His teeth grazed her bottom lip. Sucking slow and hard, he pulled it between his own, drawing out the pleasure that spiked her bloodstream. Fitting herself closer to him, she indulged in his heat and strength, wanting to kiss him longer, deeper.
The certainty that she would never get enough of it—of him—punched straight through her chest. Nearly panting, she pulled back, pressing her fingers to her already swollen mouth.
Green eyes held her gaze carefully, an eerily calm lake on the surface, but with a fierce current raging beneath.
No, she hadn’t imagined anything. He felt it too.
Lucan didn’t try to stop her as she backed out of his arms, then she turned and ran. “You’ll have to catch me if you want more.”
“Briana,” he hissed after her, but she’d already left him behind, not caring if anyone heard them.
Knowing he’d follow, she let her cat rise close to the surface, guiding her as she lifted her gown to duck beneath branches and leap over fallen limbs and roots that turned the forest floor into a map of gnarled ropes.
She paused long enough to remove her boots, and ran until the celebration in the meadow had faded entirely, leaving only the woodland creatures to reach her ears when she finally slowed. It would have been easy to lose Lucan altogether, making it more of a challenge to leave a trail he could follow.
She tipped her face up.
A trail she could watch from above.
Grinning, she pulled herself up into the tree that split in two, twin trunks fighting for the moonlight. As comfortable moving among the leaves and branches as she was with the earth beneath her feet, she settled herself in the crook between the trunks, one leg tucked beneath her.
Surprisingly, Lucan didn’t leave her waiting for long.
He came into view moments later, bursting through the undergrowth. He slowed, crouching to study the ground. Carrying both her boots and her sword—what on earth had possessed her to leave such a gift behind?—he took another few steps, then paused to look at the twigs left broken when she’d passed.
When he studied her tracks for another moment only to turn in the wrong direction, she called out, “Do you always tromp through the woods like a drunken troll?”
Lucan laughed, spotting her easily. “If you’re waiting for me to come up there and get you—”
Pushing off, she jumped from the tree, and found only her boots and her sword on the ground. She turned, but he was already behind her, wrapping an arm around her waist as he had at the lake. He was much too fast for a human.
“Giving in already?” His lips moved against her neck.
Her eyes drifted shut, and she leaned into him. His groan of approval made the tightening low in her belly clench harder.
The heat from his palm warmed her through her gown, and she watched as he drew the backs of his fingers up her ribs, catching the side of her breast. A yearning so foreign, and so perfectly right, pulsed under her skin in delicious anticipation.
She tipped her head back, watching him. Eyes hooded with seductive intent, he continued to explore her, his feather-light touch growing bolder until she cried out when he finally closed his palm around her.
His thumb circled the tip of her nipple, increasing the throbbing pleasure that tugged between her thighs.
“Briana.” He groaned into her neck, his grip unbreakable. He turned her in his arms, his mouth finding hers, devouring her all over again. “We should go back, before it’s too late. Before I…” He sighed, the sound caught somewhere between regret and heartbreak.
“Before you realize exactly how good I am at this?” she teased.
“You seek to torment me.”
“No.” She pressed her hand to his heart. “I only seek to know you.”
He looked away. “What you find there may disappoint you.”
She bit his bottom lip. “Never.”
He smoothed the tangled strands of hair back from her face. After running through the woods, she had no doubt what she must look like, but she felt too alive to care. A silent war seemed to wage in Lucan’s head, and more than once he glanced past her in the direction they’d come from.
She felt more than saw the moment when he gave up on whatever would have pulled him away from her.
His thumb stroked the length of her jaw, the kiss he stole from her mouth overwhelming in its intensity. If he’d been possessive before, now every place he touched felt like a predatory brand that marked her bone-deep.
His fingers snagged the laces at the back of her gown, and she closed her eyes as the material slipped down her body to pool at her feet. If there had been a chill in the air, she wouldn’t have felt it, not beneath the gaze—pure ravenous heat at its core—that held her in place.
