Midnight Honor

him, devouring her in the punishing caress of a man who had allowed himself to think the worst even though he had been desperate to believe it could not be so.
    Anne responded with pure carnal joy. It trembled through her arms and quivered the length of her body, turning her blood to liquid fire. She drove her hands deeper into his hair and refused to let him break away, not even to grasp at a mouthful of air or plead for a moment of space to accommodate the sudden pressure swelling at his groin.
    A rough curse brought him swiftly to his feet, dragging her with him. His mouth stayed fastened over hers but his hands flew down to tug at her coat, to tear aside her doublet, to fumble with her shirt, and finally, with a curse that voiced his impatience as well as his lust, to rip it from neck to hem in his haste to expose her flesh to his hungry lips. Anne arched her head back, groaning like a wounded animal when she felt the suckling heat close around her breast, but when he would have picked her up into his arms and carried her to the bed, she stopped him with a shallow cry.
    Wide-eyed, panting lightly through swollen lips, she pushed out of his arms and backed up against the wall. When she could retreat no farther, she unbuckled her belt and kicked her way out of her boots and trews, then stripped off theloosened upper garments, all save for the shirt, which she left hanging open over her breasts.
    “I want you to take me here,” she said huskily. “Right here. Against the wall.”
    He was not entirely certain he grasped what she was asking, or that he could walk that far unaided. “Right there?”
    “Here.” She nodded. “I have a demon that needs exorcising, my lord, and I want to burn this into my mind so that when I close my eyes, this will be all that I see and feel.”
    Something in the timbre of her voice turned Angus's bones to jelly and his flesh to iron. He had not planned on this, not at all. In fact, when he had seen her standing out under the starlight with MacGillivray, the pair of them exchanging whispers like lovers, he had almost walked away and not looked back.
    Now there she stood with her coltish long legs bared, her body lush and ripe, challenging him to take her in a way that sent the blood pounding into an erection that was already perilously close to causing him permanent damage.
    “You won't mind if I remove some encumbrances first,” he murmured, his voice low and fierce, his cloak already hitting the floor. He ripped at the brass buttons on his tunic and waistcoat, tearing them off as one garment, casting them aside without a care as to how close they came to the fire grate. Toe to heel he removed each boot and kicked it aside. His shirt was tugged free of his breeches and pulled over his head; the buttons over his codpiece were released, an action that caused his flesh to surge forward, rigid and tall against his stomach before the unwanted garment was shoved below his hips.
    Anne stood perfectly still against the wall, her body drowning in alternating waves of heat and icy anticipation. Her eyes were all that moved, avidly devouring the glorious lines of his naked body. There were some subtle changes, she noted. The muscles in his arms seemed to be more defined, his thighs thicker with sinew, and there were more distinct ridges of power sculpted into the lean bands across his waist and belly.
    “You have not been sitting idly around the barracks,” she said, as breathless as if she had been running.
    “There are a few muscles I've not had the opportunity to exercise,” he murmured, beginning to close the gap between them.
    Because she could not help herself, she stared openly at his erection. “They do not appear to have suffered.”
    “Believe me”—he drew a breath and exhaled it slowly— “they have suffered.”
    He stopped just shy of touching her and let his gaze roam down the torn seam of her shirt. It was as bold as a physical caress and Anne felt the cloth quivering to echo her body's needs. She moistened her lips and saw his eyes flicker upward, saw his flesh take a small leap even as his hands came forward and slowly, deliberately peeled the edges of cambric aside. The fingers of one hand skimmed upward to capture a breast, the other went lower, brushing lightly over the tangle of coppery curls before slipping between her thighs.
    Anne pressed her head against the wall. She was trembling, slippery with the heat of wanting him, and she heard him suck in a slow