Pressed so close to him, my skin turns to fire.
I sink my fingers into his thick hair, scraping my nails over his skull to soothe the rigid fear from his body. And then I press my mouth to the shell of his ear, and murmur, “Holyrood owns me because life without you wouldn’t be much of a life at all.” When he stiffens, imperceptibly, I settle myself more firmly in his lap. “You sent me that message like it was a good-bye. You gave me the money and the car and a house in the middle of Oxford like those were the only pieces of you I’d ever have left.”
“You were better off without me. You’re still better off without me.”
My heart plummets. “Saxon, I only want—”
“But you’re mine.”
Jerking back, I sweep my gaze over his rugged face, noting the notch between his brows and the firm set to his mouth. “I thought . . . you just said that—”
“A girl like you shouldn’t be with a man like me,” he says, cupping the back of my head so that I have no choice but to be swept away on a sea of glittering green and tawny yellow, “but you lost any chance to walk away the second that I spotted your car outside the pub. You were mine when Josie let it slip that you hadn’t bathed, over missing me. You were mine when I heard that gunshot and felt terror the likes of which I’ve never known. You were mine, sweetheart, when your brother begged me to put you in the car and I couldn’t fucking let you go.”
Tears prick the corners of my eyes, and there’s nowhere to hide.
Saxon watches me, and surrounds me, and I let them fall. A warrior at her most vulnerable—for him, for us.
“You said that that no one should own a woman like me.”
“I don’t own you, Isla. I’m choosing to walk by your side.”
The dam breaks open, then, and maybe it’s a week of being stuck in that bed with my nerves on edge. Or maybe it’s the leftover adrenaline of storming the keep, so to speak, and expecting to find myself locked back in that cell beside Alfie Barker for a second time. Either way, I curl myself into Saxon’s arms and allow myself the freedom of being comforted by the man I love.
My first, my only.
He rubs my back, careful of my healing wound.
He husks out words that I can’t quite make out but nevertheless feel their vibration against my skin.
He holds me like I’m his, now, tomorrow, forevermore.
Only once my tremors have stopped does he raise his dark head, and the look on his face, it’s . . . sinful. Downright sinful. “I’m going to kiss you.”
Answering heat blooms between my legs. “I told you, you don’t have to ask permission.”
“I’m not asking for anything,” he retorts, leveraging his hand at the base of my head, “it’s a promise. A warning. Because once I do, there’s no stopping. I’m going to lay you out on this grass and drive myself so damn deep inside you, they’ll hear you at the Palace. I’m going to remind us both that we’re alive because right now . . .” The fingers of his free hand flit over my shirt collar, dragging it down, down, down, until he’s exposed the lace of my bra. “Right now, this still feels like a fucking dream and I’ll be damned if I wake up to find you gone again.”
“I’m not going any—”
The rest of the word breaks on a stifled gasp, and then Saxon is kissing me.
My back pressed into the damp grass.
My legs spread wide to make room for his brawny frame hovering above me.
My mouth parted, devoured, ravaged.
There’s tiny discomfort in the pressure against my battle scar, but it’s gone within seconds. Lost to a man who balances pain with pleasure, who offers possession and dominance on the heels of endearing affection.
Saxon kisses me like he may never have another chance, his calloused fingers fluttering over my face. Teasing down my temple, dancing across my cheek, firming over my chin, so he can angle me just right. My eyes are peeled open, and there is nothing beyond him but the wide breadth of his shoulders, and the soft, dark hair that falls over his forehead, and the harsh planes of his face.
And then his eyes meet mine, our mouths still fused, and I might as well be falling.
Raw vulnerability mingled with stark need dances in those pale green depths. He pulls back. Touches his tongue to his upper lip, and rasps, “You asked me, once, if I believe in fate. I said no.”
My hand finds the firm contour of his shoulder. “Have you had a change in opinion?”
“The day you walked into the pub,” he says, hoarsely, “I should have realized it then. Of all the thousands of people that we meet in our lifetimes, it was you who sat down in front of me. You, just you.”
His mouth slants over mine, his tongue teasing at my lips until I grant him entry.
There is lust in this kiss, but there’s something more. Something that brings an ache to my chest because Saxon . . . there are no walls built around him. I’ve scaled them, or maybe he tore them down, but as his tongue tangles with mine, there’s no denying the possessive roll of his hard cock against my core or the way he breaks from my mouth to utter “fucking beautiful” and “mine” against my temple.
This is Saxon Godwin unrestrained by the chains of Holyrood and prescribed loyalties and forever-present ice. And it’s wonderful.
I strain my neck, arching my back and thrusting my breasts into his body. “Please. Please.”
“Please, what?” The words are a taunt against my mouth, a dare for me to rise to the occasion and demand what I want from him. “Don’t be scared now.”
With my fingers raking through his hair, I yank on the strands. “I’m not scared of you.”
“You should be, sweetheart. You fucking should be.”
His nimble fingers flirt with the elastic waistband of my joggers. An intentional stroke along the seam. Another well-positioned drag over my clit. With his chest pressed flush with mine, he holds me captive as he works me into a writhing, trembling mess. I want more, and I part my lips to demand just that, but then he’s already moving.
Beneath the cotton of my sweats, beneath the silk of my knickers.
Until I feel the rough pad of his finger coasting along the all-too-sensitive bundle of nerves at the hood of my sex. He strokes me in a soft, barely-there caress, but it’s enough. Enough for sensation to flare. Enough for me to bury a cry into his shoulder while he rewards me with a guttural groan that has me turning into liquid beneath his body.
“Oh, God. Saxon.”
He plunges two fingers inside me, then angles his body so that I have a clear view of what he’s doing to me. My pulse skips a beat at the sight: my knees propped up, my hips rising again and again, shameless in my desire, his hand tenting the material of my joggers while he curls those fingers inside me and drags a moan from my lips.
The orgasm tickles at the base of my spine.
I feel it, the heat, the pull for me to let go.
Saxon doesn’t let me fly.
With one last thrust of his fingers, he pulls his hand out from my bottoms and plants it on the grass beside my head. “You’ll come with me,” he growls against my mouth, “and not a second before.”
“Cruel,” I tease on a heavy pant, “so bloody cruel.”
“No, not cruel,” he rumbles, as he sinks back on his heels and reaches for my shirt, arrogantly gathering the fabric in one fist, which he uses to pull me from the ground. My hands clamp down over his hard shoulders, just as he adds, “Starved. For you, for this.”