yet as she looked she saw his fingers tremble.
She gulped down the panic that had bubbled out of nowhere and looked into his eyes, glazed with hot desire yet questioning. This time her brain kicked into gear.
When she’d watched him roll on the condom, his eyes had eaten her up with a fierceness that thrilled and terrified her. When he’d approached she’d let fear of the unknown swamp the surge of desire.
Now she saw that despite Alaric’s raw hunger, he was the same man she’d come to know these last weeks. A man who’d been honest and straight with her. Who desired her.
A man she could trust.
Maybe every woman felt that tinge of fear the first time, confronted with such unvarnished lust and the stunning reality of naked male arousal.
Her lips curved up in a wobbly smile as she realised very few women were gifted with a first lover as gorgeous as Alaric. Just looking at him made her heart throb so fast she could scarcely catch her breath.
This was what she wanted. She refused to walk away from something that felt so good, so right.
She just needed courage.
Eyes holding his, Tamsin reached around and fumbled her bra undone, letting it fall with a shake of her arms.
Alaric drew a huge breath, his chest expanding mightily. His outstretched hand curled and fell away.
Her unbound breasts felt impossibly full, the nipples hardening to aching points as his heated gaze dropped. Fire scorched a trail across her breasts and lower.
Following the direction of his gaze, Tamsin hooked her thumbs in the sides of her panties. There she hesitated as her inbuilt urge to cover herself fought the need to offer herself to Alaric. A lifetime’s habit was strong, but far stronger was the magic she felt when he looked at her with such longing.
She felt desirable. Desired. Feminine. Powerful. Needy.
Without giving herself time to think she shoved her underwear down, felt the slide of fine cotton against her legs and the waft of air against her skin. All over.
‘You have no idea how badly I want you.’ Alaric’s voice was a rough blur of words that tugged at something low in her belly. Pleasure coursed through her as his eyes sparked blue fire.
A second later he lifted her up and onto the mattress.
His hands were so large they almost spanned her waist. His sure grip reinforced the physical differences between them. Yet this time her vulnerability didn’t bring fear. A delicious flutter of excitement filled her.
With one fluid, powerful movement he pushed her up the bed and sank down on her. Senses on overload, she gasped for breath, but nothing could calm the spiralling excitement that drove her on. She was hemmed in, surrounded by him and nothing had ever felt so perfect.
Arms closing round his torso, Tamsin pressed her mouth to Alaric’s neck, his shoulder, tasting the spicy salt flavour of him. Sinking into the mattress, soft velvet caressed her back while her breasts, belly and legs rubbed against satiny skin, powerfully bunched muscles and coarse hair that teased every nerve ending.
He was so…male. So intriguing.
So sexy.
He moved and she swallowed a gasp of pleasure at the sensation of his broad chest sliding against her breasts. Delight was a rippling wave engulfing her, surging again with each tiny move, each touch.
Driven by instinct, she’d invited this. Yet she’d been unprepared for the stunning reality of Alaric’s body against hers. Theoretical knowledge only took a girl so far.
Alaric slid a fraction and his erection pressed against her belly. Instantly the hollow ache inside intensified and her hips strained up against him.
Thankfully her body knew what it was doing. Instinct would make up for her lack of practical knowledge.
Then Alaric’s mouth captured her nipple and Tamsin lost the capacity for thought as wet heat tugged at her, drawing blood-hot wires of tension through her arching body.
She needed…she needed…
‘I love it that you’re so hot and ready for me.’ His hoarse voice was the most thrilling thing Tamsin had ever heard and the possessive splay of his hand across her feminine mound would have brought her up off the bed if she hadn’t been anchored by his strong frame.
She wriggled her hips and he moved, nudging her legs apart with one solid thigh. Eagerly she complied.
‘Yes. Like that,’ he growled, raising his head and spearing her with a searing look of approval.
Vaguely she noticed the way Alaric’s skin stretched taut over that magnificent bone structure, his mouth a grim line of tension.
