Page 102 of Blood of the Thistle

Bram searched her face, using his hand to brush aside the hair at her brow.

Anna thought he was searching for the truth in her.

“I don’t know what this is, Bram.” She slid her hands up his chest, holding his gaze. “I don’t know what we are, and I’m not asking you to tell me.” Her fingers curled into his tunic. “But I’m not confused about what I’m doing, if that’s what you’re asking.”

He remained still for another moment. “Anastasia—”

“I want this. I want you, Bram.”

Something in him seemed to give way. “Jesu, lass.” Then his mouth was on hers again.

Anna’s heart pounded in her chest as Bram’s hands roamed her back, sending tingles of heat through her skin. The intensity of his touch made her head spin, and she clung to him, desperate for more. His fingers traced the curve of her spine, igniting a fire within her that she couldn’t extinguish.

When he lifted his mouth from hers, Anna’s lips felt cold and abandoned. But before she could protest, Bram’s lips found hers again, fierce and demanding. She gasped into the kiss, her hands grasping at his shoulders, feeling the hard muscle beneath his tunic.

As their bodies pressed together, Anna felt a surge of desire unlike anything she had ever experienced. The world around them faded into insignificance, leaving only the urgent pull between them. Bram’s breath mingled with hers, creating a heady fog of shared need that clouded her thoughts.

She stopped thinking just as she felt him step back from her, just barely, and heard the rough pull of linen as he stripped his tunic off. In the dark she saw only shadows and planes, but she felt the warmth radiating from his bare skin when he returned to her, and she pressed her palms flat against his chest, feeling the landscape of his chest beneath her hands—the hard slab of muscle, the coarse hair, the heavy, steady drumbeat of his heart. The warmth of his skin beneath her palms was intoxicating, the steady thrum of his heart a counterpoint to the frantic rhythm of her own. Anna’s fingers traced the ridges of muscle along his chest, her breath catching as she felt the heat of him seep into her skin. The darkness of the chamber pressed in around them, thick and intimate, broken only by the faintest glimmer of moonlight seeping through the open window. It was enough to silhouette the broad expanse of his shoulders, the raw strength of him, but not enough to ease the flutter of nerves in her stomach.

Bram’s hands found the laces at the back of her kirtle, his fingers working with a practiced ease that made her cheeks burn. Of course he would know how to undress a woman. The thought sent a prickle of something sharp through her—jealousy? Insecurity?—but it dissolved as quickly as it came when his lips brushed the shell of her ear, his breath hot against her skin. The laces of her kirtle gave way beneath his fingers, the ties loosening with a whisper of fabric. The outer gown sagged, the weight of it sliding down her arms until it pooled at her feet. The kirtle beneath followed, the linen clinging for a moment before slipping free, leaving her in nothing but the thin shift and the borrowed hose. His hands stilled, fingers brushing the delicate fabric of the shift where it draped softly over her skin.

Bram’s fingers hesitated at the curve of her waist, then slid upward, the heat of his palm seeping through the linen as if it weren’t there at all. Anna’s breath caught when his hand stilled just beneath the swell of her breast, his thumb brushing the underside in a slow, deliberate arc. The moonlight painted his face in dull silver, sharpening the angles of his cheekbones, the dark hollows beneath. His eyes were fixed on her body, unblinking, as if he could see straight through the shift to the skin beneath.

His thumb swept a slow, deliberate path up the curve of her breast, the linen of her shift offering no barrier to the heat of his touch. A shudder broke over her skin, sharp and sudden, and a low, answering pulse beat deep within her.

Anna’s breath came quick and shallow, her chest rising and falling beneath the fabric. Blood surged at each place he touched, shooting out to meet his hands and returning to her core, pooling deliciously between her legs.

When his mouth found hers again, it was not the consuming fire of before. This was a slow, deliberate exploration. His lips moved with a soft, almost reverent pressure, a whisper of sensation that made her ache for the wildness he withheld. His breath came warm against her throat, his lips scorching the flesh of her neck and collar as he moved up and down. She arched her neck and laid her hands tentatively against his chiseled chest once more, felt his racing heart under her palms. His lips were a soft, deliberate fire tracing a path up the column of her throat. When his mouth finally met hers again, Anna parted her lips on a gasp, a raw and yielding surrender to the heat of him. He would not be hurried, though. He was deliberate in his exploration of her lips, making her pulse pound madly. His tongue, when again it touched her, was neither insistent nor wild, but teasing, tasting, as arousing as his commanding kiss of moments ago, eliciting a yearning moan from Anna.

