Page 77 of My Hero
“Nay,” he growled.
He’d fought that lusting animal before and won, just barely. But it had grown since then into a snarling, raging beast, blotting out the quiet voice of reason.
He was powerless to resist.
With a groan, he sank to his knees before her. Furrowing both hands into her hair, he surged forward to claim her mouth.
Her gasp of pleasure fed his passion. He answered her with hungry grunts, nipping at her parted lips. His hands moved over her with a will of their own, finding every part of her soft and warm and supple.
He kissed his way toward the shelter of her neck, a starving man who’d dreamt often of this feast, and she eagerly bared her throat to him. He whispered wordlessly against her ear, and she shivered in his arms, clutching feverishly at the front of his cassock. With deft fingers, he threw back her cloak and loosened her surcoat.
His groin tightened with need as he reached tenderly inside her underdress and found the precious curve of her breast. It was like velvet, its tip puckered into a tiny rosebud. He freed her from the dress’s confines and let his mouth take suckle at the sweet flesh.
She moaned in encouragement, letting her hands move down over the woolen folds of his cassock. He gasped as she discovered what she sought through the wool, fully erect, throbbing with a burden of seed. And at last, the pressure of her fingers against him shocked him to reason.
“Nay!” he cried, pushing away from her, stumbling back against the punishing stones of the garden wall, one hand holding his cassock closed, the other across his sinning mouth.
Cynthia staggered, trying to catch her breath. Her gown hung off one shoulder, her breast bare to the breeze. But, reeling from the heady drink of passion, she was past care.
Aye, she belonged to another. Aye, she was breaking her sacred oath to God. But she longed to have Garth for her own, whatever the consequences. She’d pay, even if it meant the damnation of her soul, if he would only hold her in his arms again, kiss her, and admit his love.
But he slouched against the wall, clutching his cassock to him as if it were a talisman. His face was a study of suffering. His eyes blazed with anguish, with desire, and with something more.
Victory.
He thought he’d won the war over his emotions. He thought he could simply withdraw from the battlefield and win.
But she’d come this far. She’d risked telling him the truth, bared her heart to him as well as her body. And she had no intention of giving up the fight.
“What is it you fear?” she whispered, taking a step toward him.
He pulled back, stiffening against the wall.
“Why do you resist what we both desire?” She took another step.
His jaw tensed. He looked as wary as a cat cornered by a mastiff.
“You want me,” she murmured, moving close enough to catch the compelling scent of vanilla and wood smoke on his skin. “And God knows I want you.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, as if he could block the truth by blinding himself to it.
“You’re not a monk anymore. What wrong can there be…?” she said, clasping his forearms lightly.
Cat-quick, he turned his hands to trap her wrists away from him, searing her with a fiery glare.
“Leave me!” he hissed.
“Why?” she demanded. “Why?” She was so close to hurt now, she could taste it. But she had to know. She searched his eyes for the answer. “Is it…Mariana?”
“What?” he exploded. “How do you know about—”
“You cried out her name before.” She felt the painful prick of a blade at her heart, but she had to discover the truth. “Is it Mariana? Is she the one you love?”
“Nay.” He scowled at her as if she were crazed. “Nay.”
“Then why do you turn me away?”
“Leave me,” he snarled. “Go to Philip…or another. It’s no matter. But I have nothing to give you. I have nothing to give any woman.”
