The Viking's Woman (20 page)

Courage seeped from her, melting like ice with the
coming of spring
. She felt his gaze and the deep mockery of it. She gazed upon the naked gold power of his sinewy arms.

And then he took that first step toward her, and she saw that his smile was very grim and that his teeth were clenched hard against the cold, rigid line of his jaw.

A gasp escaped her. There was no sweet dullness
left now in her blood, and fear entered into her, electrifying her being. Belatedly she realized that she had pushed him far. She had fought him, injured him, betrayed him, and done her best to discredit him. Aye, she had pushed him far. Too far, perhaps.

Courage be damned, she thought. And pride and honor and even Wessex. She longed only to run and cared not where.

He took another step toward her, and she cried out and bolted, determined to slip past him and seek refuge in the darkness of the night. But she could not escape. His fingers locked into the fall of her hair, and he jerked her back to him, like a doll upon a string. She felt the impact of his body like a shaft of living steel, and she felt the furious wind of his breath against the softness of her cheek.

“Ah, lady! You think to elude me this evening? Nay, I think not. Sweet, sweet reckoning is mine at long last!” His hand snaked around her waist and he lifted her effortlessly, high against him. His eyes tore into hers with their icy blades.

Then he tossed her down hard upon the clean white expanse of their marital bed.

Stunned, Rhiannon gasped for breath, and for several seconds she lay without moving, barely able to think. He smiled at her, his eyes narrowed, and in those swift, fleeting moments she realized that he clearly remembered every injury she had ever done him, from the deadly rain of her arrows to the insult of her tryst with Rowan. She watched in shivering dismay as he continued to disrobe, his eyes, cold and blue and ageless, never leaving her face. Hose, tunic, and his fine linen chemise all left him and fell carelessly where they would lie, and still she hadn’t found the ability to move; nay, she had barely found the ability to breathe.

Flames cast their glow upon the rippling muscles of his shoulders and torso. Coarse golden hair covered his chest, and beneath it, too, the sleek power of sinew rippled gold and bronze in the play of the firelight. She tried to fix her eyes firmly upon his, but they slipped, and she began to shiver. The beguiling golden mat upon his chest slimmed and narrowed at his waist and flared well beneath it, creating a masculine mat for the powerful shaft of his sex. She stared at his turgid manhood and her throat went dry, her blood racing in a sudden flurry. She longed to scream,
to deny, to disappear into the very air. With swift-rising horror she brought her gaze back to his eyes and was startled by the hard mockery and unrelenting pride within them. There was a strange and savage beauty about the man; it was in the carriage of his fine head, and even in the blazing mockery of his eyes. It was in the lithe, animallike grace of his sudden movement as he came toward her.

“A night to remember, my dear … wife.”

“No!” she whispered. She sprang to her knees, dismayed and terrified, for she was certain that he meant to avenge himself in the most horrible way. She could not lie still and await what torture and brutality he would wreak against her.

She tried to leap from the bed. Before she could do so, he had caught her shoulders. He cast her back grimly and wasted no mercy or effort but crawled atop her, knelt astride her, capturing her wrists and stilling them beneath his weight. She struggled in maddened silence, but she could not begin to wage war against him, for his strength was so superior. Trickles of flame danced down the length of her spine as she felt his touch, bold and hard, upon her … as she felt his eyes, daggers that ripped into her, and pinned her soul as his body pinned her form.

“What shall I do first?” he inquired. “Beat you or rape you?”

“Let me go—”

She freed her hands, and he caught them again, pressing them to the sides of her face and leaning low against her. His breath warmed her lips and entered into her. She was filled with his scent, curiously clean and strikingly masculine and as alarming as his touch.
He whispered so close that his beard teased her flesh, as if the barrier of her gown did not lie between them at all.

“Ah, lady! There was a time when I had thought to use restraint! To prove to you, madam, beyond measure, that I was a product of a law more ancient than any English rule. I meant to be the epitome of a gentleman, madam, to display all the finer side of my sex.”

She didn’t know where his taunts were leading, but the deep tone of his voice was anything but tender. His body burned her. Even as he spoke, she was shatteringly aware of his splendid male build, of the very force of his hard body against her, of the searing, virile rod that nested against the gauze of her gown, and taunted her in greater measure than any words. She would have gladly died to escape him then, to escape that intimate surge of his body and the dreaded scorn of his voice, which made a mockery of his words. She did not want to feel the soft brush of his beard upon her, and she could not bear the vibrancy of his chest as his muscles rippled and constricted against her.

“Please—” she gasped out. There was a gray mist about her. She prayed that she might lose consciousness, that she might enter some netherworld where she was not at his mercy, where she need not know that he would rip into her at any moment, monstrous and cruel.

She would die, she thought. He would kill her.

“Ah, but there was a time when I longed to be civil! You had sent your arrows flying against me, you had fought me like a wildcat. But I was willing to believe
in your innocence. Even when I caught you, a woman betrothed to me, with her lover in the woods, I tried to understand. But then you danced, madam. And you sang with such … eloquence. You tormented my heart and soul. And I thought of those distant ancestors of mine, sailing upon Lindesfarne and raiding it so brutally. I thought of the battle cries, and the blood lust, and the dark and rapacious need for ravishment that is surely born within us. Rhiannon …”

Her name was a bare whisper. It might have been spoken in tenderness. It might have been just a ripple of the ocean or the hungry flicker of a flame against the wind.

