by Selena Kitt
“Darrow was right. He’s always been right.” Her voice trembled. “I’m putting all of you in danger just by being here.”
Raife shook his head but he didn’t deny it.
“I can’t continue to risk your lives,” she said, the thought of Alistair and his men attacking the wulvers in their mountain too horrific to contemplate. She had the image in her mind of four hundred wulvers being slaughtered, blood splattered everywhere like red paint against the mountain walls, turning the stream that ran through it red. She couldn’t be responsible for that. She wouldn’t.
“Raife, will you tell me the truth?” she whispered.
“Sibyl, do’na ask this of me.” His voice was hoarse, pained.
“Please,” she begged him. “You knew Alistair and his men had stopped looking for me. A month—over a month ago! You knew. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m weak.” Raife sighed, closing his eyes and hanging his dark head. His hair spilled across his cheek, a black waterfall, obscuring her view of his face.
“You’re the strongest man I’ve ever known,” Sibyl countered, reaching out to touch his arm.
“I can’na let ye go, lass.” He lifted his head to meet her eyes, the look in them so filled with longing it took her breath away.
“And I don’t want to go,” she confessed, swallowing, feeling tears brimming at the thought. She couldn't leave them. Couldn’t leave him. “But I should go, Raife.”
“Nuh.” His jaw tightened, eyes flashing. “Ye will’na leave me.”
His words thrilled and terrified her at the same time.
“There is a woman in a village not too far from here. She was my ladies’ maid, but she…” Sibyl swallowed, remembering. How long ago it seemed now. “She found herself in the family way while we were traveling.”
“Wit’out a family?” he guessed.
“Aye.”
“Listen t’ye.” His smile was infectious. “Aye.”
How much of his Scottish brogue had she picked up? Sibyl wondered, smiling at her own choice of words.
“They wanted to leave her on the side of the road.” Her face hardened when she remembered the men denying relations with Rose, as if she had been the one solely responsible for her chastity. “I found a family to take her in. I know they would take me in, too.”
“Nuh.” His brow knitted as he looked at her in the firelight. “I can’na allow it.”
“Allow it?” Her shoulders straightened and squared as she faced him. “No. You do not allow anything. You do not get a say, Raife. You are not my father. You are not my…”
He didn’t say anything as she struggled to finish the sentence and found she couldn’t.
“But I am.” Those incredible blue eyes, so bright in the firelight, sought hers. “I’m yers. I’ve been yers since the moment I first saw ye, Sibyl.”
And hadn’t she been his, from that very moment when he broke out of the underbrush, throwing her over his shoulder and carrying her out of her intended’s reach? Hadn’t she been his, ever since?
“Raife…” She whispered his name, so dear to her, a name she spoke in her mind a thousand times a day. “You’ve been right to deny me. You’re protecting your pack, your family. No matter what I feel… I can’t be yours.”
“But y’are, lass.” He traced the outline of her hand, still gripping his arm, with his index finger. “I’m yers and ye’re mine. Nothin’ can change that. N’matter wha’happens.”
“Things are so different here.” She felt a tear tremble on her lashes and she let it fall. “Wulvers get to choose who you love. But I never had a choice. I was used as a political pawn, sold by my uncle to a man who… who…”
“I’ll not let ’im hurt ye.” Raife cupped her face in his hands, turning her chin up so she was forced to look at him through the blur of tears.
“I was born a girl and not a boy,” she whispered, remembering her father’s constant lament. “Do you know what that means?”
“Aye.” He smiled, those blue eyes dancing devilishly. “I do.”
“No, you don’t,” she choked, jerking her head away from him. “You don’t understand. You’re a man—you can do what you like. I’m a woman. I only ever had one thing of value in the world to offer.”
“And what’s that?” Raife asked softly.
“My virginity.” The words hung between them, much to Sibyl’s horrible shame. Even after all of the training her father had bestowed upon her, she had, in the end, still been sold to the highest bidder as his ornament, his brood mare.
