Page 47
Oh, Sylvana. Is this meant to be torture? Of course Lorelei had known he was rumored to be chaste. But to have it confirmed—to have this gorgeous miracle of a man offered up to be all hers, if only…!
She was so wrapped up in the shock of his revelation that he slipped his next words like a dagger through all of her guards. “Are you always so unwilling to accept real love when it’s offered to you?”
“Argh!” Lorelei let out a muffled scream, squeezing her eyes shut against him and every impossible temptation that he offered. “This isn’t real love. You know it can’t be. You, of all people—”
“I know I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind or my heart for seven years,” he said as easily as if he were relating a perfectly ordinary, everyday fact and not tossing an incendiary device into her life and future. “I know that no one in my life has ever gotten under my skin the way you do.”
“Like a stinging insect?” She opened her eyes to roll them pointedly at him.
“Like a soulmate.”
The sincerity in his amber gaze made her bones feel as if they were melting, braced muscles and pride only barely holding her upright and her voice rising in panic. “What would you know of soulmates? You’ve never even had a single lover before me!”
“And you’ve had plenty,” he said calmly. “But tell me, Lorelei, did you care for any of them as strongly as you do for me now? When you look back on all of them, did any of them feel like such a perfect match?”
Lorelei lifted her chin into her haughtiest expression and did not respond.
His smile was slow and glorious, and she couldn’t wrench her eyes away as it lit up his face. “Lorelei, we fit. You feel that, too, don’t you?”
She pressed her lips tightly together, but he nodded anyway. “That’s what has you so afraid now.”
“Damn you,” Lorelei gritted out, “I told you before—I am not afraid of anything.” Green shoots pierced the silken floor around them, thrusting upwards with aggressively sprouting leafy vines to wrap themselves tightly around Gerard and Lorelei’s entangled figures, locking them in place together. Supported and cradled by her own creation, Lorelei glared mutinously at her nemesis, who looked infuriatingly unaffected by their new cage of vegetation. “You see? There is literally nothing you can do to hurt me!”
“One day,” he murmured, “you’ll allow yourself to believe I never would—because I love you, too.”
Wait—“too”? Panic flipped Lorelei’s center of gravity, leaving her breathless. “I did not—! I never said—!”
“It’s all right,” Gerard said patiently. “You don’t need to say the words. I know you love me, Lorelei. That’s why you kidnapped me in the first place.”
“Ugh!” He was impossible. He was the most stubborn and enraging man she’d ever met. Without a doubt, he would be her undoing. But when she tugged upwards against his grip with a desperate, wordless moan, he let her move, his strong hands sliding down to her waist to pull her even closer.
Giving up on debating her way to victory, she sealed her lips to his and rubbed herself against him, instead, to claim it by different means. No more talking. No more perilous, life-disrupting words could be allowed to escape into the too-seductive warmth and privacy of this tent.
From now on, she simply wouldn’t let him speak.
But it was impossible to miss the message he was sending her with every movement that he made. She might be keeping his lips safely occupied, but the slow, warm stroking of his thumbs around her waist was a terrifying statement of care in itself. Wriggling within the constricting cradle of vines that surrounded them, she reached between their tangled bodies to yank his troublesome hands up and place them firmly on her breasts, determined to get this intimate encounter back on track, just like any other act she’d shared with other lovers across the years …
But—oh, goddess, save me!—that was a terrible mistake. When Gerard’s big, capable hands closed around her sensitive breasts through all the layers of her bodice, they fit as no one else’s hands ever had, as if they had been made to her own personal specifications—made for Lorelei from the very beginning. Her back arched against her will, and hot sparks shot through her skin in a moment of near-divine revelation. Had she been looking and waiting for this singular man all along, without realizing?
The twin groans they let out at that shattering moment of contact felt perilously like a shared prayer of gratitude.
Damn it, she was not in love with Gerard de Moireul, no matter what that unyielding force of a man might think. No matter how right his body felt against hers—no matter how perfectly they fit together as partners both on and off the tournament field—no matter what a subversive delight it was to spark off him in arguments or conversation!—he had not been made for her, nor she for him.
But it was impossible to make herself focus on that stern reminder when his fingers were exploring her shape with a slow, relentless thoroughness that threatened to destroy her completely. Closing her eyes, Lorelei tipped her head back with a helpless moan of pleasure and despair.
He’d always been much too adept at spotting weaknesses in her armor. Now, his hungry lips closed around her throat without hesitation, the bristling golden stubble on his cheeks and the delicate scrape of his blunt teeth against her skin making her shiver uncontrollably. Silk shifted against her chest as he tugged at her bodice; she let out another, embarrassingly raw moan as his warm, calloused palms closed around her newly revealed, bare breasts.
Goddess help her, he was taking her apart! If she didn’t retake control of this encounter soon, she’d end up in a puddle of melted willpower, helplessly agreeing to anything he wanted. It was unthinkable. No, intolerable.
“Enough!” Her voice was a pitifully breathy rasp, but her power swept out without fail, tipping their cradle of vines onto a newly made bed of soft, green grass. Those vines vanished an instant later, leaving Gerard flat on his back on the fresh greenery before her, covered in golden glitter she didn’t even remember shedding. The sight was intoxicating enough to make her light-headed, but Lorelei pushed herself up anyway to straddle his waist, while chains of lushly scented, de-thorned roses wound themselves around his outstretched arms and legs to pin him down.
“My turn,” she announced smugly.
His amber gaze fastened on her exposed bosom, which spilled over her loosened bodice as she sat triumphantly over him—and his lips curved with an unexpected wickedness that made her breath catch in her throat.
“I yield,” Gerard said gravely, “and can only hope that the conditions in which you keep your prisoners of war are not too burdensome.”
“Oh, they’re just terrible,” Lorelei assured him. She tried to keep her expression appropriately stern, but as she met his wicked grin—Gerard de Moireul, of all people, grinning up at her like a rake and playing delicious games in bed!—she found herself smiling helplessly in return, a years-old knot inside her chest melting in a sudden wave of warmth.
