Lion's Bride - Iris Johansen [71]
“I’ve not seen any sign that you wish to right this sin with other women.”
“I spilled my seed in you. I tried to stop, but I could not—” He buried his face in her hair. His voice was muffled. “And I’ll do it again and again. For I will not send you away from my bed.”
“Then accept it.” She yawned. “As I have.”
“You accept it because you don’t know what—”
Her patience was at an end. She reached down and grabbed him, tight. “Accept it or I’ll—”
“I’ll accept it,” he said, alarmed.
Her grasp loosened.
He drew a sigh of relief. “You’re a woman with neither shyness nor delicacy. A lady should not touch that part of a man without invitation and certainly not with roughness.”
“You’re a stubborn brute, and delicacy would not have stopped you.”
He chuckled. “True enough. You certainly got my attention.” He drew her close. “But don’t do it again.”
She did not answer. She had no intention of consenting to behave in a manner foreign to her nature, but she was in no mood for conflict.
He did not speak for a long time. “We…fit.”
“I didn’t think you would at first.”
“No, I mean…” He released her and turned on his side away from her. “I don’t know what I mean. Nothing, I suppose. Go to sleep.”
She wanted him to hold her again. She didn’t move for a moment and then rolled closer and slid her arms about his middle, pressing her breasts to his back. That was better, not as good as before, but better.
“What are you doing?”
“I like this, and since you already know I have no delicacy…” She rubbed her cheek back and forth along his shoulder blade as if to soften the edge. “But don’t roll over. You’ll crush me.”
“Nothing could crush you.” He hesitated, then turned around again and drew her back into his arms. “Now will you go to sleep?”
“Yes.” She was already half-asleep as she curled closer to him. “I feel safer now…I don’t like being alone.”
I feel safer now.
But she was not safe. She would never be safe again, and he knew it was his fault. He had taken what she offered with only token resistance, and now she was more at risk than before.
Christ, what else could he have done? He had wanted her from the beginning. But he had put lust behind him a hundred times in the last weeks. He could have done it one more time. He could have picked her up and carried her to her own chamber and locked the door. She was only a woman, with a woman’s strength. He forgot that truth sometimes when she matched him word for word and will for will. Now, sleeping in his arms, she seemed as small and fragile as a child.
But it had been a woman he had taken earlier. She had been full of lust, vigorous passion stronger than any he had known before.
He wanted it again. He could feel himself harden as he remembered the way she had met him thrust for thrust, her cries as he had—
He deliberately blanked out the memory. Not now. Let her rest. She had been a virgin and—
Jesus, he had not treated her as a virgin. She had deserved better than to be glared at and blamed with rough words. What did he know of virgins? It was her fault. She should have stayed away from him.
He was blaming her again, he realized. Blaming her because it was too painful to blame himself for taking what he wanted.
It might not be too late. It could be she was not with child. He could behave with knightly honor and tell her he would stay safely at Dundragon and she need no longer come to his bed.
But it would be a lie, he thought bitterly. It seemed he had no honor at all where she was concerned. Only desire and obsession and the compulsion to seize every moment he could before she was taken away from him. Oh, no, there was no question he would couple with her as frequently as she would let him.
But there must be some way of protecting her. She was his now. She must live, even if he did not. He would find a way to make her safe.
Thea stirred and murmured something beneath her breath. Was she dreaming? He prayed the dreams were good and not the nightmares he endured each