The whinny of a horse trickled through the trees, hinting her carriage driver had gotten the bolting horses under control and had come back for her.
Pity.
I should’ve struck the beasts harder—spooked them so their mistress stayed mine for as long as I wanted to keep her. After all, this was just business. A tax to be paid for using my stretch of the highway.
Our eyes locked as the electricity that always infected us reached a fever pitch. As much as I enjoyed foreplay with words, I wanted to touch her. Feel how wet she was. Hear her moans as I fucked her.
With a swipe of my arm, I knocked the sword out of her hands and winced at the heavy clatter of metal on the moss-covered stone.
“Hey!” She went to parry and gallop off, but I was prepared for that. I knew her better than I knew myself these days.
“Gotcha.” Grabbing her by the nape, I pulled her into me, squeezing the feminine column of regal muscles and delicate bones.
She froze in my hold, breathing hard as I lowered my mouth to hers.
I didn’t kiss her.
Not straight away.
I stared into her gorgeous grey eyes that had once haunted my dreams, and I saw past the disguises we’d cyphered. I loved this woman more than anything else on this goddamn planet. No matter the year, the place, or the appearance.
I drowned in her stare.
And it was her who broke the moment.
Rising on her tiptoes, she smashed her lips to mine, kissing me hard and swift, making my hand uncurl around her neck in surprise.
The moment she was free, she took off.
Her royal blue dress fanned out behind her as she scrambled over fallen rocks and dashed beneath an archway that was pockmarked with cannon fire.
Watching her run activated primitive possession.
“Yer will regret that.” Power charged down my legs, and I gave chase.
The thud of my boots thundered over the ground while her dainty slippers didn’t make a sound. The swish of her petticoats was barely noticeable over the heaviness of my breathing.
She didn’t get far.
Through another archway, this one almost intact with hints of carvings from past stone masons, and into a room that I assumed was once a hall. A large fireplace waited at one end, its chimney broken in half and roof scattered by our feet.
I snagged her around the middle just as she went to leap over a large boulder, yanking her backward, crashing her against my chest.
“Running was a bad, bad idea,” I growled, loving that she’d run because I was desperate to punish her.
My hands groped her chest, fisting her breasts through the corset while cursing the fact that I couldn’t cup them through the restrictive boning.
“Let me go!”
“Never.” Grabbing both sides of the corset, I tore it down the middle. The fine ribbon holding it together snapped, freeing her breasts and leaving her gown gaping all the way to her belly button.
“Oh, my God.” She scrambled to get free, her willpower to run fading beneath her own lust. My teeth found her neck and clamped down hard while my fingers found her nipples and pinched with no mercy.
Her spine bowed, shoving her ass into my cock, giving me something to grind against.
We stood there, in a Scottish ruin set in some wooded battleground between Redcoats and Jacobites, and I couldn’t take it anymore.
Marching her forward, still squeezing her breasts and biting her throat, I found a rock large enough for her to lean on then spun her around.
She gasped, her eyes glowing with silver desire as I dropped to my knees and shoved her stupid petticoats and silk gown over my shoulders.
The world went dark as the fabric settled over me. The scent of her lust was heady and hot beneath the material, and I tore at the pantaloons, making a hole over her pussy.
Her hands landed on my head through the thick dress as my tongue lashed over her clit.
Her scream was muffled, but her full-body tremble made me groan with my own pent-up hunger.
I wasn’t gentle.
I’d gone past gentle the moment I’d dragged her from the carriage with full intentions to take her ruthlessly for using this stretch of road.
I devoured her with my tongue and punished her with two fingers as I speared them deep inside and found precisely how wet she was.
Drenched.
Her release fisted my two fingers as I bit her clit and thrust into her. Short and fierce, her orgasm was over as quickly as it’d struck.
I wanted what she’d just had.
I wanted to be inside her when I did.
Withdrawing my fingers, I fought my way out of the dense jungle of her dress, sucking in tree-green air instead of her heady musk.
Her hair stuck to her cheeks, and she blinked in a daze, unprepared for me to swipe at her legs and send her tumbling to the dirt beside me.