Free My Lady's Pleasure by Alice Gaines Page B

flesh there. She’d never thought much about that part of her body, but it suddenly became tender enough to sense the passage of his fingertip over each inch of skin. She held herself perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe.
    “Just so,” he whispered from behind her. Close, so close. He gathered up her hair and draped it over one shoulder. “You respond to gentling. I should have known.”
    “No one likes to be forced. Or drugged.”
    “I have no potions now, and yet you want me.”
    “I don’t,” she said, although the breathless quality of her voice said the opposite. “I’ll do my duty, no more.”
    “That’s not what the flush of your skin tells me.”
    “You can’t see my color in this dim light.”
    “But I can feel you.” His fingers traveled to her neck, to where her spine met her skull. “You’re warm, my lady. I know how to quench your fever.”
    She jerked around and stepped back. “What are you trying to prove?”
    “There’s a link between us. Invisible but real. We forged it that first moment we laid eyes on each other.”
    “When you looked up at me from the bailey,” she said.
    “I never drop my guard in battle. Never. In those seconds, nothing existed but you and me and the connection between us.”
    She’d felt it, too. She would not confess that to him, but she couldn’t deny it to herself. He’d fascinated her, even as she’d feared him. He should repulse her–an untamed male with all the usual base urges. Now free from Trey’s potions, she ought to recoil from him. But the invisible tether between them held strong, and when he took a step toward her, she didn’t move backward.
    “Ah, my lady,” he said. “My brave, little mouse.”
    I’m not a mouse. The words wouldn’t pass her lips, even when he inched closer.
    “You’ll stand and stare down the lion, won’t you, Lady Mouse?” he said.
    She’d thought him a lion before, a huge, tawny beast who could eat her alive if he wanted. But the cat in him made him toy with her, instead, as he got closer and closer until she could see a stray shard of sunlight in his hair.
    “What are you going to do?” Curse the tremble in her voice.
    “I’m not going to hurt you.” His big hand went to the side of her face, and he stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “But I am going to convince you of something.”
    “So we’ll debate then,” she said. “Like two learned priests dissecting some obscure bit of scripture.”
    “I won’t need words for our discussion.” His hand slid along her jaw to her chin, and he used his thumb to pull it upwards so that she could look nowhere but into his face. “Nor will our subject matter be theological, although it will be divine.”
    She could continue sparring words with him, pretending ignorance. He’d noticed the heat rising within her, though. This close he’d have to hear the harshness of her breathing as she worked to get air into her lungs. His own uneven breath spilled over her cheeks, and she could imagine that his heart beat at the same frantic pace as hers.
    “God created men and women to fit naturally together,” he said. “Whether the Norse gods or yours, they created your queynt for my cock, my sword for your sheath.”
    “To produce children only,” she said.
    He took her elbows in his hands and pulled her against him. “Oh, we’ll do that, my lady. I want sons.”
    When he wrapped his arms around her, she should have resisted, but in truth, she’d grown too weak to fight him. No, not too weak. Too much in need of him.
    “And a daughter to cherish as every woman deserves,” he whispered, his breath tickling her ear. It sent a shock through her, and when he followed with his tongue, a cry of pleasure escaped her.
    “Such a sweet sound.” His voice had taken a low, husky tone. “Let me cherish you now.”
    She managed to get her hands on his chest and pushed back to get some air. Useless. “That isn’t cherishing, it’s—”
    “Come now,