Free Claiming Her (Renegades & Outlaws) by Kris Kennedy Page A

life.   Her lonely, windswept life.  
    I do not disapprove.
    A ribbon flicked inside her, hot and low in her belly, raising paradoxical little chills across her skin.
    She got to her feet, but could not look away from him.
    He sat watching her, the power of him flickering in shadow and light. Dark hair, pewter eyes, warrior’s body, weapons hanging across him, he was everything she knew to fear. And did fear.  
    That must be fear, rushing through her in hot, shaky sweeps.
    “Is that an aye?” he said as the silence extended.
    One beat, two. His eyes never left hers.  
    Then he pushed to his feet.
    She half-turned away. She was breathing too fast; her head spun. She could not think straight. She heard him coming, the silvery jingle of spurs, the soft tread of boots on plank floors. She curled her hand around a hairbrush on the dressing table, its gilt silver handle a cool thing of solid sanity, for this thing happening now, it could not be real.
    But it was. He came up behind her, stood at her back, not touching, emanating . He was a fire burning in the room.  
    She parted her lips to inhale, trying to slow her racing breath, her spinning mind, her thundering heart.  
    “I cannot,” she said. It was more breath than word.
    To her horror, she realized it sounded like a question: Can I?
    He bent his head beside her hair. “Your people are frightened, Katarina. Their lives have been disrupted. They need you to calm them, guide them. You and I have armies to integrate,” his dark coaxing went on. “My men…they have been too long amid the fight. They need civilizing.”
    She gave a broken laugh. “They will hardly find that here.”
    “And you.” His body was heat and hard power, a bare inch away. “You must ache for a husband.”  
    She meant to shake her head, deny his words, deny everything. She moved nothing.  
    “On occasion, aye?”
    She tilted her chin up and drew in a breath.    
    “At night, when you are alone?”  
    He tread too close. In every way.
    His fingertips touched down low on her back. “I would do my part to make it pleasing for you.”
    Her breath stopped. His fingertips skimmed up her back. He might as well have raked a hot poker up her spine, dragging streams of fire behind. Her body remained frozen as his hand slipped under the weight of hair at the base of her neck and brushed it aside.  
    He lowered his mouth to hover just above the exposed skin.  
    “Breathe,” he said quietly.
    Her breath rushed out.  
    He did not touch her, but his breath skimmed across her skin as he spoke. “You would not suffer for the union.”
    He presented it as a choice, but all would bend to his will. She knew it, he knew it; his presence was a decree. But still, he stood, restrained, head bent, a hand brushing the hair off the nape of her neck, coaxing her.
    Seducing her.  
    Inside, she felt like dying coals awakened, as when a door is opened and the wind sweeps in.  
    “Contrary to what you might think, Katarina…” Oh, he must stop saying her name in that dark, lilting Irish voice. It would make her do something mad . “I do not take my pleasure in unwilling women.”  
    “No?” she whispered.
    “Nay.” He rested a hand on her waist. “I prefer to make them willing.”
    Fire coursed through her body. “How?” She meant how on earth could you ever think to make me willing? It was a rhetorical device, a defiant query, a breathless taunt.
    He took it as an invitation.
    He pressed his knee to the back of hers and lowered his mouth to her neck, and if Katarina had thought him dangerous before, now she was educated on the true peril of Aodh Mac Con.  
    He was spark, and she was nothing but tinder.
    Hot and confident, his mouth laid whisper-light kisses across the base of her neck, raining chills down her spine, then his wide palm came to rest flat against her stomach.  
    Shock reeled through her. She made the smallest push against his arm, and he dropped it at once. He did not move