His hand moved, arrowing unerringly through damp curls and folds that felt plump and hyper-sensitive. Tamsin’s body jolted as long fingers slid down.
She couldn’t gasp enough breath. Her chest pounded and she stretched her arms up to grab his shoulders, digging into taut, hot flesh. He said something she couldn’t hear over the roaring in her ears as he looked to where his fingers stroked again, further, faster.
Tamsin bit her lip against the sob of pleasure rising in her throat. But she couldn’t stop the way her body moved into his caress. Confidently, needily.
When he met her gaze again there was a feral glitter in his eyes. He looked like a marauder, a ruthless barbarian intent on plunder. As if she were the bounty he intended to take for himself.
She loved it!
Slipping her hands along those wide shoulders, she clamped her fingers behind his head, desperately burrowing through his thick hair for a good grip. Pulling down, she raised herself and plastered a raw, breathless, open-mouthed kiss on his lips.
For one fragile moment he seemed suspended above her, unmoving. Then he sank onto her again and passion erupted.
Their kiss was fervent, impatient, and his caress between her legs changed. No longer Alaric’s hand but something longer, throbbing with a will of its own as he clamped his hands beneath her buttocks and tilted her hips.
‘I’m sorry. I can’t hold off any longer.’
Tamsin barely processed his words when he shifted and she felt heat nudge the entrance between her legs. Fire flooded her womb at the spiralling whorls of anticipation created by that blunt touch. At last!
His lips closed on hers again, inviting her to join him in pleasure as his tongue pushed greedily into her mouth. At the same time his hold on her bottom tightened and his hips plunged against hers.
One long, slow thrust stretched her body till she was taut, impaled and impossibly full. Gone was the heady passion, replaced in that instant by the first flutterings of panic. Every muscle stiffened and her eyes snapped open.
Startled ink blue irises stared back. Alaric lifted his mouth from hers and sucked in a shaky breath as he pulled away.
Surprisingly, the sensation of his withdrawal instantly distressed her and she clamped her knees against his hips. She didn’t want him gone! She just didn’t want the scary feeling that he was too big for her. That despite their desire, this wasn’t going to work.
‘Alaric?’ Tamsin didn’t care that the word wobbled or that he could hear the entreaty in her voice. Pride had no place here. ‘Please.’ She didn’t know what she expected him to do. She only knew she couldn’t bear it to end like this.
A gusty sigh riffled her hair and his head dropped between his bunched shoulders. Tendons stood out on his neck and arms and inside she felt a pulse where the tip of his erection moved.
Response shivered through her at that tiny, impossibly erotic movement. Involuntarily she twitched, circling her hips and his breath stopped.
In answer he withdrew a fraction then slowly pushed forward. This time it didn’t feel quite so scary. Or maybe that was his warm breath blowing on her nipple, teasing the aroused bud and distracting her from the slide of his body away then back again.
The fourth time he began to move she anticipated him, arching upwards simultaneously, then gasping as a fiery spark of pleasure flared at the point of friction. Her breath hitched and instantly he stilled, his breathing harsh and uneven.
Tamsin waited but he didn’t move. What now? Had he decided this wasn’t going to work? Her hands fisted at his shoulders and she bit her lip against the protest that hovered on her tongue.
Then she saw the pulse at the base of Alaric’s neck, thudding out of control. He was waiting for her. Trying to accommodate her fear, her discomfort. The rigidity of his body, the way his broad chest heaved like overworked bellows told their own story of the toll this took.
Suddenly this wasn’t just about her. Tamsin felt ashamed by her self-absorption.
Tentatively she slipped her hands down his body, feeling muscles flinch at her light caress. Daringly she reached out and smoothed her palms over his hips, down to his taut, rounded buttocks that felt so good under her increasingly needy touch. She wanted to explore him all over, she realised with a shock.