The night seemed to hold its breath.
She moved into his arms, and no step had taken so little effort or taken her so very far.
Lucan couldn’t stop from touching her.
Everywhere.
Spellbound by every blissful sound she made, drugged by the wild scent of her—crushed wildflowers and rainstorms—and drowning in the softness of her skin, he craved only to please her, the need poised to consume him completely.
Caging her hands in his palms, he captured her mouth—so soft and lush—in another kiss that spiraled away from him. She didn’t protest the way he ravaged her mouth, didn’t question the staggering thirst she unleashed inside him.
He drank from the sweetest lips, savoring every molten taste, losing a little more of his control. Later he could kill the gargoyle who’d dared to kiss her before, but for now he sought only to sample every inch of her.
Her tongue slid into his mouth, and he fisted a hand in her hair. She nipped at his jaw, daringly playful. “How can I barely breathe and still feel like I could run for miles?” Like fragile silk over heated-steel, her voice weakened him further.
He drew his thumb across her bare shoulder, her skin so pale and delicate compared to his sun-darkened hand, rough from training. “Maybe you should run.”
“You’d never catch me.”
The gut wrenching certainty that he would never stop until he found her kept him from agreeing. He bent, pressing his mouth to the slope of her neck.
She shivered in his arms, her nails lightly raking his chest. Her fingers brushed the edge of his shirt, lingering at the hem, but then too quickly fell away. Sensing her hesitation, he tugged it off and was rewarded with a soft sigh of feminine appreciation.
With Arthur and Constantine for company, he’d grown accustomed to women watching him, but never had he felt so exposed, at her mercy, as she stood there, drinking him in.
One by one, her gaze traced the scars on his body. He’d forgotten how many he’d picked up over the years, never once self-conscious of the healed wounds—until she drew an invisible path between each one. First with her fingers. Then her mouth.
Exquisite and agonizing, each caress burned a little hotter, a little deeper. Clenching his fists, he indulged her curiosity, welcomed the satin sweep of skin across skin. As though he hadn’t fully healed, she used only the barest pressure to explore him.
Her dark head bent with every pass, her palms heating up his already feverish skin.
The girl he’d teased, intrigued by in ways he hadn’t understood then, was now a remarkable woman with a spirit he wanted to chain himself to in hopes of forever holding onto some small part of her. Love was impossible for him—almost as impossible as being so taken with a woman he hadn’t seen in years—but the knotting ache under his heart said otherwise.
Unable to take any more of the blissful tenderness that could throw a stronger man off balance, Lucan tipped her head up, taking her lips with his.
Her tongue, greedy and increasingly demanding, pushed into his mouth. With as much care as he could manage, he pulled her down, her gown half covering the mossy ground beneath them as he came down on top of her.
Lips shiny, eyes sparking with an inner fire that ensnared him completely, she stared
up at him waiting. He closed his eyes, lulled by the glide of her fingertips up his spine, and aroused by the squeeze of her thighs around his hips.
So fucking aroused.
She arched her hips, rubbing against his cock in slow, needy circles. Through the thin material of his pants, he could feel how warm and wet she was.
For him.
Sliding down her body, he palmed her breast. The tips—already hard—beckoned him, and he lowered his head. She gripped the back of his head, her claws lightly raking when he pulled her into his mouth. Rolling his tongue across her nipple, he released her only to draw her back in with a slow, greedy suck.
He couldn’t stop from grinding against her, the length of him throbbing, wanting inside her.
“Luc.” She licked her lips, and he rose up to conquer the lush mouth that was meant for him—just like the rest of her. Every sigh, every freckle, every strand of hair the color of the darkest ale.
Gripping her hips, he lifted her, sliding a palm beneath. There he could rub her ass, changing the angle as he pressed against her. Her whimper of pleasure filled his mouth, and he teased with his tongue, drawing another soft cry from her.
