To Tame a Highland Warrior (22 page)

“I took a vow to keep you from harm, Jillian. It was only natural that I should check on you when you were nearby. Have you kissed Quinn yet?” he demanded.

“Keep me from harm?” Her voice soared with disbelief. “You failed!
You
hurt me worse than anything else ever has in my entire life!”

“Have you kissed Quinn yet?”
he roared.

“No! I haven’t kissed Quinn yet!” she shouted back. “Is that all you care about? You don’t give a damn that
you
hurt
me.”

The goblet clattered to the floor as Grimm lunged to his feet. His hands came down with unbridled fury. Trenchers flew from the table, untouched pottage stew showered the room, chunks of flatbread bounced off the hearth. The candelabrum exploded into the wall and stuck like a cleft foot between the stones. Soapy white candles rained down upon the floor. His rampage didn’t stop until the table between them had been swept clean. He paused, panting, his hands splayed wide on the edge of the table, his eyes feverishly bright. Jillian stared at him, stunned.

With a howl of rage, he crashed his hands into the center of six inches of solid oak, and Jillian’s hand flew to her throat to smother a cry when the long table split down the middle. His blue eyes blazed incandescently, and she could have sworn he seemed to be growing larger, broader, and more dangerous. She’d certainly gotten the reaction she’d been seeking, and more.

“I know I failed!” he roared. “I know I hurt you! Do you think I haven’t had to live with that knowledge?”

Between them, the table creaked and shuddered in an effort to remain whole. The wounded slab tilted precariously. Then, with a groan of defeat, the ends slumped toward the center and it crashed to the floor.

Jillian blinked as she surveyed the wreckage of their meal. No longer seeking to provoke him, she stood dumbfounded by the intensity of his reaction. He knew he’d hurt her? And he cared enough to get this angry at the memory?

“Then why did you come back now?” she whispered. “You could have disobeyed my da.”

“I had to see that all is well with you, Jillian,” he whispered back across the sea of destruction that separated them.

“I’m well, Grimm,” she said carefully. “That means you can go away now,” she said, not meaning a breath of it.

Her words evoked no response.

How could a man stand so still that she might think he had been cursed to stone? She couldn’t even see his chest rise and fall as she watched him. The breeze blowing in the tall window didn’t ruffle him. Nothing touched the man.

God knows she’d never been able to. Hadn’t she learned that by now? She’d never been able to reach the real Grimm, the one she’d known that first summer. Why had she believed anything might have changed? Because she
was a woman grown? Because she had full breasts and shiny hair and she thought she could entice him near with a man’s weakness for a woman? And since he was so damned indifferent to her, why did she even want him?

But Jillian knew the answer to that, even if she didn’t understand the how of it. When she’d been a wee lass and tipped her head back to see the wild boy towering above her, her heart had cried welcome. There had been an ancient knowing in her child’s breast that had clearly told her no matter what heinous things Grimm stood accused of, she could trust him with her life. She knew he was supposed to belong to her.

“Why don’t you just cooperate?” Frustration peeled the words from her lips; she couldn’t believe she’d spoken them aloud, but once they were out, she was committed.

“What?”

“Cooperate,” she encouraged. “It means to go along. To be obliging.”

Grimm stared. “I canna oblige you by leaving. Your da—”

“I am not asking you to leave,” she said gently.

Jillian had no idea where she drew her courage from at that moment; she knew only that she was tired of wanting, and tired of being denied. So she stood proudly, moving her body exactly the way it felt whenever Grimm was in the same room: seductive, intense, more alive than at any other time in her life. Her body language must have signified her intent, for he went rigid.

“How would you have me cooperate, Jillian?” he asked in a flat, dead voice.

She approached him, carefully picking her way over broken platters and food. Slowly, as if he were a wild animal, she reached her hand, palm out, toward his chest. He
stared at it with a mixture of fascination and mistrust as she placed it upon his chest, over his heart. She felt the heat of him through his linen shirt, felt his body shudder, felt the powerful beating of his heart beneath her palm.

She tilted her head back and gazed up at him. “If you’d truly like to cooperate”—she wet her lips—“kiss me.”

