The Taming: Book 3 in the Tribe Warrior Series by Imogen Keeper (romantic novels in english TXT) 📕

tried not to listen, but they burrowed in deep, traveling across the aching loneliness inside.

I did it to protect you. I’ll keep you safe, abellina amiera. I’ll make you happy. We’ll make a family, just like you want.

And in the days since, he’d destroyed her with his tongue and his fingers, invaded her body and her mind until she couldn’t even claim that she didn’t want his kisses and his touches. She did want them.

That was the worst part.

He’d made her want him.

He called to her in the place deep inside where she was a girl no one had ever loved, and with every kiss, he made her wish that he would love her.

And he’d been true to that one promise. He hadn’t taken anything she didn’t want to give.

He never pressed her, never took his own pleasure inside her body, though he could have done that too. In the thrall of the dangerous, gentle spell he wove, she’d have let him.

She was pathetic.

The bulkhead had been her constant companion. Black, and smooth, and glossy enough for her to see her own reflection now, her hair tumbling wildly across the pillow, and over the blanket that draped across her bare breasts. She looked wanton and wild, like the dominesses she’d caught glimpses of in Merentide. Elegant women who smiled as if they knew secrets that would make the stars themselves implode.

Maybe they did. Tor had certainly made her feel as if a few stars had imploded. Under his touch, the universe took on new meaning.

He rose behind her to rest his chin in his hand, his dark eyes probing. He stroked a hand down her spine, over bare skin. Her shiver had nothing to do with being cold. She wasn’t cold at all. She was a thousand degrees of helplessness and confusion.

“Couple hours,” he murmured, his fathomless eyes meeting hers in the reflection.

She swallowed. She was desperate to get off this ship. Out of this bed. Away from him.

It was like a safe little nest, isolated from all the troubles that awaited them, and it was too easy to let herself forget that he’d kidnapped her, steamrolled her every desire.

She shrank away from his warm body, inching closer to the cold bulkhead. “When can I have my clothes back?”

His hand traced deeper down her spine, over the dip in her waist, around her hips, down her belly. “Soon.”

She closed her eyes against the rush of heat that followed his touch across sensitive skin. Her body, unlike her conflicted mind, had no doubt about Tor. It revered, reveled, rejoiced in his touch. She knew so many things about him now, secret things, dark things, sexy things she shouldn’t know and would never unlearn. The flex of his skin on her teeth, because she’d bitten him in the throes of an angry orgasm, leaving a red welt on his neck that she’d have sworn he’d liked. The choked, growly grunt he made when he took his beautiful cock in his hands, the texture of his thumb on her tongue, because so often he pushed it between her lips, soaked in his delicious flavor, while he pleasured her, and like a rabid beast, she sucked it in as if obeying some unspoken order.

He trailed his tongue along the outer shell of her ear, and that single touch sent a shiver from the top of her head to the bottoms of her toes.

“I hate you,” she groaned, unable to stop her body from bowing against him, her bottom from thrusting out.

He grinded his hips, and the long, hard girth of him pressed against her, so hot that she couldn’t help but imagine it doing just what nature had designed it to do.

She’d spent far too much time imagining it. She wanted it, though she’d never say it. She wanted him inside her.

“You don’t,” he whispered in her ear.

They had this argument hourly, it seemed. He insisted she wanted him. Her body agreed.

His hand slid down to palm her thigh, pulling until she rolled half over and rested her leg across his lap, opening to him fully, defenseless against the relentless draw of his body.

His lips drifted down her jaw. She turned away, looking back toward the wall. It made it worse, seeing what he did to her. She was panting like a pathetic animal, driven by pure instinct and reckless need, writhing as if she were dying and he alone held the key to her salvation. He was a sickness under the skin, simmering in the blood.

“You want me, Klym, just as badly as I want you.” He turned her onto her back, looming over her to trail his tongue down her sternum, over her breasts, his hair tickling over her skin.

“I know exactly what I feel for you, and it isn’t want. It’s ahhhh—”

When he closed his mouth over her nipple, dimples flickering in his cheeks, she sighed.

“—loathing.” It came out long and throaty, lacking all conviction, but it was something. “And... and...”

He chuckled, sucking harder, flicking his tongue until she was writhing under him like a woman possessed.

“Revulsion,” she whispered.

He slid a finger inside her, where he’d claimed her as his own, working his thumb around the hard, sensitive bud between her thighs. Her hips moved at his call, dancing to his tune, just like the rest of her. Pathetic.

“Weird response to revulsion.” He kissed his way up her neck again, voice smug and awful. “Your old life sucked. Let yourself be free from all the cages they had you locked in, and you’ll see what we could be together.”

“I loved my old life.”

His eyes slitted. “You hated it,” he hissed. “The regimented food, the bodice that left welts on your skin, the worthless lessons on dancing and curtsies. Useless and you know it. You want me so badly you dream about me. You wake up hot for me, panting my name, and reaching for me.” His voice went gruff, almost angry.

“That’s an involuntary response, like sneezing.”

“Lies.”

She turned her face toward him,