Then he leapt up, but he didn’t release her. His fingers wound tight around her wrists; he dragged her along with him and stood her before the fire. “You’ve called me barbarian, and alas! The raw and primitive side of my nature has sprung forward. I have seen you in all your naked glory. I saw you shed your clothing like the most practiced harlot for your lover, and then I saw your movement as you danced. I saw the sinuous sway of your hips and the sensuous jut of your breasts, and the blood lust pounded within me until I could bear it no more. I knew that I must behave just as my ancestors did—brutal, merciless … hungry.” The last word was a deep, startling, passionate whisper. It brought her keenly to life.

“No!” Desperate, she wrenched away. But she had won no victory, she quickly realized. He had released her on purpose, freeing his own hands so that he could catch hold of her again, drawing her back to him by the bodice of her nightgown. His fingers brushed the swell of her breasts as he forcefully tore
at the fabric. The gauzy material shredded at his touch, as if melting away. Rhiannon grasped madly for the pieces of it, but he would not allow her to cover herseff. With little care and certainly no mercy, he tore the remaining material from her shoulders. She swore against him and tried to strike him, but she was too quickly swept up once again and cast back upon the bed, naked this time. She tried to rise. Frantic, she sought to soothe him.

“You are no barbarian! You’re an Irishman, a Christian. I was mistaken about you from the first! I find you are ever gentle—”

“You find me gentle? Oh, lady, you do lie!” he thundered, and fell upon her again. She was very aware of every nuance of his warrior’s body, for he was careful to see that she was. He touched her lips with his own, and she twisted, growing frantic. She no longer sought to soothe him.

“Beast! Wretched wolf, wretched dog—”

“Ah, your words are fuel to the flame, my incredible beauty! We are ruled by passion and lust, and nothing more.”

Wildly she tried to strike out, and her hands were imprisoned once again and pinned beneath her. She continued to curse him, for it was all that she could do to fight her fear.

“A wolf, a dog, a savage beast, and a barbarian!” he reiterated. “What did you intend to evoke in a man when you danced tonight, milady?”

She went still, afraid to answer him. His eyes held hers with a strange force that was as powerful as the knotted muscles of his limbs. His lip curled into a dry smile once again, and he touched her breasts, curving
his hands around the fullness of them. She tossed her head and clamped her mouth shut and tried not to cry out as he moved his palms over the soft mounds, stroking and kneading her nipples until they hardened and swelled to taut peaks. Then, in shock, she lay still, barely daring to breathe. She felt horror and humiliation that her body should react thus to his touch. She despised this man, loathed him more deeply than she had imagined it could be possible to loathe anyone. But the fire continued to skitter through her, and though she longed to scream, she could not; she could merely lie there and pray that her face did not betray her, that it showed scorn, not confusion. He watched her like a hawk, stared into her eyes, and awaited her reaction with some keen emotion.

She swore then, savagely. She strained in wild and rampant fury and dismay and accomplished nothing but to feel him more firmly wedged against her, more insinuating, more intimate. She felt his sex between her thighs, felt the ungodly heat and the savage pulse, and again she thought that she would fall into some swirling vortex ….

“Rhiannon …” Her name again, that soft and searing lap of flame on the air, whispered, barely spoken. He moved his thumbs over her nipples and caressed the full swell of her breasts once more. He moved a finger down the valley between them, and she felt that mere touch as if it were a knife against her flesh.

“Alas, I am a Viking, a beast. ’Tis what you desired, your creation. But it is more. It is your beauty, lady, your most incredible beauty. I meant to be gentle and
tender—truly I did. I meant to suffer your arrows in silence. I meant to forget that you had so willfully sought out the arms—and more—of another man when you were betrothed to me. I meant to leave you until battle had been waged. But your sheer, seductive beauty overwhelmed me. I wage a battle even now. Those eyes! They are the silver of the stars at night, and then they are the cornflower that grows upon a field in spring. They are all things, flashing with passion, gentle with laughter, evocative and cunning, and then seeking to portray sweet innocence again. And your hair. Red as fire, gold as the sun. And these breasts I touch, tipped with rose, and full and firm and beautiful. I am a Viking, so you tell me. I am savage and I am brutal. And I am on fire with lust, lady! Dying to plunge within you, to have you in blind and total possession ….”

His tone was mesmerizing despite his words; his body was like steel, his eyes like blue fire. His voice penetrated deep, deep inside of her, and she quaked and trembled in a way that he could not miss. His face was so close. His handsome countenance was dark and grave and his lips curled in contempt.

She should not be such a coward. She had gone to battle with less fear, with less sense of raw, quaking expectation. Where his hands lay against her she was shocked at the sensation, stunned by the warmth and the searing spirals of flame that were born within her from that touch. She could not bear the hot, thundering pulse of his protruding sex, could not bear the heat of his naked flesh or the power of it against her. Not for another second.

“Have done with it!” she cried. “Beat me, rape me, do what you will! But have done with it!”

He was dead still. Then he gently stroked her breast again, moving his palm upon it in such a fashion that she nearly screamed out again—with a shocking, newfound pleasure that mortified her more than the worst pain could do.