It was that flash of grin she caught from the corner of her eye that did it. Brilliant white teeth in a rogue's smile that could have bewitched any feminine heart from a dozen paces. The smile made her give a savage tug on the boot. It came free and tumbled her backward. She fell in a heap on the bedroom floor.
The corners of Aidan's eyes crinkled, and she could see him make a manful effort not to burst into gales of laughter. Instead, he said in tones of the most tender concern, "Did you wound yourself, my love, landing on your... er, delicate parts? Poor angel, may I kiss it and make it better?"
"You're impossible!" Norah said, flinging the boot at him. "From now on, any item you care to wager you may remove yourself. Now play!"
It was scandalous. It was embarrassing. It was treacherously exciting, matching wits with Aidan at cards. Tricks were won and lost, games disputed as if the safety of the throne depended on them.
But as Aidan's rein-toughened fingers dipped again and again into the bodice of Norah's nightgown, the vee of silky bared skin growing alarmingly wide, Aidan's cynical banter and Norah's bouts of outrage faded into something more subtle, more dangerous, more enticing.
Time and again Norah caught those green eyes clinging to the wedge of her skin, tracing the curves of her breasts, visible through the gap. Twice she saw his tongue steal out, to moisten lips that seemed parched, thirsting for something other than brandy or wine.
When he won yet another trick, Norah's voice was unsteady as she said, "We cannot play anymore. I—I have run out of buttons."
Dark lashes, thick and curling, dipped to half mast over those relentlessly masculine eyes. "Then I rest my case. Men are superior to females in games that require higher intellect. Of course, we could raise the stakes."
Norah wondered how far he could push this game. What wager would he demand of her after they had played three or four more hands of cards?
"This time," he said, fingering his own half-opened shirt, where the crisp mat of dark hair was visible against the stark white linen. "This time I shall be magnanimous. I shall let your forfeit be my shirt."
"Your shirt? But I don't—don't want you to—"
"To strip my shirt off?" He looked at her with demonic guilelessness. "As you wish, my sweet. I was only attempting to do you a kindness. I was quite certain you would rather have me strip off my shirt than slip your nightgown down your shoulders, across your breasts."
Those hot words made her feel as if her skin were already bare to his gaze. She could picture all too clearly those big hands unveiling her breasts, those intense green eyes devouring the velvety pale mounds, lingering on the vulnerable coral tips of her nipples with earthy delight. Most horrifying of all, she was entranced by the idea, compelled by it, appalled because he had made her such a wanton that some secret part of her actually wanted to reveal herself to his uncompromisingly sensual gaze. That knowledge drew a choked reply in a passion-thickened voice she didn't recognize as her own.
"Your shirt. I accept that wager."
She played like the veriest fool, distracted as Aidan lounged against a mound of pillows, the muscles of his chest flexing, the iron-hard sinews pulling his shirt open further, ghosting over the burnt-sugar planes of muscle, tantalizing with a forbidden glimpse of his nipple against the edge of linen.
Norah was certain she would lose. She tried to take comfort in the fact that if she did, Aidan would be the one to surrender a garment. Yet the mere idea of this sulky, sensual man naked to the waist made Norah's fingers so unsteady, she could barely hold her cards.
When the last card was played, she looked up at Aidan in dismay. "I—I lost...." Tension coiled low in her stomach, a prickling heat in her breasts. His hands—beautiful sculptor's hands—skimmed the fabric from the exquisite musculature of his upper body, revealing glistening muscle, silky dark webbings of hair, dauntingly broad shoulders. His black breeches were slung low on narrow hips, and Norah could glimpse the shadowy indentation of his navel just above the waistband of the garment.
He tossed the shirt aside, one arm outstretched, the dusky wisp of hair just visible under his arm, the sleek cords of muscles playing beneath his skin, starting a shuddering need deep inside Norah.
When he dealt the cards again, it was all she could do to recognize which was a king and which an ace. No matter which cards she glanced at, all she saw was sun-browned skin, rippling muscle. With every erratic breath she took, her head was filled with the scent of wind and rain and horses, that wild, mysterious essence that was Aidan's own.
