The Passionate One (17 page)

His tongue moved
insistently against the seam of her lips. She opened her mouth and the warm tip
delved deep within. Her head spun.

Her hands skated
down his strong throat to his collarbone and beneath the loose shirt to his
heated flesh. Sinful, satiny skin. She wanted more, she wanted to arch her body
against his naked flesh like a cat.

She pulled at his
shirt until he became aware of what she wanted. He broke off the kiss. Her head
fell back into the lee of his arm. He stared down at her.

“We’re near a place
where there is no return,” he said, his breathing ragged. “I am not a nice man,
Rhiannon. I’ve little honor and less restraint. This is the extent of both
noble traits. From here out I will take whatever I can, whatever portion you’ll
allow even knowing it was never meant to be mine.”

His face was set,
and his words were brutal and honest but she didn’t want to listen, hear, or
heed them. She touched his cheek. He turned his head and pressed a hot kiss
against her palm.

“It’s Beltaine
night,” she whispered hoarsely. “Nothing we do tonight counts against the
dawn.”

For one long second
he looked down at her and she thought she saw a wound within their silvered
depths. He smiled with terrible resignation. She opened her lips to ask him
why, but he set his finger against her mouth and hushed her, easing her down
onto her back and straightening up on his knees. With one smooth, economical
movement he grasped the edge of his shirt and peeled it from his body. She stared
in awe at the masculine beauty he revealed.

The moonlight
outlined the hard ladder of his ribs and played with intimate sensuality over
the muscles of his chest. Dark hair covered his breastbone in a triangle and
more dark hair grew low on his ridged and taut stomach, disappearing beneath
the waistband of his breeches.

His arms were long,
the biceps well developed, his wrists supple and powerful beneath their scars.

Slowly, his eyes
never leaving hers, he put one hand then the other alongside her hips, tipping
over the basket of hawthorn blooms as he did so and scattering the shadowed
ground with white petals. He lowered himself until his chest just brushed
against her.

“Nothing counts,”
he whispered hoarsely and then his mouth claimed hers.

He hadn’t lied to
her. There was nothing of restraint or composure in his actions, nothing
courtly or obsequious in his manner. He quite simply, quite ruthlessly lay
siege to her senses.

One arm snaked
beneath her, hauling her up against him as the other hand reached between them
and jerked her bodice down, exposing her breasts. He lifted his head, something
feral and possessive in the gaze that met hers. She should have been afraid of
his ill-contained violence, but she wasn’t. She drew a deep shuddering breath
and her breasts grazed his chest.

He looked down at
the dark puckered tips, smiled, lowered his head, and licked a nipple.

She gasped,
embarrassed and panicked by the unfamiliar sensations that shot through her.
She grabbed handfuls of his long dark hair in her hands, trying to pull him
back. He ignored her, taking the hard nub deep into his mouth, until it grazed
the back of his tongue. He drew hard on it, suckling her with devastating
deliberation.

Her gasp turned
into a moan. Sensation after sensation assaulted her untried body, pulled
chords of response from her nipple to a point between her legs. Her fingers
loosened in his hair. Her back arched. With a sob, she silently offered more of
what he’d so roughly taken.

The sound seemed to
set a spur of need through him. His hands traveled down over her quivering
belly to the waistband of her skirts. He grasped bunches of the cheap material,
rucked it high above her thighs, all the while plying her breasts with his
attentions, dazing her with physical sensations she’d never imagined existed.

Dimly she became
aware of cool night air tickling her thighs and whispering gently over the
down-covered vee at their apex. Reality spun into focus with a shattering jolt.
She snatched her hand down to cover herself.

He grabbed her
wrist, easily pulling it up and away and pinning it beside her face.

“Ash—”

His lips found
hers. His tongue plied the interior of her mouth with deep, rich strokes. He
nudged his knee between her legs. Reflexively, she clamped them together.

He would have none
of it. He forced his knee between her legs, spreading them apart, and at the
same time she felt his fingers there, at the very entrance of her body.
Mortification brought a strangled sound to her throat.

“It doesn’t count,”
he muttered against her lips. His tone was dazed and dark and bitter and lost,
but his mouth was sweet and pleading and tender.

Gently he caressed
her mound until he found the sleekness beneath. She jerked, but the movement
only moved his fingers deeper into that nether cleft. The trembling that had
begun deep within her spread and centered there. She moaned as he rubbed and
fondled her.

Her legs went lax
with the exquisite sensations he roused. He cupped her mound, his callused palm
pressing tight against her as his fingers gently eased into her very body,
stretching, testing—driving her mad. She had no idea her body could be played
like an instrument, that so much pleasure could center in as small a nubbin as
the one that Ash caressed with such mind-wrecking genius.

And it wasn’t enough.
She shuddered with the unsatisfied craving he’d inspired. Her hips lifted,
instinctively trying to force a deeper contact.

He stopped. She
sobbed and he covered her mouth with his own, drinking her need as though it
was an opiate. Then the heel of his hand moved against her, building the
sensations all over again, carrying her toward the brink of that unnameable
place. Dimly, she heard her own ragged breathing. Her eyelids fluttered,
shutting out the night sky above—

He stopped again.
She sobbed in frustration, clutching at him.

“Aye,
daor.
Want and want more and then maybe you’ll begin to know my own desire.” His
fingers moved deep within, his palm rubbing quicker and quicker. There. Nearly...
almost... !

Gratification
exploded within her, bringing with it crescendo after crescendo of pure,
physical pleasure. Her back arched, pulled taut by her crisis, her limbs went
rigid, her hands clutched into fists. And then it was over, the tension seeping
from her, leaving her sated and spent.

She felt him ease
his fingers from her. Weak and shaken, she opened her eyes. A crooked smile
twisted his sensual mouth. A mouth she could not for the life of her look at
without wanting to kiss.

