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She rubbed against the bulge in his breeches, thrilling to his hiss of pleasure. To the knowledge of her own sexual power.
He released her hands on a groan. Dragged her chemise up and over her in a slick rake’s move that had her naked and quivering, her body one giant exposed nerve. His eyes and then his hands glided over her in lush seduction—the column of her throat, her pebble-hard breasts, the flat of her stomach. Ending at the junction of her legs.
Her breath caught on a strangled whimper as she pushed up into his touch. Willed him to satisfy the wicked, pressing urgency vibrating through her. Once committed, her inhibitions burned off in a dirty passion, swamping her with a wet, throbbing heat.
She fumbled with his breeches in a desperate move to have him inside her. Shoved them down over his hips, but he was quicker. Kicked himself free before dragging his shirt over his head.
His gyrations rocked the bed. Knocked the table. The book hitting the floor with the explosive power of a gunshot. Startling them both out of their inescapable whirlpool descent into sex. He remained poised above her, Cat reading second and third thoughts on his face. Hesitation in the tension stringing his body.
And what a body it was.
No extra flesh or rich man’s excess marred the lean strength of his chiseled frame. The whipcord slide of honed muscles. The packed ridges of a stomach begging to be caressed.
Washed in silver blue moonlight with dark pools beneath his candlelit eyes, he seemed something out of fantasy. A lover born of her wildest, most erotic imaginings.
If he stopped now, she’d shatter.
She pushed a flop of hair off his brow. Lifted her head to trace the seam of his mouth with her tongue. Splayed her hand over the marbled coolness of his chest. “Don’t you dare come the prude on me now.”
A grim smile flashed in the reaches of his gaze, a wicked greed suffusing his face. His hands and his mouth creating a twisting torture spiraling up through her. Liquid fire running with her blood. The beat of her heart thunderous in her ears as he tightened his hold upon her soul.
He sheathed himself in her heat. Lowered his mouth to hers, sweeping her along on a kiss, claiming her as his own. She rocked forward, taking him deep into her. Gasping back a trembling moan. He thrust again and again in a fierce bid to outrace memory. To find release from a past holding the killing strength of a weapon. She knew, because she did too.
Pleasure-infused destruction.
Desire’s sweet tension tightened. Crushed her under collapsing wave after wave of orgasm. She cried out, clutching his shoulders. Spine arched. Head back. Felt his shuddering ripple as he found release. As he spilled himself into her. As his sated weight pressed her into the mattress’s smothering cocoon.
She closed her eyes on what she’d done. Struggled to feel shame or guilt. Some emotion signaling she wasn’t completely lost to propriety.
Couldn’t do it.
The corpse lay facedown in the mud, his bottle green coat twisted up around his chest, mud and blood spattering his buckskin breeches, a spent pistol clutched in his cold hand. Lazarus wiped his blade on the grass before shoving it back into its scabbard. Pushing aside his coat to check his own bloodied side.
The man’s bullet had broken a rib when it hit. Slashed its way through muscles. Grazed a lung. Spent itself deep within him. Pain squeezed Lazarus until every breath he took sent a shock wave reaction through his whole system. It wouldn’t last. It never did. The agony would dull. Fade. Leave nothing but the echo of its force behind. A memory of pain. Of death. Of peace.
Mage energy would have sufficed to end the man’s life. A clean kill. Murder woven with words and released on a breath of air. A coward’s way. No, he preferred to close with his quarry. Blade on blade. To scent a man’s fear. See the cleverness in his eyes. Hear his labored breathing and his curses as they struggled. To exercise the skills and training he’d learned on the tilting grounds and fortress yards. Murder might be his purpose, but he could pretend. He could remember.
He moved to catch the man’s skittish horse lurking just out of reach. Smelling death in the air, it sought to escape him as it would a predator. Lashed out with teeth and hooves, its nostrils wide, its ears flat against its head.
Lazarus allowed it to fight. Allowed it to tire.
West, the man had said. Kilronan had been traveling west, though he’d offered no more specifics than that. Belfoyle lay west, the principal seat of the Earls of Kilronan standing watch upon the coast. Could they have been going there? No, the man had seemed certain. He’d overheard His Lordship speaking. Had heard the word Killeigh. They planned to turn off at Killeigh. That way lay the mountains. The craggy sweep of the Slieve Aughty. And Kilronan was no fool. He had to know Belfoyle would be the first place Lazarus would search.
Exhausted by fear, the horse finally let itself be caught, its sides heaving and trembling as Lazarus smoothed a hand down its neck. Crooned to it until it calmed beneath his hand. A memory blossomed from the barren soil of his consciousness. He’d owned a horse like this one once. Same steel blue coat. Same fathomless black eyes. Same fiery temperament. Neirin, he’d named it.
He pushed aside his shirt one last time. No shredded flesh. No gaping hole. Nothing but a puckered scar where death had been turned aside. Even his movements came easier, the sharp edges of this recent pain receding to be lost amid a groundswell of deep-rooted anguish.
Swinging into the saddle, he lengthened the leathers. Gathered the reins. Turned the gelding’s head to the west. “Walk on, Neirin.”
Aidan woke from a tumultuous dream where Barbara Osborne’s pillowed curves and soft valleys writhed beneath him, nails digging like talons down his back. As he climaxed, her face changed. Became elven-narrow, high cheekbones, delicate jaw, flashing jade green eyes. Raven hair spilling across his chest in a shining wave. A body supple as a bow with moves to make a man weep.
He ran a shaking hand down his face. Sought to erase the disturbing vision even as his cock throbbed in frustration. He rolled onto his stomach. Buried his head in the pillow. Let loose with a string of muffled curses. He’d bolloxed it up. That was for damn sure. And what was worse, he’d do it again. Wanted to feel Cat close around him. To watch her face go bright with ecstasy. To chase her ghosts away.
His ghosts? They’d never leave. But he could bring her relief even if he found none for himself.
He flopped onto his back. Stared into the gray blue of dawn. Listened to the rattle and hiss of rain beyond his window. And rode the memory of Cat’s lovemaking from the cliff edge of Daz’s revelations.
“You need to eat, miss. You’re wraith thin.”