“It’s hardly yer only valuable feature,” Raife teased. She sniffed and tried not to smile at his words. “Although I would’na dismiss it outta hand.”
“But it is all that makes me valuable to them. To him.” She sneered, remembering Alistair’s snide comments, the way he’d treated her like property.
“But ye’re here now,” Raife reminded her. “And here, ye get to choose.”
“Then I choose you.” She met his eyes, knowing if she did this, there would be no going back, not ever. And she didn’t want to go back. Not anymore. She wanted this man, more than she’d ever wanted anything. He made her want to give up everything for him, to him.
“Will you take me now?” she urged, kneeling up in front of him so they were eye to eye in the firelight.
She leaned in to him, her mouth quivering as she touched her lips to his. She felt his spine stiffen, heard his gasp at the daring press of her mouth.
“Please,” she pleaded, her lips burning where they touched his. “Raife, please…”
“Believe me, lass, I want nothin’ more.” He captured her face in his hands again, searching her eyes. “But Sibyl… what ye’re askin’… wulvers mate for life. This is’na simple matter of a man takin’ yer virginity. I’d be claimin’ ye. Makin’ ye me own.”
“If you really don’t want me….” She swallowed, blinking in surprise at his words.
A simple matter? Did he think she took it so lightly?
“Och!” He closed his eyes, pressing his forehead to hers, a pained expression on his face. “Tis not that, lass. Tha gaol agam ort.”
“I… I don’t know…” She didn’t understand his Gaelic words.
“I love ye.” He opened his eyes and met hers. “I love ye, Sibyl.”
His mouth took hers and all the feeling between them was caught in that kiss. Sibyl whimpered, putting her arms around his neck, spilling into his lap, unable to contain herself. Raife moaned like he was in pain when she tumbled into his arms, so eager for him she scrambled to get closer, desperate for more of the hard press of his chest against the soft give of her breasts, the way his hands roamed through her thick, red hair.
“And I want ye,” he confessed, breathless, when they parted. “But I do’na jus’ want yer maidenhood. I want all of ye. Yer brave heart, yer quick mind, yer very soul, lass. I would claim ye and mark ye and ye would belong to me alone. And if I can’na have that—”
“Don’t you know how much I want you?” she choked. “How much I want to be yours? Really and truly yours?”
“Ye realize what yer askin’?” His eyes were bright with the knowledge, and the fire in his gaze matched her own.
“Yes,” she whispered, knowing only that she wanted him, needed him, that more than anything, she loved him. She had never experienced anything like it before, and knew she never would again.
“On th’morrow I’ll declare ye as me mate in front of our family, our pack.” His words thrilled her to her very foundation and she trembled with anticipation in his arms. “Tonight, I claim ye as mine own.”
Finally.
Her body screamed it, her mind too, as she wrapped herself around him, giving into the feelings that had been building between them for overlong. Raife held her in his arms a long time in the firelight, kissing her lips until they were raw and swollen and she was desperate for more, something more, but she didn’t know what. She felt as if she wanted to climb inside his skin and wear hi
m like a coat.
“Hungry lil thing,” he murmured against her mouth as she pulled at her clothes, too hot to keep wearing them. “Easy now. Lemme.”
She watched, reclining on the rug, swallowing hard as he unbuckled her leather belt, pulling it through the loops on her plaid. This caused it all to fall apart in his hands, the yards and yards of material coming away in an instant. Her Scots clothes gave no resistance. There was no corset, nor a hundred tiny buttons to grapple with. She surrendered the last bit of her clothing herself, pulling her shirt off over her head, leaving her completely nude on the rug.
“Bóidheach.” Raife’s gaze moved over her form and his hands followed, tracing the curve of her waist, the swell of her hips, the gentle slope of her thighs.
“Mine,” she whispered, reaching for his thick, leather belt, unbuckling it.
“Aye,” he whispered again as he pulled off his plaid in the dimness.