Worse still, he wasn't making jests any longer. He was watching her, intent as a jungle cat about to pounce on its prey, anticipating the sweet taste of its flesh on his tongue.
Flesh... tongue... Why was it that when she closed her eyes, she could picture so clearly Aidan's mouth making a sensual foray along the path where her buttons had once been, the point of his tongue testing the pliant curve of her breast, the cords of her throat, the hollow where he had first touched her?
She all but jumped out of her skin when the callused tips of his fingers brushed her cheek. "Do you want to stop the game?" His voice was low, rough and full of desire. Norah remembered a hundred dreams she'd spun, of a man who would speak to her in that husky, need-filled voice, a man who would look at her with that lambent heat simmering in his eyes. But never had she imagined that man would be as magnificently virile, as devastatingly handsome as the man who now lounged upon her bed.
"We don't have to continue, Norah, unless you want to."
He was making her decide. Offering her a chance to retreat from what he'd begun in a fit of pure devilment. Why? Because he was beset by some errant twinge of guilt about the day's events? Or because he was as shaken as she was by the emotions he'd unwittingly unleashed between them, this sizzling heat that pounded in her blood?
He had hurt her, confused her, trampled over the hidden, vulnerable places in her soul. He had taken their wedding day and cast it aside as if it had meant little more to him than the sheaf of cards strewn across the bed. And yet, after all that had happened, he had come to her tonight because she had asked him to. He had come in order to spare her further humiliation.
If she turned him away, what purpose would it serve? To hurt him, when he was already so filled with emotional scars? To maintain a grasp on her pride?
Her pride was a cold bedfellow. One that had shared her nights for twenty-some years. Now this man, with his hot hands, his sulky, sensual mouth, his green eyes that lit fire beneath her skin, was offering her a night far different. Perhaps he could not give her the love she craved with all her heart, but he was offering her the sweet intoxication of his mouth, the skilled play of his hands, the carnal promise that shimmered in every dark strand of his hair, every sinew of thigh and chest and shoulder.
To surrender her virginity to a man she was in love with. To have him guide her into rivers of passion for the first time, delve into places that had never been touched, spill his seed deep into her womb. Had she ever truly believed such a miracle could happen to her?
It was a dizzying gift, one Norah hungered for in the deepest reaches of her battered heart. If she only had the courage to reach out and take it.
Mustering all her courage, she reached for the cards. Those unfathomable green eyes mated with hers, an almost physical possession that left her aching.
"Norah." Just her name. Ragged. Hungry, a fine sheen of sweat glistening on his half-bared body. But that wasn't enough for her now.
"I want to raise the stakes," she breathed, feeling as if she were a stranger to herself.
"Name your wager."
She couldn't look at him, her pulse so wild for a heartbeat she couldn't speak. "That if I lose, we... I mean that you will—will..."
"Will what, sweetheart?"
She raised her gaze to his. "Ravish me, Aidan."
CHAPTER 15
Silence gathered up a thousand threads of desire the game had woven between them into a crushing fist of need. Norah w
atched as Aidan's eyes darkened, until they were almost black, his nostrils flaring. Hunger. Primitive, raw masculine hunger. It shivered in his eyes, deepening, intensifying, compelling response from the most feminine parts of Norah's being.
She dealt the cards, fumbling, but at that instant Aidan caught her hand, engulfing it in long, hot fingers. "I forfeit."
"What?"
"I admit defeat. No. I embrace defeat."
"But you haven't even looked at your cards."
"You've beaten me with weapons I doubt you can even understand. Or do you understand more than I think, my sweet, solemn little bride? Do you know exactly what you're doing to me with those wide, wondering eyes of yours, and those velvet lips?"
A tiny cry escaped her as he dashed the cards off the bed, letting them flutter to the floor. He levered himself onto his hands and knees, shifting until he was so close to her she was engulfed by his shadow, overwhelmed by the latent power of his body.
