Page 70 of Prize of the Warlord
I reach for him, and he crawls over me, settling part of his weight onto my body. But he’s careful, even now—careful not to compress my lungs, or crush me with all that packed muscle.
“Bond with me,” he whispers. “The healer who travels with us is a Shaman of the Bloodsalt. He has taken the rites, and he can perform the life-bonding. It will be yet another proof to the clans that this peace can work.”
A glow rushes through my heart, a joy that I don’t think any sickness or ill fate will ever be able to dim. No matter what happens to me or to him from this point on, we will always have this night, and this moment—the moment when my captor and my enemy asked if he might tether his soul to mine.
The enormity of it makes me want to cry, so to stave off the tears I murmur, “How practical of you. Always thinking about your people, and your goals.”
“That’s not the only reason I want this,” he growls.
I trail a finger across his broad, smooth lips. “I may need some convincing.”
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The Warlord rises from the bed, takes off his boots, and removes his unlaced trousers. He shucks aside his tunic—and there he is, bared to me in all his glory. The magnificent expanse of him that I’ve only been able to admire from a distance, and touch one part at a time.
“Are you going to let me touch all of you?” I whisper.
His throat bobs as he swallows hard. “Get up, mouse.”
When I try to obey, my legs wobble, tremulous from the pleasure in which he bathed me. Cronan steps in, whirling me around and unfastening my gown with impatient jerks of his fingers. Finally he grabs the voluminous skirts in his great hands and pulls the whole thing off, over my head. My hairstyle is completely wrecked, loosened and tumbled about my bare shoulders. He dismantles the rest of my clothing—corset, shift, underskirts. And then he steps back, with a quick inhale and a brightening of his green eyes.
I tremble before him, naked as I was all those days ago, when he said my tits were too small and my body was inadequate.
His length hangs limp and thick against his thigh, but when he looks at me, at all of me, it bobs and lifts, stiffening, a mute testament to how much he enjoys what he’s seeing. My insecurity softens and slides away, melted by the incandescent heat quivering through my belly.
I rake my gaze slowly up his body, devouring every bulging muscle with avid delight until my eyes reach his face.
His jaw is hard, his broad lips pressed tight; but his eyes are alight with craving. “Come here, mouse,” he says.
Slowly I walk to him, and I place all of my skin against his, slipping my arms around his waist. His burning shaft is fully erect now, pinned against my stomach. Experimentally I slide my palms lower, smoothing over his rounded ass.
His hands sweep along my back, gathering handfuls of my hair and fondling it, before releasing it so he can savor my skin again.
We were bare together under the furs on the night of the blizzard, and bare together in the bath as well, but this time there is liberty to explore each other. I draw circles on his firm rear, shift my hands to his front and wander freely across his pectorals. As my hands pass over his nipples, his dick twitches against my stomach.
He pushes me back a little, sinks to one knee, and takes one of my breasts in his mouth, licking its tip. Spots of scintillating pleasure prickle between my legs, and I whine, my hips swaying forward. My body wants him inside again, yearns for that stretched fullness. The Warlord traces a finger along the seam of me, then draws a wet line up my belly before taking his lips from my breast and capturing my mouth instead.
His kiss is brutish, demanding, and he picks me up as he rises to his full height again. I curl my legs over the ridges of his hips. So much of his enormous body is pressed to my flesh—I can barely stand all the sensations screaming along my nerves. Smooth abdominals, broad chest flecked with curling gold hair, iron muscle rolling under hot skin.
He handles me as if I’m nothing, as if I’m a rag doll with limbs to be arranged at his pleasure. His teeth tug at my lips, and I bite him back fiercely, which makes a laugh rumble through his chest.
Hands braced under my thighs, he hitches my whole body up and sinks me down, his shaft poking through, entering me abruptly. I squeal, breathless, clamping both hands on his shoulders. It doesn’t hurt, because I’m completely liquid for him, dripping with embarrassing need.
He lifts me, sliding me up until only the tip of him lingers between my folds—then down, pressing me firmly while his length rushes up inside my channel again. The giant muscles of his upper arms bulge as he works me up and down, casually, easily, as if I’m simply a toy for his lust.
The Warlord gives me a feral smile, darkness and delight. “I’ve wanted to do this with you since they threw you at my feet after your capture. You’re the perfect size to be used like this.”
“Bastard,” I gasp, but my eyes are rolling back in my head. “Maybe I don’t want to bond with you after all.”
With a snarl he shoves himself up into me, driving a sharp cry of anguished pleasure from my mouth. Then his arms wrap around my back, clasping my body to his chest. Still shoved deep inside me, he walks to the wall and presses my spine against it. Then he keeps pumping, but this time there’s more friction of his lower stomach against me, rubbing, rubbing—I release tiny desperate yelps, over and over, while he bucks forward at just the right angle—and a squiggling line of sheer white-hot ecstasy snakes through my belly, branching along my legs.
I scream, and the Warlord slams his mouth over mine, driving his tongue deep as if he wants to taste my pleasure, to swallow it into himself. As my body spasms around him, he starts to pant, heavy and helpless, into my mouth. Dazed, enchanted, I watch his handsome features tighten and shift—and then he comes with a violent quiver of his thigh muscles, his body hardening briefly before it relaxes. He presses his forehead to mine, his eyes shut while his chest heaves with pleasurable agony.
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Somehow the Warlord manages to get us both on the bed, where we lie, floppy and blissful, him on his back and me on top of him. I can’t suppress a wriggle of happiness while I stroke his collarbone and bicep. There’s a soothing relief in the rush of my skin against his, as if it’s a sensation I’ve been craving all my life without even knowing it, and I’m finally, fully satisfied.
After a while he rises, wanders from the room naked, and returns with water and fruit. After we eat and drink, he closes and latches the bedroom door, at my insistence. After all, the other warriors staying in this house could come back from their reveling at any time.
