Untamed (28 page)

Fear struck her, replacing the wild exhilaration she’d known but a few seconds before. The main road was no place for a wild horse. Carriages, hedgerows, and other riders all presented likely risks. She brought the reins up hard, hating to hurt the animal’s sensitive gums, but having no choice if she wanted to rein him in. Zeus let out a screech and reared, forelegs leaving the ground and thrashing at air. Kate’s world upended. For a dizzying few seconds, her gaze met with the sky, her foot slipping from the stirrup.

The animal righted itself. Amidst the stomach-pitching motion, somehow she managed to keep her seat, holding on with her legs. The episode would give her bragging rights for life, provided she didn’t end the morning with a broken neck.

“Kate!”

Rourke was beside her, his bay running neck and neck with Zeus, the animals’ exhaled breaths forming twin frost clouds. Kate risked a quick sideways glance at her husband. Sweat streaked the side of his face from forehead to jowl, dripping into his shirt stock, already banded by a wet ring.

“Rein in before you break your bloody neck or I’m minded to break it for you.”

“I’m trying!” She said so at a scream, but she didn’t think he’d heard her.

A hedgerow rose up faster than she’d judged. Rourke snapped out an arm and caught her reins in a fist with his and yanked hard. Reaching over, he slapped her hands onto her saddle pommel. “Hold on!”

Kate was trying. Zeus, though more than half-wild, slowed to match the bay’s gait. Several more circuits about the field were required to slow the horses to less than a full gallop. The next thing she knew, Rourke’s arm wrapped about her waist, pulling her off the stallion and onto the saddle in front of him. Seconds later, Zeus tore off.

Hamish Campbell slipped under the fence and ran over to them. “Are you all right, missus?”

It took Kate a full minute to be sure. “I … Yes, I think so. But the horse …”

She looked off to the dust clouds rising up from the lane and felt her heart sink. A horse run amok was not only a danger to himself but to others. She’d never meant for anyone to get hurt, man or beast.

The stable manager took off his cap and ran his hand through his thinning hair. “Several of the lads have gone off after him. Dinna worry, like as not we’ll get him back eventually.”

Rourke’s voice was a hard hiss in her ear, his arm about her waist a vise that permitted no escape. “Were I you, Katie, I’d save my worrying for myself.”

hat afternoon Kate stepped out of the hip bath and wrapped the towel around her. The long, hot soak had proved just the thing for sore muscles. If only a bruised heart might be as easily remedied.

The dressing-room door flew open, crashing against the wall. Rourke stood in the portal, the breadth of his shoulders filling the frame. Kate wasn’t all that surprised to see him. He’d been stomping about his bedroom ever since they’d gotten back to the castle and parted ways at the top of the stairs.

She held her chin high and kept a firm grip on the towel. She might be dripping wet, but he looked wild, indeed. His rumpled white shirt hung open to the navel as though he’d been in the process of taking it off and then changed his mind. Her gaze fixed on the queue of reddish brown hair leading downward to his trouser waistband, and her lower belly thrummed.

He braced a hand on the door frame and raked her with his gaze. She was keenly aware of the bathwater pearling on her skin, her nipples firming to hard points beneath the towel, and that her legs were bare from the knees down. And suddenly the room, large as it was, didn’t seem to contain nearly enough air.

“You might have knocked.”

He snorted, bringing to mind the stallion. Both were arrogant beasts used to having their way with females. “Aye, I might have, only I’m no feeling so verra civil toward you at the moment.” He shoved away from the door and stalked over to her. “You might have obeyed me, Kate. Your disobedience caused the loss of a valuable animal and put those who must go after him at risk. Beyond that, you made me seem a laughingstock in front of my own men. No one respects a man who canna control his own wife.” He drew up beside her, so close that for a moment Kate thought she might fall backward into the bath.

Kate shrugged, sending the towel slipping. “I suppose you chose the wrong wife, then.”

“Whether I did or not, the deed is done. I’m your husband. That makes me responsible for you.”

“The hell it does.” She shoved one arm inside the silk sleeve and held onto the towel with the other hand. “Husband, yes; lord and master, no.”

Bold words, and yet his nearness was like a drug, making her dizzy, making her wet. His musk filled her nostrils. She wanted to taste him, trace that queue of hair down his chest first with her fingers and then follow with her tongue.

“The vows you took before God and man say otherwise. Obedience, Kate, was only part of what you promised. Those vows you took of your own free will, I might add.”

“Free will, ha! A fat lot of choice I had with your holding Papa’s marker over all our heads.”

His emerald eyes narrowed. “We struck a bargain, you and I. You promised to obey me, Katie, and in turn I swore to protect and provide for you, to worship you with my body and to keep myself unto you alone. We’ve neither of us been verra good about upholding our end of the bargain, but that, dear wife, is about to change.”

His arm shot out. The towel came off. Kate stared down at the pool of it at her feet, and then swung her gaze up to his. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

“Giving you what you’ve been asking for ever since we met.”

She tried covering herself with her hands, but he hauled her against him, pinning her arms. Her breasts flattened against him. He smelled of starch and sweat and bay rum and man. The stiffness of his shirt and the coarseness of the curls on his chest chafed her nipples. Lower, his hardness and heat bore into her belly.

Warm breath struck her cheek. Emerald eyes seared her skin. His fingers dug into her flesh. “I want you on your hands and knees. On the bed.
Now.”

Breath hitching, she shook her head. No matter what he did, she mustn’t lose control, she mustn’t lose herself. “I will not.”

He swung her up into his arms. The bed was only a few feet away. He carried her over to it. Panic flared, and she struck out, her nails scoring the side of his face. He jerked back and cursed.

“You’ve claws, haven’t you, my wild Kat?”

