Unwilling (Highland Historical #2)

Ladies at court
gossiped about soft kisses or a stolen passionate embrace.  This was no soft
kiss.  And the dark sentinel looming above her stole nothing.  He demanded.  He
plundered.  He claimed. 
    Shocked and helpless, Lindsay
didn’t dare move.  She hadn’t a weapon and the idea of fighting him off
terrified her.  The beast was obviously being careful not to sully her with his
blood-stained armor.  This – thing might have single-handedly
slaughtered a vanguard of more than twenty men.  She shuttered to think of the sordid
violence he could commit if she inflamed him by struggling. 
    Besides, this could be no ordinary
kiss.  Something happened within the demanding contact of his hot, branding
mouth.  The swirling mist surged.  The highland beasts quieted and took notice
of a new variable in the world about them.  Perhaps an alteration in the cosmos
while something as intangible and exigent as fate shifted in a single moment.
     His strong, warm tongue breached
her mouth and explored the untouched recesses.  Lindsay thought the creature
should have tasted like death or brimstone.  Maybe blood or damnation. 
    He did taste like sin. 
    Crippling pleasure paralyzed and
shamed her.  The expected anxious flutters or hesitant thrills didn’t accompany
this kiss.  It went beyond that, instantly, to a curious burning sensation deep
in her belly, radiating outward on a feverish pulse and culminating in a moist
rush to her loins.  Fear made the sensations sweeter and more terrifying. 
    This was wrong. 
    It was sinful.  But she couldn’t
stop him if she tried.  Her best chance at survival was submission.
    His deep groan reverberated through
her and then his hands were on her.  Strong, demanding fingers gripped her
shoulders, kneading them in rhythm with his mouth before trailing to her
breasts.  Lingering over their softness, his hands were gentle as they stroked
and cupped the soft mounds.  The rough pads of his thumbs abraded the sensitive
flesh of her nipples and a stunned gasp of delight escaped her.  The demon
swallowed it and answered back with a fervent moan as his fingers continued to
drift lower. 
    Here in the mist, Lindsay could
forget where they were and what lay beyond the present.  The future became a
nebulous abstract, perhaps not even to be manifested.  Only the next moment
mattered, for it brought with it a subsequent untried sensation. 
    The coach disappeared in the
consuming fog and with it, all sense of time and reality.  Perhaps, Lindsay
thought, she was already dead.  Maybe he truly did spill her blood and
decided to follow her into the afterlife.  Her very own reaper, easing the
final journey by initiating her to passions of the flesh.  Wasn’t heaven
supposed to be like this?  Clouds.  Beauty. Ecstasy.
    Stroking her firm, trembling belly,
he dipped below the rent seam of her dress.  Her skin felt clammy beneath his
warm, sure fingers.  Moist from the frosty kiss of the vapor.  When he trailed against
the crisp hairs below her waist, Lindsay clutched at the wide shoulders as
though to hold him in place.  Of course, she realized the absurdity of the
notion, but she would die if he stopped kissing her now.  She couldn’t look
into those bleak, fathomless eyes.  If she did, she’d have to admit that she
took pleasure from the damned. 
    That her soul might be as black as his.
    Not that he gave any indication
that he was finished.  He drank from her as a parched man would from an
enchanted well.   It was as though he’d never drink again, and planned to gorge
himself until he could no longer. 
    When his fingers dipped into her
cleft, he found a river of desire.  Breath escaped them both as he delved into
the slickness and tested it against the engorged flesh aching to be touched.
    Lindsay jerked against the
movement.  She hadn’t even been aware her body could produce such a sensation. 
Perhaps it couldn’t.  Maybe this searing, aching pleasure was a manifestation
of this man’s dark power.  Either way, it captivated her absolutely. 
    He barely had to move his hand, but
only to hint at a pulsing circle, his knuckle pressed beneath the tight bud as
his finger mimicked the movement of his lips.  Soon, her hips moved with him of
their own volition, riding the waves of pleasure like a horse racing out of
control.  She knew it carried her to a destination.  That this climbing,
overwhelming  pressure couldn’t continue to build.  If she could