He stared a moment, his hard face given the gift of surprise, then threw back his head and laughed so deeply the woods rang with it. He laughed so hard and so well she forgot all about being afraid, aware mostly that her arm felt cold without his fingers on it. She felt unruly and reckless and peculiar, washed out and energized all at the same time, as if she’d been breathing too fast.
Emotional storms were like that, she supposed, although her recall was dim. It had been a long time since she’d given rein to her emotions, and her life the last twelve years had been much more tranquil as a result. Better. Truly. Who could say otherwise? Doing as she was told, stifling those pesky urges and intuitions that ruined everything, ’twas for the best. Truly. All was well.
Except for the fact that no matter how well she behaved now, nothing could bring Mamma back. Or Roger. And now Papa was dead too.
Willfulness had its price. But why did so many others have to pay?
The familiar free-falling sensation began again, and she slipped down into the Ache, that yawning chasm of despair that had cracked open twelve years earlier on the day her brother, much-loved heir to the Everoot earldom, was killed. By Gwyn.
Mamma died three months later, her heart broken in two. Papa kept on, of course. As a shell.
Gwyn’s body started closing in on itself, as it always did when the memories came. Her shoulders crumpled, her throat tightened. Oh, Mamma. I miss you so. It was a terrible accident. I told Papa that ever so many times.
“Here.”
Pagan’s voice jerked her out of the awful reverie. She flung her head up to find him watching her, the flask extended. She shook her head, dispelling the dark thoughts, and reached out. “You feel blessedly uncomplicated.”
“You mean the drink does.”
She recoiled as the now-familiar fire threaded its way down her throat, then lifted the flask in mock toast. “Aye. To simple drinks.”
“And complicated women.”
“Oh, my,” she laughed softly. “I don’t know that they’re worth all that much, in the end.”
The smokey greyness of his eyes was unreadable in the darkness. “And what would you know of it?”
“Of complicated women?”
“Of the men who toast them.”
“Oh.” She blinked. “Nothing.”
“I didn’t think so.”
There didn’t seem to be any more else to say on the subject, or else far too much, and she was feeling much too…unruly, to trust herself to do either. Instead, she took another long, scorching swallow. When it had settled into her belly in a nice, hot wash, she asked the question she’d been wanting to ask since they’d left Hippingthorpe Hall.
“What were you doing there, Pagan?”
“Where?”
Unruly, indeed. Or drunk. The look on his face should have warned her off. “Hipping’s hunting lodge.”
A slow smile curved up his mouth, but it was dark and dangerous. “You don’t want to ask me that.”
“No,” she said, her voice dropping until it was barely a whisper. “It doesn’t seem particularly sensible, does it?”
“I would advise against it.”
“Sirrah,” she said weakly, “I would advise against nigh on everything we each of us have done tonight.”
There was a long pause. “Ah, well, but you haven’t had it all yet, Raven.”
The masculine rumble was all confident, sensual threat. Peering up into eyes that shifted from blue to grey to smokey black, Gwyn had the sense she was falling. Her head was spinning, her fingers cold, her face hot. She presumed it was fear. It ought to have been fear. It mimicked fear, teasing her skin into ripples and making her heart hammer.
But it wasn’t fear at all.
“Where are you taking me, Pagan?” she asked.
He paused for the brieftest moment. “I know of an inn.”
“And I know of an Abbey,” she said weakly. Did it sound as desperate as she felt? “An inn doesn’t seem particularly…sensible either, does it?”
He dropped his gaze to the cleavage she’d been struggling to cover with the shreds of her tattered dress. As if physically pushed, her hand fell away. “I may be running a bit shy of sense at the moment,” he admitted in a low voice.
Pause, a heartbeat, then she said, “I believe I am entirely bereft.”
“Bien,” he murmured in the low kind of masculine rumble that could be threat or promise, but was definitely pulsing wetness between her thighs. Heat radiated off his body and whispered of wanting. It undulated in waves over the cape, through her dress, onto her skin. Pulse, heat, come closer, pulse.
His shoulders stretched huge and blocked the moonlight washing through the woods. Dark hair, dark eyes. He stood with his legs slightly apart, his boots planted in the earth. Around his hips was strapped a belt hung with a sword and a veritable arsenal of blades. A faint, musky odour clung to him, of soft leather, of wood smoke and forest. Pewter-grey eyes steeped in mystery long-lived and danger about to burst, she stared into them and knew within the length of his rock-hewn body was a force she’d never reckoned with before.
He was danger and she had most certainly, most tremendously, fallen.
She lifted her fingers to trace his jaw, then rolled her hand over and brushed the knuckles of her fingers against his lips. He watched, motionless, then the hot stroke of his tongue slid between her fingers.
“Oh,” she murmured on a hot exhale.
He caught up her hand, eyes still locked on hers, and stroked his tongue over the centre of her palm. Her knees buckled.
He caught her up and when Gwyn knew she should have been screaming and pushing him away, God save her if she wasn’t opening beneath him, letting his tongue spread possessively into her mouth, letting him suckle her lips, explore every inch of her, crash in on her with a wave of passion so intense she forgot she was standing, breathing, living, doing anything but being kissed. Engulfed. Possessed.
She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and hung on, her mouth open for him, meeting every passionate lash of his tongue with one of her own, until there was no difference between breathing and kissing, no space between them; they were all a single length of hot touching desire.
It was an unyielding assault. Gwyn knew nothing but that her life was forever changed. The hard heat from his thighs burned against hers, loosing a firestorm of wet heat that slid down her belly and pooled between her legs. She entwined fingers in his hair, her mouth open, welcoming each lash of his wicked tongue. With breathtaking skill, he locked his hands around her hips and gently, inexorably, rocked her hips into his.
Throbbing, perfect, painful wanting washed through her. “Oh, no, Pagan,” she whispered, not meaning the no, only meaning she hadn’t known. She’d never known there was anything like this man.
Griffyn heard his name and didn’t heed the no. Her body was moving in a subtle, instinctive rhythm and told him which cue to attend. He plundered her willing depth, plunging his fingers deep into her hair and dragging her head back, lashing her harder and deeper, coaxing her body to bend back for him, which she did, trembling, ready, until their bodies touched from chest to knee, and it surged desire through him, hot and savage.
Reckless with passion, he kissed down the side of her neck and as he did, he pushed his hand up under her skirts, sliding his calloused fingertips up the back of her silky warm thigh. Then, God save him, she bent her knee in response to his touch, and the move pressed the hot