“I need…” Her breath caught, and he deepened the kiss, letting it spin out of control. Reveling in it. In her.
“Tell me,” he managed when he could speak.
She shook her head, but captured his hand and brought it to her thigh.
Watching the pleasure drift across her face, he dragged his fingers upward. Already damp for him, she parted her legs, letting him slide higher, through the slick moisture waiting for him at her core.
She never once looked away from him, not even when he raised his fingertips to his mouth. She bit her lip as he sampled her, letting her scent and taste fill his senses. Starved for her, his cock pulsed, the need to be inside her stealing over every inch of his body.
She wasn’t ready yet, but he’d get her there, to a place where she would writhe beneath him, her cries echoing against his ear.
Finding the slick knot between her folds, he circled in lazy strokes.
“Luc,” she hissed, her hands digging into his shoulders.
Resting on one elbow, he trapped each shuddering whimper between his lips, stretched every sensitized cry into a wild kiss nearly as untamed as the woman in his arms.
Back and forth, he drew his fingers through her wet folds, felt her become even wetter. She just might melt in his hand, he thought, her body trembling as he pushed her closer to release. Her hips lifted, rocking to every thrum across her clit.
So very close.
Panting, her chest rose and fell, her breasts rubbing against him. The hunger to move inside her, thrusting hard, raced across his skin, pulling tight. With his mouth on hers, his tongue sliding fast and deep, he traced her damp seam, flicking over and around her clit.
She moaned low and deep, her body tightening, trembling so perfectly. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, the flush of color across her cheeks so striking it was impossible to look away, giving him the most amazing view as she finally shattered in his arms.
Desperate and needing her in a way he couldn’t remember ever needing anything, he shoved his pants out of the way. The head of his cock slid through her wetness, and forgetting to breathe, he pushed inside her.
Briana cried out, and he froze, staring down at her. He should stop, he knew it, but the moment the decision to pull away penetrated his sex-drenched haze, Briana wrapped her arms around him, holding him to her.
He didn’t deserve the gift she offered him, wasn’t sure he even deserved the tentative smile that wedged under his ribs.
“Please,” she murmured, the ragged plea almost destroying him.
Sliding a hand beneath her head, he lifted her to meet his mouth. Deliberately soft, he licked and stroked with his tongue, nipped and raked with his teeth.
Coiled so damn tight, the merest bump of her hips capable of snapping him in two, Lucan surrendered to the deepest parts she touched within him. He couldn’t allow himself to fall in love with her, but he could make sure every kiss, every lingering touch, every slow thrust left her quaking inside as hard as he was.
When her nails raked his back, her hips rocking again, he pressed deeper inside her.
They both groaned, the sounds raw and breathless and like they both might be losing their minds.
Every pump of his hips—slow, so achingly slow—heightened the sensations pummeling him. But he didn’t thrust any faster, didn’t bury every inch in hard, furious strokes. If he did, the pleasure just might kill him. The brutal heat of it thumped through him, sweet and scorching.
Her soft cries bled into each other, her hips lifting to fit so snuggly against him he grit his teeth as if it would hold off the tide rising swift and sharp.
“Briana,” he choked out, locking their fingers and burying his face against her throat.
Riding the fine edge of release, he drove into her, felt the silken heat spasm around him, tugging him deeper. Caught in a savage free-fall, like someone had shoved him from the highest tower in Camelot, he held on to her.
One last wild thrust and he burst apart, pumping hard and fast and knowing somehow she would catch him, hold him just as tight.
A sharp tug on his hair, and she dragged him back to her mouth, the feral possession in her kiss a blow to the heart that pounded in time with hers.
He wasn’t sure how long he lay there, the languid strokes of her fingers down his back finally returning him to awareness. Rising up on his elbows, he couldn’t stop from crushing his mouth on hers once more, willing her to understand that tonight meant more than he would ever be able to tell her.
