Celtic Fire(63)

Lust surged through his veins, demanding that he claim Rhiannon on the very ground upon which they stood. He choked back the urge. Half the household could be watching from the shadowed doorways ringing the courtyard.

He gripped her waist with both hands and thrust her away. She looked up at him, a dazed expression on her face.

“Not here,” he gasped. “Above stairs.”

Her eyes widened as if she’d suddenly realized what they’d been doing and now thought better of it. “No, I …”

He forced his fingers to loosen his grip on her waist. “I’ll not hurt you,” he said in a fierce whisper. “I would protect you with my life. Say you believe me.”

Her expression changed to one he might have sworn was guilt. “I do.”

He swallowed hard. “Then will you have me, Rhiannon?”

Tears were on her lashes. He thought for one dreadful moment that she would refuse him yet again, but after a brief hesitation she nodded and the relief he felt was sweet. She lifted her hand and traced a trembling path along the line of his jaw. When she ventured too near his mouth, he caught her fingertip between his lips. He watched her eyes widen as he suckled, then darken when he captured her hand in his and flicked his tongue into the center of her palm.

Her breath quickened. “Will you have me?” he asked again, needing to hear her acceptance.

Her gaze fell to his mouth, and her tongue flicked out to lick lips already swollen with his kisses. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll have you, Lucius.”

He needed no more encouragement. Bending low, he swept her into his arms. She clutched at his shoulders and buried her face in the curve of his neck, her long curls brushing a tantalizing caress over his bare arms. He took the steps to his bedchamber three at a time, but even so it seemed like an eternity before he emerged on the upper level. Her heat seeped around the edges of his armor, causing his heart to race and his thoughts to cloud. His rod hardened beyond endurance. He reached for the door and fumbled with the latch, cursing when the simple mechanism refused to yield.

Rhiannon laughed softly and nudged his fingers aside. “Let me do it.”

The door swung open. He shoved his way into the chamber, wanting nothing so much as to fall on the woman in his arms like a stag in rut, marking her as his own and obliterating the memories—both good and ill—of any who might have come before him. He denied his craving. Rhiannon needed a tender lover, not a savage brute who would take his own pleasure with no thought of hers.

He tumbled her onto Aulus’s wide bed. She lay on her back on the coverlet, gazing up at him with eyes as heated as a summer night. Her hair was a wild blaze of fire, her tunic hiked up past her knees. His control faltered.

Then Rhiannon smiled. She lifted her arms, beckoning him closer, and all restraint fled.

* * *

Rhiannon lay trapped by Lucius’s hungry gaze. Her heart pounded as she watched his shaking fingers loosen the fastenings of his war belt. She could not have looked away for her life, even if she had desired such a thing. She didn’t. She wanted nothing more than to be lost in the dark glitter of his eyes, surrounded by a thousand stars, seeking the mysterious pleasures she knew were hidden there.

His sword and belt fell to the floor with a thud. The sound carried a finality Rhiannon no longer wished to deny. For good or ill, she would give herself to her clan’s enemy, not because she’d been ordered to seduce him, but for the simple reason that she could no longer hold herself away.

Soon enough she would return to her people and the duty she owed to them. Soon enough she would welcome Edmyg to her bed as her king and consort. That was her future and she could not gainsay it. But here, this night, in this place, the future would not intrude.

Here, tonight, she belonged only to Lucius.

When he’d laughed and touched his son with love, her heart had melted. She’d seen his soul in that instant as she had two nights before when he’d pleaded with her to banish Aulus’s ghost. His façade of cool discipline was a sham, no more a real part of him than the armor he donned to shield his body. Once stripped of its protection, he was revealed as a man whose emotions ran so deep he feared he would drown in them.

His strength mingled with his aching vulnerability drew her to him more surely than any command he might have thought to issue. A flame of yearning came to life in her womb as he stripped off his armor and tunic. When both had fallen to the floor, she sucked in a breath between her teeth.

He stood before her naked and aroused, like some virile god of midnight. His golden-dark skin stretched over the hard muscles of a warrior. Black, springy curls danced across his chest and dipped in a tight V over his flat stomach to the dark nest below. His cock, smooth and erect, rose in unrepentant glory.