Free Deep Magic by Joy Nash Page B

mystery that was her mouth. She made a sound in the back of her throat as his tongue touched hers. Not a protest. Not exactly, anyway.
    She tensed, her palm flattening against his chest. He thought she would push him away—he’d even begun to withdraw. Then her fingers fisted in the loose fabric of his shirt. A small, helpless moan sounded in the back of her throat.
    He resisted the fierce urge to press her against the edge of the worktable and grind his lower body into the soft cradle of her thighs. Instead, he held himself still while she hesitantly returned his kisses. They were sweetly innocent gems, uncertain and untutored. Elation filled him. She had not yet given herself to her intended. He was all but sure of it.
    His shaking hand moved to her shoulder, then skimmed down her arm and settled on her waist. All the while, he feasted on her lips and rained kisses on her cheeks and eyelids. He nuzzled her jaw, suckled the spot just below her ear.
    She slid her arms around his neck.
Gods, yes.
    “Marcus …”
    The breathy, sensual quality she brought to his name fired a streak of desire directly to his loins. Lust dazed his mind. He calculated the distance and direction to his bed. No more than a half-dozen steps to the left. He would lay her on the mattress. Cover her body with his. Plunge into her sweet, wild heat.
    She seemed to sense—and approve—his fevered decision. Her kisses grew frantic, ardent. She pressed her body against his. His tongue swept along her jaw, lapped and nibbled at the corner of her mouth. A low, growling vibration sounded in her throat.
    Without warning, pain exploded in his lip.
    He jerked back. “Ow!”
    Gwen inhaled sharply, her eyes flicked to his mouth, then widened in horror. She looked as though she would be ill.
“Great Mother …
Oh, Marcus, I am sorry! I did not mean …”
    He touched his mouth. His fingers came away smeared with blood. His blood.
    She’d bitten him.
    By Pollux. She’d bitten him, as a she-wolf might nip its mate. His rod hardened unmercifully. He should have been appalled. He was not. He was unbearably, insanely aroused.
    Hades.
What would she be like in his bed? Would loving her kill him? For an instant, he was willing to risk it.
    Then sanity slammed into his brain like a load of bricks falling from the top of a scaffold. Watching a wolf turn into a woman—that experience had driven him out of his mind with lust. But taking a woman to bed, only to have her morph into a snarling, vicious beast …
    That
prospect would give any man pause.
    He’d survived an encounter with Gwen as a wolf once—when she’d been weak and wounded. At full strength, he had no doubt the wolf could rip out his throat.
    Abruptly, he turned and paced a few steps away. Ran his hand over his head, then glanced back at her. The self-hatred in her eyes had returned—it made him feel like the worst of louts. She thought she’d repulsed him. Not true. His phallus was throbbing and his stones were so tight they were probably blue. He was struck with an absurd urge to laugh.
    He cursed under his breath instead. “Forgive me. I should not have … accosted you. You’re Rhys’s sister. He’d kill me if he were here.”
    It was the wrong thing to say. She stiffened, her fingers curling into small fists. “Rhys does not command me.”
    “No. I doubt any man could.”
    Then why was he struck with an irrational urge to order her behind the screen and into his bed? He shook his head slightly and cast about for something safe—or at least something
safer
—to say. He could think of nothing, except, maybe, yesterday’s rain.
    “Tell me more about this sword you require,” he said at last, plunging headlong into the next dangerous topic. “You don’t want a
gladius,
I’m sure. Do you mean for me to forge a Celt sword?”
    “I … hardly know. I know nothing of swords. There are no weapons on Avalon—Cyric does not allow it. The sword I need … I held it in a dream. I fought