She’d never been so afraid in her life, even watching him change into a wolf, as she was when he disrobed in front of her. Looking at him, rising up stiff and erect, her breath caught in her throat. She didn’t know what to expect now that they were both naked together, whether it was from man, wolf or wulver. The stories she’d heard her ladies’ maids tell had contained a lot of innuendo but not a lot of details.
“I’m afraid,” she confessed, clinging to him as he leaned in to kiss her.
“I do’na wanna harm ye,” he whispered, feathering kisses over her bare shoulders. “Och, lass, ye’re so beautiful. It hurts me heart. “
She smiled, fingers playing in his long, dark hair as he lowered his mouth to her breast.
“Oh!” Sibyl cried out when his tongue flickered back and forth against her nipple, staring at him, aghast at the sensation. Was it supposed to feel like this? She remembered watching babes suckling at their mother’s teats but she had never in her wildest dreams imagined it would be like this.
Raife chuckled, rolling one nipple between thumb and forefinger, continuing to assault her other breast with the hot lash of his tongue. She couldn’t help the low moan that escaped her throat, the way her hands groped him in the dimness, finding all the lean, hard slopes of his body, so different from her own softness, beyond exciting.
He kissed and suckled at her breasts for a long time, so long it made her squirm and cry out, begging him for more, although more of what, she still wasn’t sure. It was endless, exquisite torture, his titillating exploration of the open, yielding terrain of her body. She gave herself over to the sensation, gave herself over to him, to the flickering quiver of his tongue, to the rough press of his hands against the small of her back, pulling her into the saddle of his hips.
“Oh Raife,” she whispered, her thighs trembling as she wrapped her legs around his waist. She couldn’t stand this torture, not for another moment. “Please, oh please, I want you.”
He let out a low groan when she rocked her hips against him.
“Nuh-yet.” He kissed his way down her belly, flicking his tongue into her navel, tracing an invisible line straight down to the triangle of fiery red hair between her legs.
All of the sensation seemed focused there, between her thighs, where she felt soft, moist, swollen with heat. She twisted in his arms, his big hands on her hips as he settled himself between her legs. Always curious, Sibyl went up to her elbows to stare down at him, incredulous, as he nuzzled her sex, parting it with his tongue. His tongue!
“Raife! No!” she gasped in shock, but her protest didn’t last long.
Not once he’d drawn her into his mouth, his tongue probing like a hummingbird looking for nectar. He moaned against her sex and Sibyl moaned too, writhing on the lamb’s wool rug, hips rising against the flicker of his tongue. His mouth covered her, sweeping up and down and back again, his big hands cupping her behind, pulling her in to him.
“Oh Raife, Raife!” She called his name over and over, hands lost in the silk of his dark hair, the gentle throb between her legs mounting, building up and up, her heart thudding hard in her chest, matching the rising rhythm
Something was happening. Something strange and wonderful and beyond her understanding. Sibyl gave into it. She had no choice. The man between her legs was doing things to her body no one had ever taught her or even told her about. Her breath came fast, hands reaching for him, as if Raife could give her some relief from the delicious torture he was inflicting. The pleasure shook her body, making her thighs tremble, and then, then…
Raife didn’t stop when she cried out, when her nails raked his back and scalp at the final, sweet culmination of her pleasure, an ultimate, carnal satisfaction shuddering through her, something completely out of her control. Sibyl stared at him in wonder and awe as he lifted his head to look at her in the firelight, his face glistening as if he’d been eating honey straight from the hive.
“Raife?” she whispered, still trembling as he leaned up to kiss her. The taste on his tongue was strong, musky, his face still wet with her.
“Mine,” he whispered against her neck, his body covering hers. She felt the rake of his teeth against her flesh, as if he might truly eat her alive, and she thought she would let him, didn’t care if he ate all of her up. It might even ease this horrible ache she had for him. Even after the powerful, heady climax he’d brought her to, she wanted him. Still wanted him.
“Yes,” she urged, wrapping arms and legs around him, hanging on tight. “Yours. Make me yours.”
“It may hurt ye.” He sounded regretful as he lowered his forehead to her breasts, nuzzling her still, sending shockwaves through her body. “I’ll go slow.”
