Lord of Raven's Peak - Catherine Coulter [66]
“Laren.” He said her name, nothing else, just her name, and she responded to him fully and with no fear at all. She was eager for him and she was a virgin.
That stopped him, and he reared back just a bit. “ Listen to me a moment before I forget who I am and what I am and what you are.” Her eyes looked soft as his mother’s butter in the dim light. She looked eager for him and ever so willing. She wanted him and she’d told him she wanted him. He forced himself to look away from her then forced himself to say the hardest thing he’d ever had to do. “Do you want to be my whore?”
He’d purposely chosen the crudest word he could, to shock her, to make her draw back from him, to make her think, by all the gods, surely she couldn’t want this, surely. She had such pride, such arrogance, surely she wouldn’t want to give herself to a man who wasn’t her husband. She was probably some merchant’s daughter from the Rhineland or cobbler’s daughter from a village along the Seine in France, or perhaps even a local overlord’s daughter from the dull, hot plains of Cordoba, Spain, but she deserved more than he could give her, deserved more than to be a vessel for his lust.
All that arrogance and pride sounded in her voice as she said, “No, I will never be any man’s whore. I want you only for this night. I want you to teach me what I should know. I want to experience these feelings once in my life, ’twill suffice me. Actually, I am not even certain these feelings really exist. Perhaps they do but only to a certain point, just enough so that a woman would do anything for the man who makes her feel this way, and then the feelings stop and the man doesn’t. But it doesn’t matter. I want to know and I want you to be the one to teach me.”
Now she was giving him permission to take her. He who should have told her then that he could have forced her the moment he’d gotten her from Thrasco’s house, that there was naught she could do about anything. She was in his power and she always had been.
Instead, he said, “What if you want to have me again after this instruction I give you?”
She was shaking her head even as she said, “Even if it is possible that I might, I have more important things to consider in my life. No, just for tonight. I want you just this once, just so I may know why I feel this way about you, why you make me breathe more quickly when you’re near, and when you touch me, why I want to fling myself against you and kiss you and stroke you with my fingers and never stop.”
He wanted to strangle her and he wanted to make her take those words back, but not all of them, oh no, by all the gods, not all of them. He thought about kissing her and never stopping, and it didn’t seem such a bad idea. He decided in that instant he would give her such pleasure that she would forget those silly words of hers—after all, what could be more important than he—forget everything but him and how he would always make her feel.
Always.
Oh no, not that. That couldn’t be. He tried to calm himself. He wasn’t forcing her. Truth be told, he was succumbing to her. He almost laughed at himself for his justifications. A randy man would force himself to believe anything in order to get himself inside the woman.
She lurched up again and now she was nibbling at his earlobe, her hands in his hair, tugging, kissing his chin, searching for his mouth, now kissing him, her tongue between his lips, probing, but not too deeply for it was still too new to her and she wasn’t certain what to do. But just the touch of her was too much.
“I love your mouth, Merrik. I’ve never thought of a man’s mouth like this, but with you, all I want to do is kiss you and touch your face.” And then she was kissing him again, her fingertips feathering his cheeks, his chin, smoothing his dark blond brows, kissing him once more after that and yet again until he was drowning in her, the feel of her, the heat of her, the taste of her.
He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted another woman, except perhaps for Gunnvor when he’d