It was with a furious gaze that he watched her, but in his eyes Jillian glimpsed the heat he struggled to hide.

“Kiss me,” she whispered, never taking her eyes from his. “Kiss me and
then
try to tell me that you don’t feel it too.”

“Stop it,” he ordered hoarsely, backing away.

“Kiss me, Grimm! And not because you think you’re doing me a ‘favor’! Kiss me because you want to! Once you told me you wouldn’t because I was a child. Well, I’m no longer a child, but a woman grown. Other men wish to kiss me. Why
not you
?”

“It isn’t like that, Jillian.” Both hands moved in frustration to his hair. He buried his fingers deep, then yanked the leather thong off and cast it to the stones.

“Then what is it? Why do Quinn and Ramsay and every other man I’ve ever known want me, but not you?
Must
I choose one of them? Is it Quinn I should be asking to kiss me? To bed me? To make me a woman?”

He growled, a low warning rumble in his throat. “Stop it, Jillian!”

Jillian tossed her head in a timeless gesture of temptation and defiance. “Kiss me, Grimm,
please
. Just
once
, as if you mean it.”

He sprang with such grace and speed that she had no warning. His hands sunk into her hair, pinning her head between his palms and arching her neck back. His lips covered hers and he took the breath from her lungs.

His lips moved over hers with unrestrained hunger, but in the bruising crush of his mouth she sensed a touch of anger—an element she didn’t understand. How could he be angry with her when it was so apparent that he’d wanted desperately to kiss her? Of that she was certain. The instant his lips had claimed hers, any doubts she’d previously suffered were permanently laid to rest. She could feel his desire struggling just beneath his skin, waging a mighty battle against his will.
And losing
, she thought smugly as his grip on her hair gentled enough for him to tilt her head, allowing his tongue deeper access to her mouth.

Jillian softened against him, clung to his shoulders, and gave herself over to dizzying waves of sensation. How could a simple kiss resonate in every inch of her body and make it seem the floor was tilting wildly beneath her feet? She kissed him back eagerly and fiercely. After so many years of wanting him, she finally had her answer. Grimm Roderick needed to touch her with the same undeniable need she felt for him.

And she knew that with Grimm Roderick—just once would
never
be enough.

T
HE KISS SPUN OUT AND DEEPENED
. I
T WAS FUELED BY
years of denied emotion, years of disavowed passion that swiftly clawed to the surface of Grimm’s resolve. Standing in the Greathall amidst the wreckage of a feast, kissing Jillian, he realized he hadn’t just been denying himself peace, he’d been denying himself life. For this was life, this exquisite moment of blending. His Berserker senses were overwhelmed, stupefied by the taste and touch of Jillian. He exulted in the kiss, becoming a bacchanalian worshiper of her lips as he slipped his hands through her hair, following the silken skein down her back.

He kissed Jillian as he’d never kissed any other woman, driven by hunger sprung from the most profane and the most sacred depths of his soul. He wanted her instinctively and would worship her with the primitiveness of his need. The press of her lips thawed the man, the questing probe of her tongue tamed and humbled the icy Viking warrior who had known no warmth until this moment. Desire flattened
all his objections and he crushed her body against his, taking her tongue into his mouth as deeply as he knew she would welcome his body into hers.

They slipped and slid on the bits of food scattered across the stones, stopping only at the stability of the wall. Without lifting his mouth from hers, Grimm slid a hand beneath her hips, braced her shoulders against the wall, and drew her legs around his waist. Years of watching her, forbidding himself to touch her, culminated in a display of frenzied passion. Urgency dictated his movements, not patience or skill. His hands slipped from her ankles as her arms entwined his neck and he pushed her gown up and over her calves, revealing her long, lovely legs. He caressed her skin, groaning against her lips when his thumbs found the soft skin of her inner thighs.

The kiss deepened as he took her mouth the same way he’d laid siege to castles: persistently, ruthlessly, and with single-minded focus. There was only Jillian, warm woman in his hands, warm tongue in his mouth, and she matched him, each wordless demand of his body met by hers. She buried her hands in his hair and kissed him back until he was almost breathless himself. Years of need crashed over him as his hands found her breasts and palmed their curves. Her nipples were hard and peaked; he needed more than her lips—he needed to taste every crevice and hollow of her body.