He dumped her in the center of the mattress and stepped back. Kate landed on all fours. She tried scrambling up, but he was too fast for her to escape and far too strong. He dropped down on the bed beside her, the mattress swinging like a hammock.

“Come here, Kate.” He grabbed her, dragging her across his thighs. “We’ve unfinished business, you and I. Business I mean to see settled here and now.”

Her face was afire, her sex weeping and strumming in turns. Her cheek pressed into the mattress, she tried levering herself up, but his arm cinching her waist held her firmly down. “Let me up.”

He ignored her. “When I was a lad, I was tied to the whipping post, mind. Fifty lashes with the scourge, Kate. Surely you can take half as many from the flat of my hand.”

Twenty-five strikes! She’d gathered he meant to spank her when he’d turned her over his knee, but she hadn’t thought much about what that meant before now.

His hand cracked down. “One.” Furious, she tried shoving up on her forearms, but it was no use.

“Two.” His hand came down again, harder this time. Kate gritted her teeth against crying out.

“Three!”

Wetness spurted between her thighs. The dull ache ratcheted to pounding.

“Four. You’ve a bonny bottom, Katie. It’s pale as moonbeam and ripe as melon. My handprints look well painted on such a canvas.” He smoothed a soothing hand over the sting and skittered light fingertips between the lobes.

Kate shivered. She bit back a gasp. A mental picture of his hands shot to mind—scarred knuckles, callused palms, thick fingers that knew just where to press, how to touch. He was spanking her as though she were a naughty child, a wicked girl, a slave. He was spanking her, and suddenly Kate couldn’t seem to get enough. She turned her face into the mattress, her hands fisting the sheets, her hips rocking back and finding a rhythm with his hand. He wasn’t only spanking her. He was marking her, marking her as his.

And the shame of it,
her
shame, was that she didn’t think she could bear for him to stop. Twenty-five strikes no longer seemed nearly enough. Each successive strike lifted her to a new level of dark pleasure, a deeper understanding that surrender could be sublime.

She needed this.

As if sensing the shift in her, he slid the hand holding her around to her front. His palm took possession of her mons. He gave it a light squeeze. “Ah, I am giving you what you want, aren’t I, Katie? I thought as much.” He tunneled a finger inside her, pressing on some previously undiscovered, exquisitely sensitive spot.

Kate’s head lifted. She moaned and twisted back to look back at him. The act of control being taken away was surprisingly thrilling. “Please … more.”

“I’ll give you more, love, as much as you want, as much as you can take.”

He stood, bringing her with him. They hadn’t made it to twenty-five strikes, at least she didn’t think so. This time he laid her on her back and came down atop her. His straddling thighs locked her hips in place and his big hands banded her wrists, pinning her arms high above her head. Wetness streamed her inner thighs, the hidden throbbing heavy and liquid. Her bottom felt raw, if not exactly blistered. She shifted on her hips, savoring the stinging.

He brought his face down close to hers. Perspiration beaded his forehead, and blood from the scratch she’d given him streaked down his jaw in a thin line. She’d marked him, too, marked him as hers, and seeing the evidence brought a heady pride.

“Tell me you want this, Kate.”

Kate opened her mouth to answer but couldn’t bring herself to give more than a low moan. Her body knew what she wanted, needed, even if she did not. And so it seemed did Rourke. He wedged a knee between her thighs, pried her legs apart, and plunged a second finger into her slickness.

Kate sucked in a sharp breath. His fingers worked scissor-style inside her, spreading her wider, driving the ache deeper. She thought about how open she was, how utterly trapped and yet completely free, and a grateful sob broke forth from her lips.

I need this.

When his one hand left her wrist to unbutton his trousers, she had no thought of trying to pull away. Her gaze riveted on the open flap—the long, thick cock, the thatch of coarse reddish brown curls, the shadowed testicles. Later once her hands were free, she would want to palm and lick him, to suckle and taste, but for now those sensations were too overwhelming, too rich.

He held himself and met her eyes. A sliver of milky moisture leaked from the slit and down the side.

“Tell me you want this. Tell me you want me.” His voice was a husky demand, his breath a warm breeze settling into hair.

This time Kate found her voice. “I want this.”
I
want you.

He fitted his head to the throbbing spot between her thighs and thrust, his entry brutal and beautiful, hard and deep. The stab of pain told her he was all the way inside. She was glad. He stilled, perspiration beading his face, a long ripple sliding down his throat. “Kate?”

By now she knew what he wanted from her, knew her way to that place inside her soul that allowed her to surrender, to give. “Please.”

And then he was on top of her, moving in and out of her, and through the fog that clouded her consciousness she understood that she was moving, too. Not against him or away from him, but with him. The rhythm into which their joined bodies had mutually fallen was building toward some sort of crescendo, something magical and earthy, wonderful and terrifying, that promised to carry her to a place so foreign and exquisite that she may have visited before but only in her dreams.

At some point, he’d freed her hands. She sank her nails into his shoulders, cinched her knees about his hips, and held on for dear life. Above where they were joined, his finger flicked and teased and stroked and played. An ache, a different sort, was spiraling to some sort of glorious end. Reaching for it, Kate lifted against him. Her bottom burned, her vagina burned. Oh, such lovely, scalding heat.

“You’re mine.” He let out a groan and slid an arm beneath her hips, bringing her high against him. “Say it.” He pulled out of her and then thrust hard and deep.

Dancing on the knife edge of that lovely pleasure-pain, Kate bit her lip. She lifted her head, hoping if she did he might seal her baptism by fire with a kiss. “Yes, I’m yours.”

He didn’t kiss her, but he smiled a smile of feral eyes and bared white teeth. “That’s all I wanted to hear.”