Page 46

“’Twasn’t your fault I ran off.” She’d done better at other conversation gambits, but never under more pressure.

“I let you go.” Reaching out, he molded her breasts in his hands. His forefingers rubbed the highest point, creating a sweet friction. “You’re cold.”

“Nay.”

He chuckled, the first time she’d heard that common sound of mirth from him. “You’re shivering, and your lips are blue.”

Reaching down, he snagged the shift’s hem. With his fingertips on her skin, he raised the shift. His eyes blazed with fierce pleasure and that strange fury. He liked making her uncomfortable, he liked stripping her, and she shut her eyes to seal out the sight of his intrusion.

As if that helped. She knew his every movement. His touch alerted her as he skimmed her thigh, then her hip, her waist. As physical as his touch, his gaze sought out her bare parts and relished them, and she didn’t know now whether she shivered from cold or from embarrassment.

Suddenly with both his hands he stripped the shift off over her head. Her eyes sprang open as he cupped her breasts again.

“Look at them. They’re beautiful, and they’re mine.”

His possessiveness brought the sound of choked amusement to her lips. “So you said.”

Startled, he asked, “When?”

“When you were sick. You grabbed me and said, ‘Mine.’”

Tilting back his head, he laughed out loud. “Did I? Did I indeed?” The water was drying on his skin, each drop evaporated by his heat. “If you were going to run, you should have done it then.” He dropped to his knees in front of her.

She tried to scramble back. He caught her with one arm around her rear. In a soothing tone, he said, “I’m just going to take off your hose.”

Her hose. The only things left between her and…“I don’t think I can do this.”

“Aye, you can.”

He looked up at her, and she cursed the stupid impulse that had led her to reveal her anguish when he was kneeling at her feet. Pressing her legs together didn’t lessen her discomfiture, nor did staring out into space above his head. He was examining her, and he probably saw every flaw. After all, she wasn’t fifteen anymore.

Then he said the same thing, but with a totally different intonation. “You’re not fifteen anymore, are you? You’re not that scrawny little lass who used to follow me around. You’re a woman now.”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t know what to say.

“Aye, you’re going to give me what I want. Call it a debt fair paid.”

He said that in a more businesslike manner, and she wondered how to get him back to that other, more worshipful tone.

He sat back on his heels. With both his hands behind her, he separated her legs, and before she realized his intentions, he tasted her.

“Hugh!” She shrieked his name as if she were calling on a saint. She tried to step back. He held her too closely and used her wild action to widen her stance.

“You taste just as I remember,” he said, looking up at her but obviously not interested in meeting her eyes. “That night you gave me the fairy remedy.”

If anything, that appalled her more than his lascivious plans. “You remember—what do you remember?”

“The taste of you.” Again his tongue flicked out.

“You didn’t taste me!”

“I sucked some part of you.” He burrowed closer, using his lips to open her and his tongue to torment her.

“My fingers.” She gasped as pleasure tightened its grip on her.

He didn’t answer. He had found a place in her flesh that made her try to escape and get closer, both at the same time. And when her legs started shaking, he took his mouth away. He was done, thank the saints. If he hadn’t stopped, she would have humiliated herself by collapsing, by pulling him on top of her and begging. He’d given her a reprieve.

“Your fingers.”