"Are you sure, Norah? That you want this? I'll be damned if I'll let you string yourself out across this bed like some virgin sacrifice because Montgomery is lodging across the hall. Do you want this? Do you want... me?"
His voice was so hard, roughened with need, and yet there was vulnerability underneath.
Do you want me?
There were shadows of another woman's rejections still in Aidan Kane's eyes—a rejection that the arms of countless other lovers had not managed to cleanse. Women far more beautiful than she had tried it, Norah was certain. Women with boundless skill in the bedchamber, who would know what a man wanted and needed to satisfy his carnal hungers.
But she loved Aidan, Norah thought, her throat aching. Not the reckless scoundrel, bent on his own destruction. But the battered knight who had somehow lost his way. Surely that love should count for something.
His breath teased her tingling lips. His heat seeped through the thin layer of her nightgown. The musky-hot scent of male arousal filled her head, intoxicating her. She wanted him to reach out to her, but he kept still, waiting for her to answer.
She did so the only way she knew how. She lifted her face until the pliant curves of her lips brushed the hard lines of Aidan's own. With a groan of need, Aidan delved one hand into the thickness of her hair, opening his mouth over hers in a kiss that was all fiery hunger and fierce possession.
The powerful weight of his body was lowered atop hers, the coarse hair spanning his chest abrading the fragile skin revealed by the gaping bodice of her nightgown. His thighs tangled with hers, impatient with the fine layers of cloth that formed a barrier between them.
But it was Aidan's lean hips that seduced her, rubbing with a delicious pressure in a seductive rhythm against the subtle swell of her belly. Norah knew painfully little about the rites she was about to be initiated into, but she knew enough to recognize the rigid length of Aidan's sex for what it was as it branded its imprint into her flesh.
She gasped at the melting sensation it caused between the trembling columns of her own thighs, a primal throbbing that tore a soft moan from her lips.
"Aidan," she breathed, as he trailed sweet kisses across her cheeks, her eyelids, her throat. "Aidan..."
"Do you want me, Norah? Then tell me. Tell me you want me.
"Yes. I want you. I already told you that I—"
"Do you want me to touch you? Underneath your nightgown, Norah? Where your skin is all silky and soft?"
Her cheeks stung, her body trembled. She'd asked him to ravish her, to ravish her because she hadn't had the courage to ask him to love her, that plea too painful in its impossibility. But why was he goading her? Why was he forcing the words from her, when all she wanted was for him to kiss her and to hold her?
But she forced the words from her lips. "Yes. Touch me, Aidan."
"Where?"
"Under my—my nightgown."
"Do you want me to taste you?"
"T—Taste me?" He made her sound like some pagan banquet, laid out for his delight.
"Take off your gown, Norah. I need to see you, angel, see you all over."
She nodded, more embarrassed than she'd ever been in her life, and yet so intrigued it was like a fire pulsing in every part of her. He rolled to one side, his eyes clinging to her with a feverish light. Her skin felt as if it were on fire with shame—shame because she was not beautiful. Shame because of her own wantonness.
She closed her eyes, unwilling to see Aidan's reaction when he first saw her, fearful that it would wound her someplace she would never, ever heal. Then she wriggled out of the flimsy garment that veiled her from his eyes.
The silence was painful; the darkness behind her tightly closed lids failed to block out her awareness that he was watching her. The cool drafts teased the burning rosettes of her nipples, stirring the soft dusky down between her trembling thighs. She clenched them together, covering her breasts instinctively with her arms.
Dear God, what did he want from her? Tell me that you want me... His words echoed inside her. Tell me... Is that what this man needed from her? To hear the words, to believe it was true?
"Aidan," she breathed. "Touch me."
"Where, Norah? Where do you want me to touch you? Do you want me to touch your lovely breasts? Those tight little buds that are throbbing? Or should I kiss them to soothe away the ache?"
