by Shayla Black
Maeve took little exception to his words, as she felt certain he lashed out at her in his hurt. A good wife would calm her husband, be an attentive ear for his words of concern, she told herself. The fact that she ached for his pain meant naught.
But his blue-green eyes held her in wary thrall. The burn of fury, tumult, and lust that appeared stunned her senses.
Determined to do what she could to calm him, she said, “I care for your home and servants as a good wife should. I do not fail to answer when you have need of me.”
Kieran pulled her against the impossibly solid length of his body. He was not the tallest or biggest man she had ever seen, but he might well be the strongest and most dangerous.
Then his mouth turned into a hard snarl she would never have imagined possible. Though his fury was convincing, Kieran was hurting. A powerful need to reach out to him, to ease his pain, seized her.
“I’ve had need of you since we wed over a week ago.”
Desire and anger roughened his voice. Maeve felt it inside her, deep where she felt his hurt and her need to comfort him—as well as her need to touch him. She shook her head, knowing she must set on quieting the turmoil of his mood. Her thoughts of him as a man, as a husband, she would examine in private, when his nearness did not distract her.
But for now, he needed this rough embrace to take his mind from Desmond and his wretched anger. So when Maeve saw Kieran lean toward her, she met him with care.
His mouth, open and hungry, seized hers. No tender brush of the lips, no delicate caress. The kiss was laden with hunger and determination. He took her, his salty-sweet tongue sweeping across her own in a gesture of both mastery and possession, his stubbled chin rough on her skin. The kiss demanded surrender. Maeve swallowed against a moan that threatened, but could not resist sliding her tongue against his.
Long moments passed filled with naught but the feel of Kieran’s mouth. The everlasting kiss numbed her mind with the nectar of pleasure again and again. Maeve reeled with the sensations—his heat, his indisputable male musk, the exhilarating, frightening ache he created. She grasped him tighter.
He splayed his hands across her shoulders, pressing her even closer. She felt the fast thud of his heart against her. She felt the change in him slowly, anger melting to desire.
Then his hands parted, one at the small of her back holding her incredibly close. Maeve felt the stone-hard length of his erection. The other hand swept the turn-back brimmed cap from her head and pillaged her plaits until they lay in reddish shambles about her shoulders.
For a brief moment, Kieran lifted his head from her ravaged mouth and stared. Gone was his anger, which gladdened her heart. But in its place burned desire so fierce she felt staggered. An answering want burned in her belly and lower, so strong. A languid weakness invaded her arms and legs, leaving her both vulnerable and afraid.
Vaguely, Maeve knew she should push him away, but she did not. Could not. What Kieran made her feel was unlike anything she had known, something that involved the whole of her body and tugged at her heart. She yearned to explore her feelings. Frightened and thrilled at once, she waited for his next touch.
Kieran groaned his approval and held her tighter, the hand at her back reaching around to cover her breast. His thumb teased the peak gone rigid with want. She arched against his hand, eager to fill his palm with her flesh, urgent in a way she did not understand. Her heart tripped at the thought of sharing herself with him, and ’twas no longer about simply easing his pain. Nay, she felt so much more.
But the tight bodice restricted him from touching her flesh. She felt his frustration. ’Twas the very one she tried to escape.
“I want to touch your skin, your bare breasts, sweet Maeve,” he murmured over her mouth.
His words hit her senses like a blast of heat, honeyed, inescapable. Impatience and need gnawing at her, she nodded.
Before she could draw another breath, she felt Kieran’s mouth teasing the sensitive skin of her neck. She shivered with something icy hot that grazed its way down her back, engorging her senses with pleasure. The same something filled her with a yearning to be closer to him, reach him in the same sense.
Then he pulled her bodice away from her breasts and let the dress pool at her feet. His hands were there to caress the taut mounds and their stiff peaks. She cried out as his thumbs brushed over her nipples again.
The sensation nearly obliterated her ability to stand.
One of his hands glided down her back, then slipped beneath the hem of her shift, to cup her bare buttocks and bring her closer. He made her feel alive, made her rage with need. Around him, colors seemed brighter, touch and sight keener.
Kieran drew her deeper into the hungry tempest by whispering, “I can hardly wait to taste you.”
And with a sudden tug and whirl, her chemise disappeared. She stood before him, completely bare, only the length of her hair covering her breasts and belly.
As he brushed the strands away, his gaze locked on hers, gleaming with approval that gladdened her. It pleased her to please him; the delight in his gaze encouraged her to stand before him.
With a primal growl, Kieran banded his arms tightly about her and lifted her against him. When he lowered her again, ’twas to his bed.
Heart pounding and breath shallow, she waited as he spread her beneath him—her hair across his pillow, her lips with his own, her knees with a nudge of his fingers.
Joy erupted within her at his insistent kiss. She fisted her hands in his hair, arching against him as if that might somehow appease her ache to be nearer. But nay. She needed more, his nearness fueling a craving to be closer still.
Kieran gave, devouring her from lips to neck—then lower.
Suddenly he took her breast in his mouth. His tongue alternately laved and flicked across the sensitive tip until a dark madness consumed her, until she felt compelled to moan.
