Page 84 of Bride of Mist
“You couldn’t?”
He shook his head. Some hostage-taker he’d proved to be. And yet how could he do her harm now?
How could he bruise the lass who had gifted him with her maidenhood?
How could he batter the woman whose body had collided with his in the throes of passion?
How could he hold a dagger to the throat where her pulse had beat in lusty tandem with his?
“Ne’er,” he confirmed.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized that meant she was useless as a hostage. He had to let her go.
But in the next moment, as she bit her lip and ran a fingertip down the center of his chest, his good intentions scattered like chaff in the wind.
When she brushed her knuckles across his stomach, his mind turned to one thing, and one thing only.
By the time her fingers reached the lance between his legs, it was already primed and ready to charge.
Chapter 22
Dougal was right.
As incredible as it seemed to Feiyan, their second coupling was even better than the first.
He proceeded slowly this time, stirring her with tender kisses and titillating caresses.
He tormented her flesh with his tongue, nibbling his way up her neck. Circling the crevices of her ears. Suckling sensuously at her fingers. Bathing the sensitive backs of her knees.
She ached between her legs. But it wasn’t an ache of pain. It was an ache of need. A sharp craving for the relief he could give her.
Once she tried to reach for him, eager to seize his dagger and plunge it into her body.
But he refused her with a throaty chuckle, drawing out her torture just a little more.
When he finally claimed her lips again, she returned his kiss with such frenzied fervor that he had to press her back down onto the pallet.
“Easy, lass,” he murmured. “Soon enough.”
Then he made a trail of kisses along her jaw, down her throat, across her bosom.
She arched in anticipation as he neared the delicate crest of her breast.
When he closed his mouth over her nipple, she moaned at the lovely sensation and felt a warm wave of longing gush through her, intensifying the throbbing betwixt her thighs.
But when he moved to her other breast, he simultaneously swept his hand down, separating her curls with his fingers, to touch the swollen nubbin at the apex of her desire.
She sobbed out, grinding against his hand, demanding relief.
Then, and only then, when her body was begging for satisfaction, did he finally give it to her.
With a groan that was half command and half surrender, he parted her nether lips, sliding his shaft into her hollow. Delving into her waiting wetness. And drawing a throaty gasp from her. Not of pain this time. But of pleasure.
Together they tussled, sweating with effort, shivering with need, gliding with heavenly friction toward the ecstasy awaiting them.
This time, when her body braced for release and she felt the fuse of their union sizzle and flare with white light, she opened her eyes to gaze up at him.
His expression—of agony and rapture, triumph and despair, power and vulnerability—touched her so deeply that she soared to a place beyond anything she’d ever imagined. A place where not only their bodies—but their souls—reveled in exquisite harmony. Where, like the ores of two metals, they were forged inextricably together.