"I—I don't know!" she cried helplessly. "I just... I told you I want you. I don't know—know anything more. Why are you making me—"
"Because I'm a scoundrel, Norah. A blackguard. Because I have to know that you want this, or I swear by the devil himself I'll get up right now and leave your bed. I had one wife who tolerated my caresses. I won't endure that again."
"I told you I want you! How can I help it, with you lying there... your chest all bare, your face... smiling that smile. It could seduce the very angels in heaven."
"I don't want to seduce any angel tonight but the one I just made my wife," he purred. "But be warned: I intend to seduce you most thoroughly, my lady. Until you know what it is to be possessed completely by a man—even down to your very soul. Until no other man can ever touch you so deeply, so fiercely, no matter how many times you allow them to try."
"I don't want anyone else... could never—" Norah's anguished protest ended in a gasp she felt clear to her toes as Aidan's warm, callused palm cupped the fluid weight of one breast. He lowered his dark head, and in a heartbeat his mouth had fastened on the throbbing point of her nipple with an almost savage hunger. No tender wooing, no gentle urgings, no awkward fumblings. Just passion, in its most potent form. Desire without boundaries. Hunger that did not assuage but consumed.
Hot and wet, blessed with a fiendish skill, he suckled her, teased her, taunting the hardened bud with the tip of his tongue until she arched into his moist caress, urging him to draw harder, deeper.
Sensation speared down to Norah's womb, tightening it in tiny, pulsing contractions, dampening its entrance with dewy moisture, making her crave things only this man could offer her: fulfillment, after an eternity of emptiness; the surging power of Aidan Kane's passion after too many nights alone.
His hands were everywhere—tracing her rib cage, splaying in ardent wonder over her belly, tracing maddening patterns on the painfully sensitive flesh of her inner thighs. He nibbled gently on the underside of her breast, traced his tongue in a sizzling path down the delicate ridges of her ribs. Norah writhed, ragged moans breaching her lips, her own hands clinging to Aidan's powerful shoulders, threading through the thick, dark waves of his hair as he trailed hot kisses to places she never dreamed a man's lips would dare find.
And when he buried his face against the swell of her stomach, edged heated kisses downward until his feverish breath stirred the dewy cleft between her thighs, Norah all but screamed at the shattering sensation.
"Tell me what you want, Norah. Do you want me to stop?" He dared her, taunted her, insufferably certain of her answer. "Or do you want me to kiss you here, sweetheart?" he asked, leaving the moist print of hi
s kiss on the inside of her thigh. "And other places if you'll let me."
At that instant she thought she'd let him do anything, as long as he didn't stop this slow immersion in an unforgettable fire.
"I want you to—to... do whatever you want. I—oh!" She gasped as his finger dipped to the quivering pink bud hidden shyly beneath the dusky thatch of down.
He chuckled, the husky, satisfied sound of a lover well pleased. "Open up for me, Norah. I want to make you feel... delicious."
Her muscles instinctively clenched tighter. He was luring her down forbidden pathways, dark labyrinths she was certain most women had never explored. But the callused tip of his finger danced with indescribable delicacy on a pulsing-point of sensation, where every pleasure nerve of her body seemed centered.
"Open, Norah, or I'll stop." It was a teasing threat, one that infuriated her, that stung color into her cheeks. If she'd had the slightest scrap of willpower left, she would have rolled away from him, closed herself to him.
But the thought of him ending this before she reached that shimmering cloud of fulfillment that glistened just beyond her reach was unthinkable.
"You're despicable," Norah breathed, her voice catching on a half sob. But she forced her legs to relax, edging them apart beneath Aidan's burningly intense gaze.
She was rewarded by a shuddering masculine groan. His hand cupped her womanhood with a firm mastery that made her quake, and his mouth fastened on hers with an ardor that swept away everything but the mind-numbing madness that was Aidan Kane's kiss.
Her lips parted of their own volition, and his tongue swept inside the dark cavern of her mouth, possessing, stroking, imprinting the taste of him until she was certain if she lived a hundred years she would never forget the wild sweetness of this Irish knight.
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