Lord Of Danger by Stuart, Anne (android based ebook reader .TXT) 📕

too often not to know when it was imminent, not to recognize the eerie calm that preceded a soul’s passing, and he was frozen with despair and rage.

She reached up and touched his face with a gentle hand, and it had been so long since someone had caressed him. “Am I going to die?” she whispered.

“No.” It was a lie.

The slow smile that lit her face was impossibly erotic. “Good,” she murmured. “I don’t want to die a virgin bride.” And she lifted her head and kissed his mouth.

He was too startled to do more than hold still, motionless, as she pressed her untutored lips against his. She pulled back, a faint frown wrinkling her brow beneath the tumbled hair. “Didn’t I do it right?”

He was past resisting her and his own desperate need. Without thinking he rolled on top of her, pressing her down into the soft furs as he cradled her neck in his left hand. “You need practice,” he said, and set his mouth against hers, feeling her open to his pressure, the softness of her lips, the smoky, drugged taste of her. It should have distracted him, but he was beyond that, his appetite was fully aroused, and he needed her, needed her mouth, needed her soft, sleep-drugged body, needed the sweet forgetfulness she could give him.

He was rock hard, wild with wanting her, and she moved beneath him, warm and trembling, needing him as well. Her laces were already loose from her disordered night’s sleep, and it was simple enough to pull the gown down her arms, to her waist.

Her breasts were small and round and perfect beneath the thin linen of her chemise, and he put his hands on them, cupping them, feeling the nipples harden against his fingers. He lifted his head to watch her, and her eyes were lost, dazed, dreamy. She was his for the taking; they were married and alone in his big, soft bed, and there was no way he could deny himself. Whatever reasons he had for keeping away from her had vanished in the heat and the darkness. He knew he wouldn’t stop.

He put his mouth on her breast, sucking the sweet flesh through the thin material, and the sound she made was a soft cry of pleasure as she arched beneath him, restless, seeking what her instinct told her she needed.

She slid her arms around his waist, pulling him closer to her, and her drugged eyes were wide and confused. He put his hand between her legs, and she jerked, startled, frightened, still needy, and she pushed against his hand with her hips, silently begging for more.

He pulled up her skirts and she whimpered suddenly, the small sound of a frightened angel. She stared up at him in mute fear and longing, as a bit of reality began to pierce the drugged cloud that surrounded her. He knew he should stop. And he knew that Grendel, the monster, would not.

Her hands slid up his chest, pulling the loose shirt away from his body. The room was dark and her eyes were now closed. The feel of her hands on his skin was exquisite torment, and in sudden impatience he ripped his shirt off, throwing it across the bed.

She was no longer frightened of him, and he could blame the drug for that, but he didn’t care. Drugged or not, conscious or not, she was his, and he would take her, and deal with the consequences tomorrow.

He wanted to seduce her, arouse her, please her, but the feel of her hands on him set a kind of madness upon him, and all he could think and feel and taste was her soft skin, her voice, her warm, clinging body.

He would have her, and there was no room for the tears she wept as she clung to him. He cursed his ungentle hands but he couldn’t stop himself from wanting her, taking her. He moved between her legs, pushing in deep, breaking past the frail barrier of her innocence. He hurt her, and she cried. He kissed her, and she kissed him back. He touched her, and she came.

Tight around him, damp and breathless and lost, she lay beneath him, holding onto him with a possessive fierceness that managed to shock his tangled brain. He expected rage and sorrow and recriminations. A thousand curses on his head for his rough passion.

Instead he got love.

Her face was wet with tears. He gently brushed them away, wondering what words he could find. Should he ask her to forgive him? Or should he demand more?

She hiccupped, a soft, lost sound that cut him more deeply than her faint protest. She opened her eyes to look at him, and in their glazed depths he could see a mass of tangled emotions.

“I hate you,” she said.

“I know.”

“If you touch me again I’ll see to it that you really are unmanned.”

“I know.”

Her furious eyes met his. “I love you,” she said, her voice rich with loathing.

“I know,” he said, and kissed her.

Her eyes fluttered closed, and she began to snore very delicately.

He froze, staring down at her in disbelief. And then he collapsed beside her on the bed. And then he began to laugh, out loud, as he hadn’t laughed in years. His bride slept on beside him as he laughed, at himself, at her, at the complete madness and unpredictability of life. She wouldn’t die, his sleeping bride.

Nor would he kill a boy-king for the sake of power and money. He was twice as smart and nearly as ruthless as Richard the Fair, and Richard was no match for him. Simon would figure a way out of his current predicament, with Richard none the wiser that his plans had been thwarted. With any luck, Simon would be able to convince him it was his own decision.

Alys moved closer to him in her deep sleep, murmuring beneath her breath, and he reached out to caress her face, smoothing her long, thick hair back. She