All too soon she would turn from him, but right in this moment, she was his. Smart and beautiful and holding a piece of him that he hadn’t planned on giving anyone.
Savaged by the depth of his feelings, he lifted himself away from her, but wasn’t ready to let her go. He pulled her across his chest, letting his eyes close as her cheek settled over his heart.
“My family will be retiring soon, if they haven’t already,” she said long minutes later. “I need to go back.”
The refusal perched on his lips, but he clenched his jaw, silencing it. Dropping a kiss to his chest, she stood and picked up her dress. She slipped it up her body, drawing her hair to one side as she smiled at him over her shoulder.
Waiting for him to fix the laces?
He stood and gripped her hips, tugging her against his chest. He let her scent wash over and through him, memorizing it, then took a step back to fix her gown. Her smile was infectious, and he caught himself returning it many times as he readied himself to leave.
They walked back through the forest, reaching the meadow much too quickly.
She glanced in the direction of her family’s tents. Cheeks still flushed, gown wrinkled and hair tousled like she’d been rolling around in the forest, she couldn’t have looked more incredible to him. But anyone she passed would take one look at her and guess what she’d been up to.
“This way.” He grabbed her hand, leading her back toward his tent, which was much closer and at the edge of the forest where they’d be less likely to run across anyone. A quick stop there would give her the opportunity to tidy up and him a few more precious minutes with her.
Drops of rain splattered the grass at their feet, quickening their steps.
After confirming that no one paid them any notice, Lucan drew back the door to his tent, ushered her inside. “There’s water—” He stopped at the sight of the woman waiting inside.
Her grin faded the moment she noticed he wasn’t alone. “Hello.”
Briana stopped next to him, confusion giving way to a guarded expression. She glanced at him, her fingers slipping free of his when he all he wanted to do was cling to them.
“You should return to your family.” The words didn’t even sound like his. The detached tone reminded him of his father and the day he’d found out he was expected to marry the woman
standing so still in front of him.
Lucan’s stomach churned, frustration and anger rising close to the surface, held in place only by the guilt that felt far worse than anything else. He forced himself to meet Briana’s eyes.
Her lips parted, understanding darkening the eyes that would haunt him for a long time to come he was sure.
He handed her Constantine’s sword. “We’ll speak tomorrow.”
She didn’t tell him to throw himself onto a pyre and burn, nor did she nod. She turned and walked away without a sound.
Alone in the tent, he crossed his arms. “What are you doing here, Gwen?”
She pulled her hood up, hiding her dark hair. “It was a mistake to come.” She walked past him.
Although he remained just as frustrated, his anger slipped away. He’d never been able to be mad at Gwen, not since they’d been children. He let out a breath. “Does he know you’re here?”
She stopped, shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
He scrubbed a hand down his face knowing Arthur wouldn’t quite see it that way.
“Do you care for her?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Like Gwen, it was all he would allow himself to say. Neither of them had any choice, their fate decided by their parents long ago.
Long after Gwen left, insisting she’d made other arrangements, he paced the confines of his tent, torn between leaving now and going to talk to Briana. Undecided, he walked outside, not caring that he was drenched in seconds.
He sat on the crate outside the door, tipping his face up to the stinging drops. Something fell against his foot and he glanced down to see what he knocked over.
The Blade of the Black Heart.
Chapter Nine
Lucan saw the blood the moment he opened his eyes and turned his head. A trail of crimson trickled from the corner of Briana’s mouth. She lay motionless on the ground next to him.
What the hell happened? Panic tried sinking greasy claws into his stomach but he knew allowing that wouldn’t help her.
The back of his head pulsed in pressure-filled thumps that beat in sync with his still racing heart. He recognized the treasure room they’d discovered in the tunnels beneath Tintagel castle, but more torches blazed on the wall than he remembered. The ground felt cool beneath him, his skin still so hot his whole body felt flushed.
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