A spasm shook him as she tightened her hold and pulled him towards her. For an instant he resisted then allowed himself to be tugged closer, inside. Even further than before. This time instead of panic, Tamsin felt a niggle of a strange new sensation. A gnawing need for more. When he withdrew she followed. When she urged him close he slid even deeper and a shaky sigh of pleasure escaped her lips.
Gradually, a fraction at a time, their movements became rhythmic and fluid. Tamsin hated each withdrawal and welcomed each thrust, even when it seemed he plunged impossibly deep. Yet even that felt right. More than right. Fantastic.
Now she revelled in the way he drove so far within her.
Alaric’s head lifted and his gaze locked with hers. It felt absurdly as if he touched a part of her no medical scan would ever identify. As if he caressed her very soul with his eyes, his body, his tenderness.
Tamsin’s breath sucked out at the heat glazing Alaric’s eyes and the reflection there of her own overwhelming need.
Lightning flickered as electricity jolted through her body. His tempo increased, her body tightened, achingly close to some unseen goal. A shudder raked him, raked her, and their rhythm rocked out of control into a fierce pounding beat that brought the world tumbling around them.
A gasping scream rent the air as Tamsin fell into pleasure. Everything swam around her except dark blue eyes, fixed on hers in the maelstrom of exquisite delight. Then, with a hoarse shout, Alaric followed her and she drew him close with trembling arms and an overflowing heart.
Chapter Eleven
A VIRGIN.
Alaric shook his head as if to dislodge the knowledge that weighted him. How had he convinced himself Tamsin was experienced?
He doused his head under the basin’s cold tap but that didn’t obliterate the voice of his conscience. He’d seduced a virgin. Deliberately set her up to fall into his bed.
He grimaced. He’d shown little consideration for her inexperience as he’d hammered her untried body.
It was no excuse that the feel of her virginal body tight around him had been the ultimate aphrodisiac.
Experienced as he was he had no defence against the pleasure she offered so unstintingly.
Would he have held back if he’d suspected the truth?
Nothing on earth would have held him back. He was as bad as that old roué Rudi, the ancestor who’d designed the place to keep his scandalous liaisons from prying eyes. Alaric’s shoulders tightened. No, he was worse. The women Rudi had bedded had reputedly been experienced. Even his father had kept that rule.
Hell! This was a new take on noblesse oblige.
Alaric raised his eyes to the bathroom mirror, expecting, as ever, to see his sins marked on his face. But as usual he was the same. Unblemished. Outwardly whole. As if the darkness within were a figment of his imagination.
What right had he, of all men, to take her innocence? She deserved a man who could give her more.
Familiar pain lanced his chest, a physical manifestation of his guilt. The ghosts stirred and he waited for the inevitable chill to engulf him.
Yet there was only the remembered heat of Tamsin’s sweet body. The warmth of her eyes, looking up as if he’d done something heroic rather than ravish her virginity. And around his heart was an unfamiliar glow.
Alaric shook his head again, splattering the mirror and his shoulders with icy droplets. This was no time for flights of fancy. He grabbed a towel and roughly dried his hair. With a final accusing glare at the mirror he left.
‘You were gone a long time.’
He stopped mid-stride. He’d thought Tamsin would be asleep. Or was that his conscience hoping she’d be too exhausted to confront him?
His skin tightened as he looked up to find her propped against pillows, her hair a sensuous tangle of silk on pale shoulders. A flush coloured her cheeks and her lips were plump and enticing after those bruising kisses.
Alaric’s belly went into freefall. His penis throbbed into life and he wished he’d thought to take his clothes with him into the bathroom.
Colour intensified in her cheeks as her gaze skated down. His arousal grew, as if eager for her attention.
‘You’re…ready again?’ Her voice faltered and he winced, imagining her nerves.
‘Don’t worry.’ He paced to the foot of the bed where his clothes lay scattered. ‘I’m not going to pounce on you.’
‘You’re not?’ He imagined a thread of disappointment in her tone and gritted his teeth. He looked for any excuse to have her again, even pretending she was eager for more.