“It’s all right,
Rhiannon.” His voice was soft, gentle. “It truly didn’t count. You’re a virgin
still.”

She barely heard
him. Dear God, she must truly be depraved. Because simply looking at him, the
darkness and light molding to his hard body, the moonlight trapped in his
dark-lashed eyes, caused desire to pool anew in her breasts and lips and
between her legs. She struggled up, heedless of the cool air on her naked
breasts or her hair tumbling down her back. Her eyes riveted on the bemused
expression that was slowly replacing the gentle mocking one he’d worn.

She stretched out
her hand and touched his throat. The skin was hot and damp beneath her
fingertips—as though he’d exerted himself in some arduous test. Her touch moved
slowly downward. His muscles tightened reflexively beneath it. She covered his
heart with her palm, her hand riding the heavy rise and fall of his chest.

She
needed
him. A piece of the heart he held so carefully apart. Once again she had no
words for what she wanted or why, having never allowed sentient thought to
frame the words.

“Please, Ash.”

A hoarse sound, brief
and heartbreaking. Anger or regret? She could not say. But then, without a
word, he swept her into his arms and snatched his cape from the ground. He rose
and carried her out from under the dark moon shadows cast by the hawthorn’s
boughs. She wrapped her arms around his throat and rested her cheek against his
chest and listened to the deep, even beat of his pulse.

He carried her out
into a grassy clearing bathed wholly in soft light. He spread his cloak and
laid her gently down. With unconscious grace, he lowered himself beside her.

“Can something that
does not exist be killed?” he asked her, gently stroking the tangled hair from
her brow.

“I don’t
understand,” she murmured. His fingers moved lower, brushing over her breasts.
The tips budded beneath his teasing. She could not think when he touched her
like this. But hadn’t that been her goal this night? Not to think? Hadn’t she
told him that?

“Look there,” he
said in a low ragged voice, sweeping his arm out over the moon-bathed field.
“If I am Oberon, then this is my dawn. This is my moontide noon, and here... it
counts.” He said the last savagely, intently.

Something elemental
and vital seized at her emotions, demanded recognition, but then he rolled his
hips into hers, driving all thought from her mind.

His member bulged
against her mound, provocative and erotic. He rocked his hips against her, and
desire, so lately sated, bloomed again, this time ripe and mature. She gasped
in startled pleasure. He met her gaze as he bunched her skirts about her waist and
gripped her thighs, moving them apart. Something hard and masculine touched her
center.

His gaze did not
release hers. His mouth was tense and hard, his eyes gleaming as he held
himself still, letting her accustom herself to that part of him. She moved and
the thick knob rubbed deliciously against her, dragging little moans from her.

Helplessly, she
pulled his head down to hers and opened her mouth, hungry for his kiss. Wine.
Cinnamon. Heat. Her head spun and whirled, her senses flashed and floated. She wanted
to be absorbed into his hard body, to meld herself with his strength, burn with
the passion she sensed he trembled on the brink of unleashing.

He slid his hands
behind her knees and lifted them over his hips, poised in the very entrance to
her. Then he slipped his palms beneath her buttocks, effortlessly lifting her.
His erection rubbed wet and silky between the soft folds. She squirmed, her
breath hitching in her throat at the promised pleasure.

He closed his eyes.
His lips curled back from his teeth, clenched tightly together. She watched
him, wanting more, wanting all of him.

“Please, Ash.”

Moisture beaded his
brow. His skin was dusky, his eyes savage.

“Moonlight doesn’t
make this any more real, make it count for anything more,” he said. “It’s madness
to want things you can’t afford, and I can’t afford you.” His words tumbled out
in a rush, violent and inarticulate. He dropped his head and kissed her again,
deeply, passionately before lifting his head. She returned it desperately,
uncertain why he’d stopped, what she’d done.

“I want you, Ash. I
need
you.
Please
want me.”

“Need.” His eyes
were dazed. He shook his head.

He gripped her hips
and pushed into her, stretching her. Impossibly big, impossibly hard. His
expression was taut, his eyes lost in the shadows created by thick lashes. His
hair fell in a black unkempt mane about his throat. Sweat gleamed on his
bunched shoulder muscles and straining biceps. Her fingers dug deeply into his
trembling arms, trying to find purchase against the torrent of sensation
buffeting her.

“No going back,” he
whispered hoarsely. “No second thoughts. Open your legs wider. Yes. There.”

A sharp, brief
pain. She gasped. He grated out a sound against the back of his teeth, a curse
or a prayer.

He filled her,
deeply and utterly, and held still, his arms faintly trembling, sweat coating
his chest. Slowly, pleasure returned, then more spiraling waves of pleasure.
Nothing had ever felt so good. He moved. A rich, thick slide of silken steel.
He retreated. Again. A hard, slow thrust.

Her world spun with
heady gratification. Instinctively she met the next thrust. And the next.

“Yes,” he breathed.
“Yes.”

He rocked into her
and she clung to him, riding the increasing tempo of his thrusts.

“Slowly,
eun.
Easy.”

But it wasn’t easy!
It was hard, passionate work. Her heartbeat thundered. She panted. Struggling
to reach that point again, she whimpered as it danced just beyond her reach. He
grasped her buttocks, driving deeper.

“Thoir dhomh,”
he demanded.
Give to me. “Gabh, me eun.”

There.
There. And there. Light and dark careened and splintered as pulse
after pulse of exquisite, wrenching pleasure beat through her, in her, to her
very core. She sobbed with the exquisite release of it.

Then his arms
clamped tighter about her. Again he drove into her body. His head snapped back
and he lifted himself up on his arms. His hips ground against her own. A deep,
body-wrenching shudder racked through him.