Midnight Honor

breath at the discovery. He stroked again, deeper this time, his finger tracing along the folds of her flesh, probing the silky rifts until he heard her imploring whimper and felt her thighs tighten around the intrusion. He moved forward again so that it was no longer his fingers sliding to and fro into the wetness, no longer just a teasing threat.
    When her hips started to curl upward to meet him, he bowed his head, his mouth nuzzling her neck, his tongue painting rivers of fire along her throat and across her shoulder. His hands smoothed over her breasts, his thumbs toyed with the stiffened peaks of her nipples, making short work of the rest of her patience.
    Cursing softly, Anne brought herself up onto the tips of her toes, pressing her bared breasts against him. She reached down and grasped hold of his flesh at the base, refusing to let him thrust forward again without knowing some of the torment he was evoking. A groan brought him sliding into the tight sheath of her fist, his flesh hot and sleek with her moisture. She squeezed her fingers and held him there, rubbing herself over the smooth, engorged head until the pressurebecame exquisitely focused and his hips bucked with his own urgency.
    “I don't know,” he gasped, “if this can be done gently.”
    “It just needs to be
done,”
she countered.
    The teasing was over.
    He brushed her hand aside, parting her thighs with a hunger that elevated desire to raw lust. Greedy for the feel of her, he lifted her and settled her over his flesh in the same fluid motion that saw him thrusting upward as deeply as the angle of penetration would allow. He staggered a moment, nearly undone by the ferocity of sensation that poured around and through him, but the climax was a small one, controllable. It even helped to temper the overwhelming need he felt just to slam into her for quick gratification. She had already wrapped her arms around his shoulders, clutching at any means to give her leverage and bring her closer, but at his ragged command, she hooked her legs around his waist and locked her ankles behind. He bent his knees, putting all his power into the next upward, inward thrust, reaching a depth even he had never dreamed possible before.
    Anne's head arched back and she cried out. He stopped on a panted oath, fearing he had hurt her, but her hands clawed into his back and her nails gouged into his skin and her body strained so feverishly against him that he gave her what she asked for and did not hold back again.
    Anne's pleasure was explosive. Her orgasm began at the first stroke of his flesh and did not relent until long after he had shuddered through his own release. Even then there were shivers and tiny quaking spasms of pleasure that kept her arms locked tightly around him. She doubted she could have moved anyway, for he still held her braced against the wall, his legs trembling, his chest heaving in a ragged effort to catch and hold a breath.
    Anne did not care if they remained there forever. Nothing mattered, not the war, not the prince, not the fact she was pinned like a starfish against the mudded timbers of a small, dusty cottage. All that mattered was that she was in her husband's arms, that those arms had been shaking with the forceof his pleasure … and were doing so now with the startling, surprising sound of his laughter.
    “Sweet God above,” he gasped. “Grant me mercy and tell me why, tell me how you manage to do this to me. I was ever such a sane man. Sane, confident, noble, dignified. Look at me now.”
    Languid and drugged on passion, her thighs running slick with the proof of his fall from grace, Anne took his face between her hands and kissed him. “I do not have to look, my lord husband. I can still feel you inside me and I detect no lack of confidence there.”
    “And this demon you sought to exorcise?”
    “He is well and truly gone.” Anne smiled and drew his mouth back down to hers. “But just in case …”
    Anne was wakened by the sound of a foot thumping gently into a boot to seat it. She raised a hand to rub her eyes and saw a shadowy figure searching around in the gloom for missing articles of clothing. He had found his breeches and his boots, but his shirt seemed to be eluding him.
    “What time is it?”
    “Dawn is not far off,” Angus said. “I had hoped to be back in Falkirk by now. Hawley's pickets are a nervous lot.”
    “You are going back?”
    He glanced over, then glanced away again as if the question caused