‘Of course not. You’re a virgin and—’
‘Was.’ The flush intensified, spreading over her throat and down to where she clamped a snowy sheet against her breasts. Alaric’s gaze lingered on the way they rose and fell. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Sorry?’ He’d lost the thread of the conversation.
‘The fact that I was a virgin. What’s that got to do with not having sex again?’
He liked the way she said ‘having sex’ with a slight hesitancy. It reminded him of her innocently incendiary kisses and the initially faltering yet devastating way she’d taken him into her body.
He scooped up some clothing. Damn. It was her shirt. Where was his?
‘Didn’t you like it?’ Now she sounded frosty. Good. They could do with reducing the temperature around here.
He grabbed something else off the floor. Her trousers, still warm from her body. Another reminder of the speed of their coupling. He should be ashamed. It was sheer luck she’d climaxed. Once he’d buried himself fully he’d been incapable of holding back to ensure her pleasure.
‘Alaric? You didn’t like it?’
He gritted his teeth. Thinking about what they’d done spun him to the edge of control. ‘Men don’t perform when they’re not enjoying themselves.’
‘Then why not again?’
He didn’t meet her eyes. Coward that he was he turned to scan the room for his trousers.
‘Wasn’t once enough?’ Surely his unskilled efforts didn’t merit a repeat. ‘Besides, you’ll be sore. You’re not used to sex.’ The words were brutal but it was all he could do to keep talking when he wanted to vault into that bed, tug her close and take her again. The battle against his selfish, baser self was all consuming.
‘I’m not sore.’
‘You will be.’
‘So you’re an expert on virgins?’
‘Of course not! I’m no expert on innocence.’ He spun round, his temper flaring under the goad of her lashing words. ‘Do you really think I’d have brought you here if I’d known the truth about you? This wouldn’t have happened!’
A half-smile stiffened on her lips and the bright flare
of gold in her eyes dimmed. Too late he realised she’d been teasing, inadvertently zeroing in on his guilty conscience.
He raked a hand through his hair and breathed deep. His brain wasn’t working and the words shooting from his mouth were all wrong. He couldn’t think straight. Not with her sitting there all demure invitation, tempting him.
He’d thought to kill two birds with one stone. Keep Tamsin where she couldn’t spill any headline news and sate his hunger. Suddenly, though, this had become something else altogether. The stakes, and his own culpability, had grown enormously.
There was a flurry of movement as she clambered out of bed, dragging a coverlet. Her chin was set belligerently but he couldn’t read her face. She kept her expressive eyes downcast as she walked the length of the bed.
Automatically he backed away, knowing if she got too close he’d do something reprehensible, like grab her and plant kisses all over her petal soft skin.
At his movement she stopped so abruptly she seemed to shudder to a halt. Close up her mouth looked pinched tight, her face drawn.
He wanted to ease her hurt, tease her into smiling, but his light-hearted seduction skills had deserted him the moment he’d taken her in his arms.
His hands fisted as he watched her bend to retrieve some clothing. It was only as she rose that he caught the glitter of moisture at the corners of her averted eyes.
‘Tamsin?’ He stepped near and she stiffened. Pain scraped his heart. ‘Don’t cry. Please.’
‘Don’t be absurd. I’m not crying.’ She sniffed and turned away, the bedclothes twisting around her. ‘You’ve made it clear this afternoon was a monumental disappointment. If you don’t mind I’d like to get dressed. Alone. I’ll return to the castle as soon as possible.’
She shuffled away, hampered by the long trail of material which slid down to reveal the voluptuous curve of her spine.
‘You’ve got it wrong!’ He closed the space between them till he could smell the scent of her skin and the sunshine in her hair. Close enough to see her bare flesh prickle with cold. Or distress.
‘Don’t!’ She breathed deep, her back to him. ‘Please don’t. I understand. I may be naïve but I’m not dumb. You wanted it to look like we were having an affair. To fool those other women. So you brought me here and…’ Her averted head dropped low, revealing the vulnerable arch of her nape.