Page 66 of Bride of Mist
When he was finally able to respond, it was with none of his usual tenderness. Like a famished wolf, he fed on her with greedy abandon. Slanting his mouth over hers. Trapping her swollen lips between his own. Trespassing into her sweet, warm recesses with his thirsting tongue.
Yet despite his aggression, she welcomed him, kissing him as fearlessly as she fought. She coiled her fist in his gambeson. Ground her mouth against his. Delved deeper into the kiss.
Lust rose faster than a flooding river. Blocking out all sense. All space. All time. The world vanished around him. There were only the two of them and this thing between them. A sort of music or magic or magnetism that bound them together where their lips touched.
Where this raging river was headed, he was well aware. But it didn’t stop him from mindlessly steering the vessel of his desire along the current. And she seemed content to embark on the same journey.
What would have ultimately happened, he never discovered. At that moment, the last remaining outlaw roused, scuffling at the leaves. The startling sound split them as neatly as an ax splitting firewood.
“What happened?” the thief asked, rubbing the bump on his head and frowning down at his torn linen shirt.
Dougal, perhaps angrier than he should have been at the interruption, snapped, “Go on! Leave! And don’t come this way again!”
The man, seeing his fellows gone, scrambled to his feet and took off into the trees.
But for Dougal and Feiyan, it was too late. The mood had been broken. Whatever had possessed them was gone now. Each unable to look at the other, they squirmed in the awkward silence.
Finally, pretending to examine her blade, Feiyan mumbled, “I’m…sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“For…for stealing a kiss.”
He cleared his throat and hunkered down by the sack the outlaws had left behind, pretending to be fascinated by its contents. “Ye can’t steal what’s freely offered.”
They exchanged glances then, and Dougal could see residual desire still glimmering in her eyes. Proof of the powerful attraction between them. Like banked coals, strong emotions burned under the surface. But in his heart, he knew stirring them again could lead to disaster.
They were playing with fire. And it was up to him to dowse the flames before they flared out of control.
It was up to Feiyan to stop this runaway cart of passion. She’d set it in motion, and she had to stop it from heading off a cliff.
What had possessed her to kiss him? She didn’t know. Madness? Relief? Curiosity?
Whatever it was, she needed to put it behind her. Only a day ago she’d planned to murder the man. Now she was slathering her affections on him as thick as butter on bread.
Killing him? Kissing him? She needed to forget about both altogether.
She should focus on solving the tragedy at Kirkoswald so she could return to her comfortable life at Rivenloch, where raven-haired men with sparkling azure eyes didn’t give her a second glance.
Despite her best intentions, her heart skipped a beat when Dougal pulled out several waxed linen parcels from the sack and smiled at her in triumph.
“Good news, m’lady,” he announced. “Food.”
Eager for the distraction—any distraction—she asked, “What kind?”
He unwrapped the parcels one by one. “Hard cheese. Bacon. Bannocks. Dried apples.”
As he laid out the traveler’s feast on his plaid, Feiyan’s gaze kept drifting back to his mouth, remembering his warm lips, soft breath, intoxicating tongue. She thought she could will away desire. But it wasn’t so simple.
Moments later, as she sat across from him, chewing on a slice of dried apple, she decided that rather than feigning the kiss had never happened, rather than pretending she didn’t want it to happen again, she needed to confront the matter openly and settle it, as she would a dispute between foes. Put things to rest once and for all.
“We can’t let it happen again,” she blurted.
He glanced up from his bannock. “What? The outlaws? I don’t think—”
“Nay, the…the…what happened between us.”
“The kiss.”
