“They said you’re a warrior.”
“I was.” He nodded his eyes tracing from my eyes to my chest then back.
“A dangerous man.”
“Perhaps.”
“A legendary lover.”
“Not for me to say,” he growled running a massive hand over his head, his fingers spread, dark hair running between them. “I’ve heard talk about you, as well. Angelica says your people don’t honor you.” With this, his grip on my waist tightened. “They don’t treat you as you deserve.”
My breath caught in my throat before I answered. “It is my life.” I shrugged. “I know no better.”
“You deserve to know better. You deserve to be worshiped.” The muscles in his clenched jaw fluttered as he delicately ran his thumb over my lips, dragging down my lower lip ever-so-gently before letting me go as a shudder shook me from my core. “But it’s time to get you away from here. You’ve got no business being this far from home.”
He picked up my basket for me, taking me firmly—though not unkindly—by the upper arm, and began marching me out of the garden toward the King’s Highway.
“What if I don’t want to go? Besides, how is it you know how far I am from home?”
His expression was firm, unyielding. “I just do. Girls who spy through windows need other ways to pass their time.”
I was unswayed. All my life I’d felt invisible… until he looked at me. And I wasn’t about to go back into the shadows so soon. “Then I’ll just have to tell the washerwomen that you’re no man at all.” I cringed even as I spoke knowing I sounded like a petulant child.
Bors stopped short and turned to look down at me. “Excuse me?”
His flash of anger gave me life and a new boldness was born inside of me as the other flash I saw behind his nearly black eyes. “A true man keeps his word. You owe me a kiss. You promised me a kiss today, by the well.”
“Bullshit. I promised you nothing. I said nothing to you.”
Emboldened by how beautiful and alluring he made me feel, I rose up on my tiptoes. “You didn’t promise me with your words. You promised me with your eyes.”
His eyes narrowed, and he shook his head as my eyes fell on the deep, thick silver scar across his face. “Again, bullshit.” But his body gave him away as he slipped his massive hand into the small of my back, tight, close, possessive.
“Please,” I said softly. “I’ll beg if you want me to.”
His nostrils flared slightly, and he swallowed hard I felt the power of my words watching how he was affected. “Fuck, Sara.” He lowered his eyes, I saw his jaw tighten and a flexing of a strained muscle in his temples and a vein in his forehead before he returned my gaze and finished. “I want to make you beg…Beg to be kissed. Bet to beg to be…” He trailed off, lips tight on his teeth a protruding vein now in his forehead.
I looked up at him, holding his eyes, urging him to tell me and he did.
“Beg to be fucked.”
Oh lord, yes. “Please. Please. Kiss me.”
“If I start, I can’t tell you I’ll stop until I take what I want. Need.”
“Good. Kiss me. Show me what it’s like.”
A moment of stunned shock flickered across his hard features, and he let loose a pained, feral sounding groan that banked a whimper in my throat.
Removing any remaining space between us, he set down my basket and took me in both arms, slightly parting my legs with the hard muscle of his thigh. “You’ve never been kissed before.”
I shook my head, answering truthfully, “Never.” I said softly, the boldness that had strengthened me fading. Instead, a feeling of vulnerability lit up in its place as he eyed me as a cat does a mouse. “You will be my first…” I finished, letting hope fill every word as the last bit drifted from my lips praying it would find home. “First…everything.”
His rough palm came to my check, firm yet kind as he eyes slipped closed for a long moment. He caressed me with gentle strokes of his thumb, while his other hand slid down my hip, his fingers finding their way to the crease where my bottom met my thigh.
“Everything about you is perfect.” He gritted out, gruff and strained, so close to me that the breath from each of his words warmed my lips.
“Please. Kiss. Me.” I begged, realizing I didn’t simply want his kiss.
I needed it.
His mouth crushed my lips and his greedy tongue pushed mine aside as he kissed me with an intensity that seemed to shift the ground under my feet. The rough scratch of his unshaven face prickled on my skin.
The kiss was the most pleasure I had ever felt. As though I were slipping into a hot spring, the wetness gathered between my legs freely. Driven by instinct and need, I pressed myself into him as he did to me and I felt his manhood grow harder and harder against my body. Fear and fascination were a frantic fury battling inside of me.