“You’re so damned beautiful.”
He didn’t touch her, just stared down at her heaving breasts. She gulped and tried to pull away from him, but he held her still, her arms still pinned to her sides.
“Are you well?” he said, and his voice was harsh and deep. “Inside, are you healed?”
But he didn’t wait for her to answer. He couldn’t. He leaned down and kissed her, hard, his hands cupping her face between his palms, holding her still for him. At the touch of his mouth against hers, Daria felt a great relief begin to fill her, but it changed and became something else, something urgent and frantic and wild.
“Part your lips. Yes, that’s right. Touch my tongue, Daria. Ah—so sweet, so very sweet you are. Do you like my hands on your breasts?”
He was lightly stroking his fingertips over her breasts, lifting them in his palms, not yet touching her nipples, just stroking her lightly, as if to learn her. Then his hand dipped down to stroke over her ribs, then he was jerking away her gown, ripping it without hesitation, and finally it fell, pooling about her feet. He yanked at the chemise and then she was standing naked, supported by his arm, his hand stroking over her breasts, his mouth and tongue against hers.
She turned to him then, wanting more, wanting all of him now. When she pressed herself against him, his hands became frenzied on her back, sweeping downward to lift her, and fit her against himself, and she felt his urgency, felt the hardness of him, and he was so hot, so intensely alive, and he wanted her. A bolt of sheer lust went through her and she moaned against his mouth.
He set her away from him but her hands were on his clothes, pulling at the fastenings, and both of them were clumsily trying to strip him, but it took much more time than they’d thought it would.
But then, despite her help, Roland was naked and standing before her, and she hurled herself at him, pressing hard against him, flinging her arms around his neck, and she raised her face for a kiss and he gave her all his need and desire. Then he lifted her. “Wrap your legs around my waist, quickly. I’m going to come upward into you, Daria, deeply into you—” And she felt him fitting her legs around his flanks, felt his fingertips between her thighs, stroking upward until he found her. He parted her swelled woman’s flesh with his fingers and she gasped and lurched, wanting to help him but not knowing how to. And he was breathing so harshly, and she was too, that neither of them heard the shouting. Then he was easing inside her, pushing upward, slowly, just a bit at a time, his body trembling at the control he tried to exert, and she was gasping at the feel of him, wanting more, yet it was tight and so sweet, the feel of him inside her—
“Roland! Daria!”
He shoved his full length into her, driving upward, kissing her breasts as she arched her back at the feel of him. “By all the saints,” he gasped, and eased her down upon her back against the sweet-smelling grass. And he began to ride her hard and deep.
“Roland! Daria!”
He froze over her, a look of astonished chagrin coming over his features. “Oh, no,” he said, and his voice was filled with pain. “By all the saints, I don’t believe it.” He began to curse.
She stared up at him, not understanding, until she heard their names shouted a third time.
He pulled out of her, his chest heaving, his member swelled and hard and wet from her. He looked for a moment utterly bewildered and uncertain of what he should do. Then he shook himself into action.
“Quickly, dearling, quickly. It’s Sir Thomas and he draws very close.” Roland saw that she was still not aware of what was happening. He ignored his own nakedness to help her dress again in her ripped clothes. “Hold them together. That’s it. Are you all right now?”
She was holding the bodice of her gown together over her breasts and she was just looking up at him.
“Are you all right?”
She shook her head, no words in her mind, not a single one.
He smiled, a painful smile, and touched his fingertips to her mouth. “I know, dearling. This night there won’t be any interruptions. By all the saints, you’re lovely.”
When Sir Thomas and Lady Katherine appeared at the top of the slope, it was to see Roland clumsily pulling on his clothes and Daria, standing there like a half-wit, watching him.
“I think,” Sir Thomas said to Lady Katherine, “that our presence is more than a nuisance.”
“You don’t think he’ll hurt her, do you?”
Sir Thomas smiled down at her. “Hurt her? I’ll warrant he was making her wild with pleasure until we came along and ruined it all.”
Katherine jerked just a bit at his words, and said slowly, “I don’t think that’s possible.”
“So it was like that with you, was it? A pity. If you’ll allow me, I will show you that a man can please you. Come, let’s leave them. I daresay Roland won’t particularly wish to converse with either of us at the moment. Actually, he is probably beyond putting two words together.”
22
Roland couldn’t clear his mind. He couldn’t seem to focus on anything outside himself, outside her. His body was in control, or out of control, he thought blankly, his senses filled with her, her sweet wild scent, the tangled masses of hair tumbling down her back, her ripped gown showing patches of smooth white flesh. He grabbed her hand and pulled her around. He didn’t care that they were in plain sight of the castle. He simply didn’t think about it. He looked down at her mouth, soft and slightly parted, and moaned.
“Daria.” He kissed her, pulling her up tightly against him, bringing her to her tiptoes. When she responded to him, arching upward, he trembled with the force of his need. He lifted her in his arms and strode toward a small copse of oak trees just to the east.
She wasn’t pliant in his arms. She was as frantic and wild as he was. She kissed his chin, his mouth, his nose, wet, soft kisses that sent him into a near-frenzy. He felt her warm tongue on his ear, her sweet breath on his cheek. He started running. She wrapped her arms around his neck, choking him in her fervor to get closer to him.