“Aye, love,” he encouraged in a breath across her skin.
Then his teeth nipped her breast. The pleasurable friction nearly brought her off the bed. Desire thundered in her, in a way she had never imagined before. His touch brought out the urge to hold him close, give pleasure back to him.
Maeve twined desperate fingers in his doublet and ripped it from his shoulders. It caught on his elbows, and she nearly cried out with frustration. Kieran came to her rescue with soothing whispers as he slid the garment from his body.
His shirt quickly followed over his head, with only a moment’s deprivation of his kiss. But even that moment was too much for her senses. Desperate to feel more of him, to experience all this connection made her feel, she dragged his mouth back to her own—and his bare chest against hers.
The heat of the embrace intoxicated her. She rushed to stroke his back, teetering on the edge of sanity.
Kieran began fumbling with his hose, and within moments, he stood as bare as she, proud, every inch solid and aroused before her gaze. Wide shoulders bulged with tense muscle. A broad chest beckoned her mouth. His flat belly and tapering hips enthralled her.
The man was near perfect. His scattering of scars only made the landscape of his skin more varied and appealing.
Before she could comment or touch him, Kieran was upon her, flesh to flesh, the full glory of their nakedness stunning in its sensation. She felt further drawn to him as he lay atop her and brought her breasts to his mouth. As he fed himself with her flesh and her response, Maeve wondered how she would survive this ferocious desire. Would she ever be the same again?
The weighty thought vanished with a sweep of Kieran’s tongue over her breast and his hand upon her thigh.
Hungry to taste him in return, Maeve set her lips upon his musky neck, the hard breadth of his chest. Beneath her mouth, she felt the racing of his heart, demanding, violent. Happiness rushed through her.
Running her hands down the firm texture of his back, Maeve found his buttocks and urged him closer to her center, where she burned with an urgent, frantic need to join with him.
In response, he thrust his granite shaft against her once again. Splinters of ecstasy made her fling her head back with abandon. She gripped his buttocks in her hands, her teeth nipping at his shoulder, blindly encouraging him.
Instead, he lifted away from her, shifted down. He fixed his gaze on her intimate center. Part of her knew she should be embarrassed that he would look at her thus. But the lust that ripped across his face and tightened his hands about her thighs did naught but bring gladness.
Then he set his hands to her flesh, a stroke upon her hip, a dip into the valley of her belly, until his palm rested directly over her moist apex, as if to claim possession.
Maeve felt the touch deep within her. She surged against his hand and cried out. Kieran ground his palm into her, until she thought she might explode into a thousand pieces from the pleasure.
She had been mistaken. When his fingers dipped into her moistness and sought her sensitive bud with a damp touch, then she knew she would explode.
He added further torment when his mouth captured her breast again and tugged on its tip. The ache there met the ache between her legs to create a screaming demand in her belly. She felt a mass of tingles and aches, and she moaned at the torment.
Still, he kept on, until the pressure and pleasure built to unbearable heights, until the need within her became the most violent storm, until the scent of arousal hung in the air between them and their harsh breathing echoed off the walls.
Nay, she would not lie prone and still whilst he drove her to oblivion. She would give pleasure back to him.
She reached forth and took his manhood in her grasp.
He stiffened. His breathing staggered. A groan spilled from his mouth, tortured and labored. Satisfied with her efforts, she stroked his flesh again, taking note of his ample size, his velvet-hard skin.
Kieran redoubled his efforts to her body, rubbing her hard center with a pair of fingers, leaving her reeling and shivering. Her thighs tensed and her body shook. A sob caught in her throat. Kieran’s tongue laving her breast in long strokes released the sound.
She began to quiver and writhe beneath him. The pleasure turned urgent, jagged. Maeve felt on the brink of something new, something that clawed its way into her until she knew naught but satisfying it.
Then that need exploded. The sharp edge of desire tore through her, filling her with fluid pleasure, the likes of which she had not known possible.
“Kieran!” she cried.
He answered with another tug of his mouth on her breast.
Another dart of pleasure arrowed through her.
Endless moments later, her body pulsed with satisfaction and languor, yet hummed with something new, as if Kieran had brought her to life. She did not pause to examine her joy that he had been the one to give her these sensations.
“You said my name,” he whispered in a raspy voice as he lay fully atop her and spread her knees wide with his own.
“Aye,” she whispered, lifting her hips to him in offering.
“Say it again.”
“Kieran.” She stared up into the depths of his eyes, gleaming a wicked blue-green with approval. “Kieran.”
“Maeve,” he groaned.
His eyes slid shut and the tip of his manhood found her portal. He surged against her once, and she felt her tight sheath take a portion of his length. But he was thick and long, and Maeve wondered if her body could accommodate him. Disappointment and a sense of panic scathed her. The thought of not fully joining with him was almost an ache.
Again, he moved within her, tempting her body to take more of him. The solid feel of him, of his heat, nearly made her stagger with new want.
Above her, he let out a deep breath. “A little more, love. Relax for me.”
She met his searing gaze. “I-I do not know if I can—”
“You can,” he vowed, then took her hips in his grip and tilted her a bit more toward him.
