Page 18 of Loving the Blacksmith
“Agnes—”
“I thought you’d drowned,” she cried out as soon as he freed her mouth.
“I didn’t. But we shouldn’t?—”
She cut him short by deepening the kiss even further, bringing her teeth into it to nibble at his lower lip. She didn’t want to hear he regretted kissing her, she especially didn’t want to hear that they should stop. Because she most decidedly disagreed. They should carry on. For a moment she thought she’d won. He seemed to surrender, and tightened his hold over the back of her neck. Then he wrenched himself away from her with a grunt that could have been one of despair or frustration.
“Wait, Agnes,” he said again, holding her at arms’ length. No matter how much she wanted to, there was no way she would manage to come closer now. He was just too strong.
“Magnus,” was all she could answer.
“If you don’t stop, I will do something I’m not sure you want me to do.”
Right this moment she could not think of a single thing he could do to her that wouldn’t be welcomed, but she knew to what he was referring. “Like yesterday in the cave you mean?” she breathed.
His blue eyes caught fire. “No. Nothing like that. In the cave you gave me pleasure. It was all about me. Today it would be all about you. If you don’t go now, I will put my hands on you, my face and my mouth and my tongue between your legs. I will devour you. I won’t stop until I've seen you explode in release, heard you scream my name and made you beg for more. You’re a woman, you can give me your pleasure over and over again. And I will make you do it, whether you want it or not.”
It was a good thing Agnes was already kneeling, because she might well have dissolved to the floor in a puddle of need otherwise.
Today it would be all about you. I will devour you.
How did he think that she wouldn’t want that? Perhaps she was not supposed to feel this way, but how could she stopherself? Had he threatened to take her, she might have taken fright. But he had not. He had talked about pleasuring her with his hands, his mouth, his tongue. None of these could make her with child so she had nothing to fear. And with fear gone, all that was left was desire.
The desire to feel what other women allowed themselves to feel when they wanted a man.
With other men, resisting the temptation had not been an issue. They had not stirred her, whether in body or in soul, so it had been easy to stick to her resolve not to let anyone get too close to her physically, much less emotionally.
With Magnus... With him everything was different. New. Exciting.
Scary.
She felt ill-equipped to face it, or even simply make sense of it. It was hard to understand why that might be. Or maybe it was not so hard. The blacksmith was not only shockingly handsome, but he was also unlike any of the men she had met, or more pointedly, he was unlike the men she had known all her life. How could she have felt any attraction toward friends she had seen covered in mud a dozen times? There was nothing enticing about someone she still remembered as a pimply youth. As to wanting to kiss someone she’d seen kiss all her friends in turn, it was unthinkable.
But she had only met Magnus as a grown woman, he didn’t have a single pimple on his face, he had not kissed anyone she knew, and they had never fallen into a bog together. He was also a Norseman, as different from what she knew as could be conceived. No wonder she was intrigued.
More than intrigued.
And so now she wondered if she had not made a mistake in going so far from her village. The familiar environment was exactly what she needed to help her keep her unwise impulseson a tight leash. Here, away from all she knew, left to her own device, she was afraid her inner demons would run riot.
How was she going to resist what she felt when nothing or no one was here to stop her?
Alone in a new place, in a handsome stranger’s house, she felt as vulnerable as a solitary flame struggling to burn bright once it had been taken out into the wind blowing outside. How long would she be able to resist in the new conditions? She might well be destroyed. Yes... Except she had now met a man who made his living from fanning flames and transforming them into infernos hot enough to melt metal. He did not destroy fire, he mastered it. Under his expert coaxing, the little fragile flame she was had the potential to grow invincible. It was an irresistible thought.
“You need to go now, Agnes, because I’m telling you, you do not know what you’re dealing with. I’m a hair’s breadth from taking what I want from you, and it is more than you are prepared to give, this much I can guarantee.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
“You should be.”
“Of you? Never.”
This was not in question. She had seen enough of him to know that, contrary to what he thought, he would never force her to do anything she didn’t want to do. He would never take more than she was prepared to give. No, if she was afraid, and admittedly, right now, she was, it was of her, of her inability to stick to her resolve never to get close to a man.
All of a sudden he stood up in a rush of sluicing water. Overawed, Agnes watched the man standing proud in front of her. The Norse god, she should perhaps say. On his broad shoulders his wet hair traced intricate patterns. She could not help but stare at them. It was like a secret message etched on his bare skin, written only for her. But what was it telling her?
Keep out?
Orcome here if you dare?