She nodded, whimpering when she felt him press between her open thighs, so hot and throbbing, insistent. There was no resistance on her part. She received him with every breath. Even the cry that escaped her throat when he finally pushed into her was an affirmation, welcoming him home. Raife stopped, poised above her when Sibyl’s nails dug into his neck, her heels into his lower back, meeting her gaze in the firelight.
The tears that trembled in her eyes weren’t from pain or fear. How could she tell him they were tears of joy at being his, finally, completely and utterly his? Raife leaned in and kissed her eyes closed, kissed the tears from them, no words between them. There was no need for them.
He moved in her and it was like flying. Her arms slipped around his neck, face buried there as they rode toward release together. Her body was taut, wound up like a lute string, a hunger burning in her like she’d never experienced before. She knew what it was like to crave this man, to spend her days longing for him, but this was entirely new. How was it possible to have him in her arms and still want him just as much?
“Oh Raife, please!” she begged him over and over, yearning for more, her body twisting and thrusting up against him all on its own, as if she might attain some sort of relief from the fever burning between her thighs. So much heat. So much delicious friction.
“Och, me love!” he cried, his motions matching her own fervor, impaling her again and again with steel heat, forged between her legs. Sibyl clung to him just as she did when he took her for a ride as a wolf, squeezing him between her thighs, feeling the hard, muscled planes of his body working as she grasped for something just out of reach.
Almost there, she thought. Almost there.
“Oh!” Sibyl’s eyes flew open, meeting his dark, midnight blue gaze. His eyes were dark in the firelight, focused solely on hers, their bodies slick and slippery as they came together. “Oh, Raife!”
She called his name, her whole body quivering with feeling as he gave one, final shuddering thrust of his hips, a cry escaping his lips as they both took one final, flying leap toward freedom, coming crashing down to earth together as one quaking mass of flesh.
She cried.
She couldn’t help the overwhelming emotion that overtook her body and she sobbed in his arms.
“I hurt ye, lass, och! I’m so sorry,” he whispered, kissing her wet cheeks again and again, and then she was
laughing, because he had so misunderstood her feeling. They were tears of pure joy, not pain. She had never been in any less pain—at least, in her heart—as she was at that moment.
“No! No!” she protested, holding him fast.
“Ye’re a dervish, woman,” Raife complained when he went to move from her but she clung to him, desperate to keep him with her, in her, forever. If they could just stay this way and lock the world out, life would be perfection, she reasoned.
“I am your dervish,” she whispered back, and he kissed her, claiming her mouth as his own, just as he had claimed the rest of her from the inside out.
“I did hurt ye.” Raife frowned when she finally let him climb off of her, looking down at the blood staining the lamb’s wool in the firelight.
“Nay, ye claimed me.” She touched his cheek. “Sometimes claimin’ what’s yers involves a lil bloodshed. Twas worth it.”
“Listen t’ye.” He grinned and stretched, his body like carved bronze in the firelight. “Yer soundin’ more like a Scot e’ry day.”
“I can be a Scot,” she mused, thoughtful now. “But I can never be a wulver.”
“Nuh.” He touched her cheek, eyes searching hers. “But ye’re mine, anyway. I’ve claimed ye and I will’na let ye go.”
“But what about…” She frowned, cocking her head at him. “What about the pack? Darrow? Will they accept me as your mate?”
“Aye.” His eyes hardened. “They’ll accept ye if’n I tell ’em to.”
She wasn’t so sure.
“Did you inherit your place? Or did someone name you leader of your pack?” She puzzled over this. She hadn’t fully come to understand how it worked, the hierarchy in the wulver pack.
“Tis a process.” He smiled at her curiosity. “We do’na inherit titles the way the English do. The leader chooses his successor, but the leader has t’meet all challenges and win in order t’keep ’is place.”
“So… your father chose you?” She wondered at this. She would have thought Garaith would have chosen Darrow, given he knew Raife’s true parentage.
