Page 20 of Highland Warlord
“It means that if you do not accept me—”
Placing a finger over Bael’s mouth, the woman managed to look both condescending and cold with a tinge of regret for show. “Maybe that’s for the best. You can devote yourself to the temple, and visit me from time to time should you like to lie together. But when I marry, it will be to someone worthy of a daughter of Thorsen. I have heard today that Prince Bjorn of the Vale is looking for a wife, and may ask me to be his. Which would make me—”
Morgana criedout as her hands were seized in an iron grip, the water showering everywhere with the force of the movement. Bael’s lip curled into a snarl as he finished the cruel, selfish woman’s words. “APrincess.”
Sensing somehow that a struggle would only incite him further, Morgana curled her hands into fists. “I’m not like her,” she declared.
“You’re more like her than you think,” he growled. “You bound me to you against my will. You manipulate me to do what you want.”
She jerked ineffectually, trying to free herself from his unyielding grip. “I may be a Princess, but I don’t care about your parentage.”
It was clear from the look on his face that he didn’t believe her. “Your brother would. Your father would have. And you would bend to their will once they found you a lordly husband with overflowing coffers and pretty manners.”
“You obviously don’t know me very well.” Morgana rolled her eyes. “I find pretty manners boring.”
His eyes flared in the firelight. “You would rather me treat you like the barbarian I am? Because let me warn you,Princess, I doubt you could handle the demands I’d make of you.”
Impulsively, Morgana lifted to her toes, bringing her lips as close to his as she could, letting the tips of her breasts, bared by the torn dress, tease the smooth flesh of his chest. “Try me,” she challenged in a throaty whisper as her heart rate spiked in tandem with his.
She didn’t miss his intake of breath, nor could she ignore the violent response of his body to the nearness of hers.
“You’re toying with a dangerous beast,” he warned.
“I’ve already tamed the beast,” she shot back. “Now I just need to persuade the man.”
“Never,” Bael vowed before his lips took hers with quelling force.
Chapter 10
Bael’s kiss quickly deepened from possessive to frantic. Though her body tensed in shock, her mouth melted against his.
Her words had released something more frightening than a beast inside him. More like a devil. He twisted his mouth over hers, claiming entrance with his tongue from every angle he could possibly devise. Before crushing her to him, he yanked her dress from her shoulders and followed it down the curves of her lush body until it fell from her hips.
Though her fingers trembled as they clung to the nape of his neck, her mouth yielded to his demands, meeting his possession with sweetness and his dominance with a moan of submission. The kiss didn’t sate his growing desire for a taste of her, as he’d hoped, but ignited a fury of desperate lust.
She’d submit to more than his tongue before he was through with her.
“Yes,” she hissed against the cavern of his open mouth, as though she’d heard his dark thoughts.
That one word broke any chain that held him in check. Bael ripped his mouth away from her long enough to have her on herback, his eyes raking over her passion-flushed skin. “Remember you wanted this,” he felt compelled to warn her again.
Or was it a threat?
“I do want this,” she reached for him. “I wantyou.”
Couldn’t be. She wanted the gentle, worshiping Berserker who’d made love to her in the lake. She didn’t understand, couldn’t comprehend that she now faced a killer who would fuck her into the dirt.
Bael almost felt sorry for her.
Almost.
With a growl, he settled his bulk atop her and kissed her again, pouring fifty years of deprivation into her open mouth. He knew his lips were rough, demanding, and agitated. That his beard abraded her tender skin. But she made soft little mewling sounds of pleasure into his mouth that nearly drove him over the edge before he even took off his trews.
He’d never wanted anything like he craved the pale body glowing beneath him in the firelight. He couldn’t remember a time he’d been so hard. So out of his mind with need. So fucking insatiable with lust.
Reaching between them, without parting their fused lips, he undid his belt and freed himself. Mounting her—heart thundering with the strength of his desire—he positioned the blunt head of his cock against her vulnerable opening.
Her sex was a moist cleft hidden by soft cinnamon curls, and she drew her knee up his waist to grant him easier entrance.