Then he took her mouth in a slow coupling that turned her blood to mulled wine, a kiss that assured her all would be well.
He sank into her further, and she welcomed him.
Inch by inch he slid into her. When she thought she could take no more, she did. Maeve felt filled, bursting with the pulsing evidence of Kieran’s need. And still his mouth indulged in a slow tasting of hers, sensitizing her to the feel of him everywhere as he slid farther into her body.
With one last stroke, he pressed his full length inside her and groaned. She met him with an arch of her back.
Shadows whispered across Kieran’s golden flesh as dusk settled in the chamber. He pressed into her once more, this time with more urgency. The sound of his ragged breath in her ear and the tense feel of his body bespoke his control.
Maeve wanted him to lose that control for her.
She pressed her mouth to his and let her hands roam freely upon the broad plane of his back, down his hips, where she urged him on. Rocking her hips beneath him earned her a groaned warning that filled her with delight.
“Maeve, do not make me finish this too soon.”
“I wish to ease and pleasure you,” she breathed.
He plunged into her again and moaned her name. “You are not ready yet.”
Before she could argue, he began a fluid rhythm, his body increasing the pressure, the pleasure. She burned with the fever again, this time stronger than before.
As he filled her in long, quick strokes, Maeve moved beneath him, sensing another peak was near, this one savage in its strength. She felt as if she were drowning, mercy to the strength of rapture. And through it all, her sense of some invisible bond to him grew.
Suddenly, Kieran rolled to his back, taking her with him, never leaving her. She straddled him, her breasts taut and visible between them. And still he pressed into her, stroking her, driving her.
He found the center of her pleasure again, and dragged both his fingers across her aroused tip. The sensation astounded her. Blood roared in her ears, hammering her senses with pleasure. She felt helpless and unprepared as he thrust into her again, transforming the brink of satisfaction into a pool of it, thick and addicting and joy filled.
She felt herself pulse around him, gripping his shaft again. A moment later, he stiffened, surged hard into her, and cried out, fingers digging into her hips.
Maeve watched as, teeth clenched, Kieran spilled himself deep inside her. Then he stilled and opened his eyes, his lids heavy, his eyes blue-green pools of satisfaction.
Her heart seemed to explode with tenderness.
Still, Kieran held her. And Maeve felt as if she belonged here, with him inside her. She did not question it when he pulled her into an embrace, a melding of slick skin and beating hearts.
She had wanted this in her union with Quaid, but never felt thus. This sense of belonging she had sought her whole life she now found in the arms of her English husband.
“Sweet Maeve,” he breathed, still panting. “Did I hurt you?”
Concern. In the wake of his pleasure, he held concern for her. Somehow she had expected the conqueror to swagger with triumph. That he did not surprised her and touched her more.
Battling a prickling of tears at her sudden happiness, her sudden sense of being complete, she nodded. “You hurt me not at all. I felt only more pleasure than I knew possible.”
He sighed with seeming relief. “I meant not to be rough, but you—your body—’twas clenched so tight, as if it knew not what to do.”
Maeve flushed. “Quaid… We shared a bed but once.”
Surprise flashed briefly across his face at her whisper. Then he pulled her closer in his arms. “I vow that will not be the last time I share yours.”
Part of Maeve knew she should protest, should point out that naught had changed, that he was still the enemy. But he did not feel like the enemy now, with his warm skin damp against her own. He felt like a husband, a lover, a man she could no more stay away from than she could stop her heart from beating. He seemed thoroughly vital to her in so many ways.<
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She swallowed. “I am agreeable.”
At that, he smiled. “Are you, now? I am not surprised.”
His confidence was both galling and appealing. Maeve did not remember ever feeling so much confusion. She glared at him.
His smile slipped. “Do not frown at me. I assure you that, as amenable as you may be to sharing a bed again, I’m twice as eager to get there.”
Maeve felt a shadow of a smile creep across her mouth. “’Tis I who am not surprised.”
And he laughed, a right, hearty chuckle that echoed off the stone walls and shook the bed. Maeve found herself laughing with him, a lingering glow of warmth settling over her.
Kieran held her tight as the laughter subsided. Silence took over until he whispered, “I’m sorry I yelled at you earlier.”
Maeve sobered. “Your father angered you.”
He hesitated, then reluctantly nodded.
“Why did he come?”
His expression turned blank, flat. “He wanted my help with the rebellion.”
She stiffened in shock. She’d always known Desmond to be bold, but that request went to brazen and beyond.
“You said him nay?” She touched his shoulder in comfort.
“And told him to leave Langmore.”
Kieran’s voice and his earlier actions told her O’Neill had hurt him. Maeve held him closer, stroking his back.
“The worst part, Maeve,” he whispered against her neck, tense beneath her. “The man came here, after all these years, not to be a father but to be a rebel. He never once asked how my life has been since I last saw him.”
Kieran would not cry, but somehow Maeve wanted to do it for him. She squeezed him tight, offering her silent support. A million questions about the past raced to mind, but she said naught. ’Twas not the time.
He kissed her temple, softly caressing her back until he drifted to sleep. And he looked so peaceful in repose. Maeve found herself wishing that kind of peace for him always.