Cradling his face in her hands with a surprisingly strong grip, Jillian forced him to break the kiss. Grimm stared into her eyes, as if to scry the hidden meaning of her gesture. When she tugged his head down to the curve of her breast, he went willingly. He traced a reverent path with his tongue from peak to peak, tugging gently with his teeth before closing his lips on her nipple.

Jillian cried out in abandon and submission, a breathless sound of capitulation to her own desire. She thrust herself so firmly against his hips that the warm hollow between her thighs snugly fitted him with the sensuous finesse of a velvet glove. The barriers between them incensed him, and ripping his kilt from his waist, he eased her gown aside.

Stop!
His mind screamed.
She’s virgin! Not like this!

Jillian moaned and rubbed against him.

“Stop,” he whispered hoarsely.

Jillian’s eyes slitted open. “Not a chance in hell,” she said smugly, a smile curving her lower lip.

Her words ripped through him like a heated iron, raising his blood from molten to boiling. He could feel the beast inside him move, yawning with wicked wakefulness.

The Berserker? Now? There was no blood anywhere … yet. What would happen when there was?

“Touch me, Grimm. Here.” Jillian placed his hand on her breast and drew his head to hers. He groaned and shifted, rubbing in slow, erotic circles against her open thighs. Dimly he realized that the Berserker was rousing into full awareness, but it was somehow different—not violent, but aroused, violently hard, and violently hungry for every taste of Jillian it could have.

He would have laid her back upon the table, but there was no longer a table, so instead he lowered them both into a chair. He shifted so her legs dangled over its arms, and she sat facing him, her hands on his shoulders, her womanhood bared above him. She needed no encouragement to press herself against him, teasing him with the brush of her peaked nipples across his chest. Jillian dropped her head back, baring the slender arch of her neck, and Grimm froze a long moment, drinking in the vision of his lovely Jillian straddling his lap, her narrow waist curving into those lush
hips. Although he’d managed to slide her gown from her shoulders, the fabric pooled at her waist, and she was a goddess rising from a sea of silk.

“Christ, you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen!”

Jillian’s head whipped back, and she stared at him. Her look of disbelief quickly became a look of simple pleasure, then an expression of mischievous sensuality. “When I was thirteen,” she said, running her fingers down the arrogant curve of his jaw, “I watched you with a maid and I vowed to myself that one day I would do everything to you that she did. Every kiss.” She dropped her mouth to his nipple. Her tongue flicked out as she tasted his skin. “Every touch”—she slipped her hand down his abdomen to his hard shaft—“and every taste.”

Grimm groaned and grabbed her hand, preventing her fingers from curling around him. If her lovely hand so much as locked around him one time, he would lose control and be inside her in a heartbeat. Calling upon every ounce of his legendary discipline, he held his body away. He refused to hurt her like that. A confession of his own spilled from his lips. “From the day you began to mature, you drove me crazy. I couldn’t close my eyes at night without wanting you beneath me. Without wanting to be beside you,
inside
you. Jillian St. Clair, I hope you’re as tough as you like to believe you are, because you’re going to need every ounce of strength you possess for me tonight.” He kissed her, silencing any reply she might have made.

She melted into his kiss until he pulled back. He regarded her tenderly. “And Jillian,” he said softly, “I feel it too. I always did.”

His words flung open her heart, and the smile she gave him was dazzling. “I
knew
it!” she breathed.

As his hands slid over her heated skin, Jillian abandoned herself to the sensation. When he palmed her between her thighs, she cried out softly and her body bucked against his hand. “More, Grimm. Give me more,” she whispered.

His eyes narrowed as he watched her. Pleasure mingled with amazement and desire on her expressive features. He knew he was large, both in width and length, and she needed to be prepared. When she began to move wildly against his hand, he could deny himself no longer. He positioned her above him. “You’re in control this way, Jillian. It will hurt you, but you’re in control. If it hurts too much, tell me,” he said fiercely.