Dream of Me/Believe in Me

I.”
    She straightened up slightly and stared at him. “You do? How can that be?”
    His reluctance to talk forgotten, he found himself doing exactly that. Ideas he had just barely thought, never spoken, took word. “No one around here talks aboutpeace. Even my brother, who has wits beyond any man I've ever met, seems to think war is inevitable. But I got the notion things ought to be different, and try though I did, I couldn't ignore it. So here I am, a warrior turned would-be peacemaker. You have to admit that sounds a little odd, and as though it weren't enough, now I find myself married …” his eyes swept over the length of her, “to you.”
    “What's wrong with being married to me?”
    He started to laugh again but caught himself quickly. A man didn't want to do that kind of thing too often. “Let's just say you affect me strangely.”
    She shrugged lightly. “Oh, well, as to that, you do the same to me.”
    She shouldn't have said that. He'd been all right up until then, holding on to his self-control, mustering patience, trying his damnedest to give her whatever she seemed to need. But now …
    He looked down again, his gaze drifting over pale, rose-hued skin clearly visible through the sheer fabric, sweetly delicate curves and long, perfectly formed limbs. His hands shook with the need to touch her … all of her … now, this instant, without any more of the maddening delay made suddenly intolerable by the knowledge that she desired him, too.
    He fell back across the bed, drawing her with him. Cymbra gave a little gasp at their sudden change of position and tried to sit up. Wolf rolled atop her, covering her completely with his hard, lean body.
    “Hush,” he murmured, his mouth tracing the delicate curve of her jaw, down her slender throat to the sweet hollow between her collarbones. Blood pounded in his veins. Hot, driving lust surged through him, making him heedless of all else. “Everything will be all right … let me …”
    He ran out of words. If he'd tried to continue, he would have been reduced to grunts. Swiftly, holding his weight above her, he clasped her face between his handsand took her mouth, parting her lips for the hard, driving thrust of his tongue. He was going too fast, knew it, couldn't stop.
    The touch, sight, scent of her, the breathless little gasps she gave, overwhelmed him. He'd held himself in check too long, wanted her too much, and his control was sizzling away like water on hot stone.
    He grasped handfuls of the diaphanous gown and pulled it up, baring her exquisite legs, the nest of downy curls between her sleek thighs, the chalice of her hips, her tiny waist…. His vision blurred, a red mist moving over all. She twisted beneath him, pushing against his shoulders, and tore her mouth from his. “No, wait—”
    He heard her but from a distance and against the great roar of his blood surging through him. The words were mere sounds, meaningless. The Wolf was not to be denied.
    The delicate fabric tore as he yanked it over her head. Heedless, he tossed the remnants onto the floor and ran his hands over her in blatant, raw possession. “Mine,” he rasped, and pushed a heavily muscled thigh between her legs, forcing her open to him.
    He was reaching to free the hard, throbbing length of his shaft from the fawn-soft trousers when awareness of what he was doing suddenly washed over him like an icy wave. He froze, staring down at her pale face and fear-wide eyes.
    Shock knifed down his spine, so great as to cause the hair on the nape of his neck to rise. Never in his life had he lost control like this with a woman, and she his wife and a virgin. If ever gentle care was needed …
    And he knew all that, understood it to the marrow of his bones, yet still had been swept away by lust unlike any he had ever known. Or at least had come very close to that.
    Truth be told, for just a moment he would have given almost anything to be in bed with a practiced whore. Thethought passed as quickly as it had come. As did the next, darker still, the wish that she really was only a captive, a slave of no account, even though he never used such women.
    But she wasn't, and he wouldn't have wanted that for her under any circumstances, much less merely for the swift satisfaction of his savage need.
    He pressed his forehead against the pillow beside her and groaned. She lay very still, small and fragile, so vulnerable against his vast strength. With a deep, shuddering breath, he forced