Anna melted into him, tipping her face up to him. He slanted his mouth over hers again. She was aware that they were moving, that he was leading them somewhere, but in truth she cared only about his kiss. She let him guide her down onto the bed, her arms looped around his neck, unwilling to break the kiss. Their tongues met and parted and met again.

She felt utterly alive, with no thoughts beyond this moment and this kiss.

When he was lying half atop her, his hand crept down from her neck and over her shoulder, settling on her breast. Anna went still in the heat of his kiss, waiting, her body eager. Through her linen shift, he caressed her breast with his fingertip, causing her nipple to tighten. Anna’s mouth gaped at the startling uproar caused within, and she shifted in his arms, instinctively arching against him.

A low, ragged groan tore from his throat—a sound of pure, wanting ache that echoed the small, desperate noise she made against his mouth. Impatiently, he dug his hand under her shift, sliding his palm and fingers upward with no small amount of fervor. Anna choked on her breath when his hand cupped her breast, lifting it. She whimpered when his thumb grazed over her nipple, rough against soft, awakening a thousand sensations inside her.

A low, impatient sound rumbled in his chest. His hands fisted in the linen of her shift and tunic, shoving the fabric up her torso in one rough, urgent motion until he bared her breasts to the cool air and his heated gaze. He stared only for a moment before cupping her breast again, lifting it to his waiting lips. His mouth closed around her nipple, sucking and pulling, first gently and then more firmly. Anna’s breath caught in the back of her throat. She stared overhead, at the shadowed ceiling, but was aware of only the feeling of his mouth on her.

Sweet Jesus.

He pushed her shift higher, and Anna yanked it over her head, discarding it thoughtlessly. Her fingers tangled in the coarse dark waves of his hair, holding him fast. There was no thought, only this: the slick heat of his mouth on her skin, the raw shudder that ran through her when he groaned against her breast, the dizzying certainty that she was falling into a fire of her own making. She felt suddenly that she was fearless Anastasia, seductive even, a notion fueled by Bram’s low groaning as he fondled and tasted her breasts and their sensitive buds.

For a long moment, she was aware only of the slow, deliberate stroke of his fingers. Then she realized the rhythm had changed. His other hand had stilled, and his gaze fixed on her face. She lifted her chin, meeting his eyes. The habitual guarded distance was gone, burned away by a raw focus that held her motionless. He watched the flush spread across her skin, the way her breath hitched as his thumb circled, and the dark approval in his look told her he liked what he saw.

His gaze drifted lower over her breasts, and she swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. The hunger in his eyes sent a shudder through her, half-frightened, half-delighted. A predator, he seemed, yes, but a worshipful one. Strange, that so much was available for her to see in his striking eyes, when so often he truly was unreadable.

At the same time, she was aware of his bare chest, carved like stone, his blatant masculinity, his arms thick with muscles. Her gaze, which had so often flitted away from the intensity of his, now rose and lingered. It traced the hard line of his jaw, the faint scar that bisected one eyebrow, the way a lock of dark hair fell across his forehead. She wanted to map the whole of him, to commit every angle and shadow to memory.

He bent and kissed her again, savoring her, lingering over her.

Her earlier nervousness had faded, overwhelmed by vibrant desire. She didn’t know herself at the moment, this woman in his arms, holding him to her kiss. Her hands slid down the hard planes of his back, over the taut curve of his hips, and around to the front of his body, her palm pressing against the rigid length straining against his breeches. A soft, craving sound escaped her throat at the undeniable evidence of his arousal.

Bram’s hand skimmed down over her breast, and she whimpered into his mouth when he did not pause there, moving over her belly and lower. Without hesitation, he slipped his fingers into the silken folds between her thighs, scorching her with his touch. She opened her mouth, her throat clogged with words, but no sound came forth, and when his finger slid inside her wet heat, Anna came apart. She gripped his shoulders and found his eyes, dark and consuming, and the hunger in them hit her as hard as the slow drag of his finger inside her.

“Bram...?”

“Aye, lass. Feel it.”