“Moira.”
“Again, please.” She took his hand, laid it on her heart.
“Don’t do this.”
“Cian. There’s your name from me. Cian. I think if you don’t touch me, if you don’t take me, a part of me will die before I ever go to battle. Please.” She framed his face in her hands, and saw—at last—what she needed to see in his eyes. “Say my name.”
“Moira.” Lost, he took her wrist, turned his lips into her palm. “Moira. If I wasn’t damned already, this would send me to hell.”
“I’ll try to take you to heaven first, if you teach me.”
She rose to her toes, drawing him down. Her sigh trembled out when his lips met hers.
Chapter 10
He’d believed his will would prevent this. A thousand years, he thought, and sank into her, and the male still deluded itself it could control the female.
She was leading him, and had in her way been leading him to this from the first instant. Now he would take what she offered him, what she demanded from him, however selfish the act. But he would use the skill of a dozen lifetimes to give her what she wanted in return.
“You’re foolish, reckless to give up your innocence to such as me.” He skimmed a fingertip across her collarbone. “But you won’t leave now until you have.”
“Virginity and innocence aren’t always the same. I lost my innocence before I met you.” The night her mother had been murdered, she thought. But memories of that weren’t for tonight.
Tonight was for knowing him.
“Should I disrobe for you, or is that for you to do?”
He gave a short, almost pained laugh before resting his brow to hers in a gesture she found surprisingly tender. “In such a hurry,” he murmured. “Some things, especially the first time they’re tasted, are better savored than gulped.”
“There, you see. I’ve learned something already. When you kiss me, things wake up inside my body. Things I didn’t know were sleeping there until you. I don’t know what you feel.”
“More than I’d like.” He combed his fingers through her hair as he’d longed to for weeks. “More than could be good for either of us. This…” He kissed her, softly. “Is a mistake.” And again, deeper.
Like her scent, her taste was of springtime, of sunlight and youth. He craved the flavor of it, filled himself on it and the quick catch of her breath as he skimmed his teeth lightly, very light, over her bottom lip.
> He let his hands plunge into her hair, the long, sleek fall of it, then under it to tease and waken the nerves along her spine.
When she trembled, he brought his hands to her shoulders to slide the robes down and bare that soft flesh for his lips. He could feel the yielding in her as well as the tremors, and when his mouth brushed along her throat, that seductive pulsing of blood under the skin.
She didn’t jolt when his teeth grazed there, but stiffened when he brushed his hand over her breast.
No one had ever touched her so intimately. The flash of heat his hands brought her was a shock, as was the knowledge only a thin layer of material was between his hand and her flesh.
Then even that was gone, and her nightrobes pooled around her feet. Her hand came up instinctively to cover herself, but he only took it, nipped his teeth lightly at her wrist while his eyes watched hers.
“Are you afraid?”
“A little.”
“I won’t bite you.”
“No, no, not of that.” She turned the hand he held so her palm cupped his cheek. “There’s so much happening inside of me. So much new. No one’s ever touched me like this.” Gathering her courage, she took his other hand, brought it to her breast. “Show me more.”
He brushed his thumb over her nipple, watched the shock of pleasure flicker over her face. “Turn that busy mind off, Moira.”
It was already as if mists clouded it. How could she think when her body was swimming in sensation?
He lifted her off her feet so that her face was suddenly on level with his. Then his mouth took hers into the heat again.