The scent of him surrounded her, and she craved more. More. The taste of him flooded her, and she could not get enough. Gentle lips. Gentle hands. They slid up around her and into her hair, holding her carefully as if she might break.
“Saerla.” He spoke it into her mouth an instant before his tongue entered her, and her bones turned to water. Aye, on some level she’d wanted this since the last time he touched her. The taste of him. The heat. Why had she spent so long denying it? She’d been born for this.
She abandoned the cloth and thrust both hands inside his sark, meeting hot, hard flesh. He felt wonderful and unlike anything she’d ever touched. Her fingers caressed their way through the hair on his chest reverently, and he made a sound deep in his throat. One of satisfaction.
When he broke the kiss, she wanted to protest. She drew a ragged breath and stared into his eyes, fixed upon her as if he could see nothing else.
“Ye’re a bonny, wee thing.”
His voice sounded slurred. He was drunk, surely, with the effects of that kiss. She felt the same way. A thought skittered through the mist that filled her mind, that which felt so much like a Vision. Mayhap it would not be so difficult to seduce him.
She wanted to sob and beg him to kiss her again. She need not, for his lips remained only a breath from hers.
She reached for them.
Because she did not want to breathe air. She wanted to breathe him, to take the scent and taste of him inside her. To fill herself with this man’s essence, dark and light.
Dark and light.
He cradled her chin in gentle, damp fingers and kissed her more deeply, so she could no longer tell where he ended and she began. When he abandoned her chin and moved his fingers down her throat, she did not protest. She wanted him there. She wanted him everywhere.
She did not notice when he tugged the ties at the front of her gown. She was fixed instead on the sweep of his tongue inside her mouth, like a claiming. But when his hand slid inside her bodice to cup a breast, her entire body took notice.
She drew back from him and found him once more gazing into her eyes. “Saerla. I pray thee.”
Did this man ever beg? Apparently so, for he beseeched her now. He sought her permission with his eyes and with his fingers that moved so gently across her flesh. He sought permission. He would not rend or seize.
She gave it with a sigh and the return of her mouth to his. She’d never felt a sensation like his fingers caressing her breast, caressing so gently. Never imagined anything could feel the wayit did when his calloused finger tips caught her nipple and a spear of pure desire pierced her to the core.
Nowshewanted to beg.Please.
It would not be difficult, nay, to seduce this man. To shed her clothing for him. To spread her thighs, to open herself, to seek to capture and pull upon the threads of light woven through his darkness.
“Saerla. My God.” He’d stopped kissing her again, but his lips did not leave her, nay. They slid from her lips over her jaw to her ear and down her neck. Lower still, they affixed to one naked breast.
Saerla forgot who she was. She forgot what she was, save a woman. She wrapped her arms around his sopping hair and drew him in closer, closer, offering more of herself to the mouth that wooed her.
She arched her body into him and Saw the bright, golden threads within him glow. She could give him this. Defeat the darkness.
“Saerla.” When he lifted his face from her breast, he looked like a stranger. Earnest. Humble. Anything but her enemy.
“Please.” She tried to urge him back to her breast.
“Nay, I dare no’.” His voice came ragged. “I want to lay ye down on that rug. I want to tak’ ye. D’ye understand?”
For the first time in her life, she did.
“I dare no’ stay.”
“Rory.” She captured his face between her palms.
He kissed her softly, softly, fleetingly, before pulling away.
“If I do no’ leave ye now, I will no’ be able to leave ye.”
He rose from the settle and went to the door, stood for a moment with his head resting against the panel, then drew up the bar and went out, leaving Saerla with but one thought.
She’d once more forgotten the knife in her pocket, failed to use it to end his life.
