Claimed by a Laird (8 page)

He knelt down, sensing her curled-up body to his left.
Brushing against her foot, he reached forward to grasp the edge of the blanket.
A soft gasp cut through the silence.

“Galen?” came Anna’s voice from under the blankets. “Is that
you?”

He could have kicked himself for waking her. “Yes, Annie. It
is I.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked, her last word
swallowed by a yawn.

“Sleeping,” he tersely answered, “which is what you should
be doing.”

He pulled the blanket back and slipped underneath, his
breath catching in his throat as he came in contact with her.

Damn it all. The woman was naked.

“You’re naked!” Anna exclaimed.

Galen inhaled sharply against her ear. “As are you,” he
drily replied. “Care to explain, lass?”

She rolled from her side to her back so she could face him,
her pride pricked by the annoyance in his voice. The motion caused her head to
swim a bit and her attention was drawn back to the strange ache that had
settled into her muscles and the dull throb in her head. The sickly sensations,
probably courtesy of some stupid virus, had taken over as she sat next to Galen
by the campfire.

She shivered as the cool air rushed under the blanket and
yanked the covering back over her, determined to recreate the warm cocoon he’d
destroyed. “My clothes were still damp. I had to get out of them just to get
warm.”

He grunted in response and pulled the blanket toward him
again, settling it over both of them.

Anna stiffened. Here she had been lusting after the guy
since the moment they met and all he could do after finding her nude was act
annoyed. “Sorry. I didn’t realize my nakedness would offend you so much,” she
mumbled as she turned away.

She froze as he stretched the length of his unyielding body
against her side. The heat emanating from his bare skin increased the dizziness
in her head, but eased the ache from her muscles.

Galen exhaled heavily against her hair, sending a shiver
through her scalp and down her neck. “I am the opposite of offended.” He leaned
down to brush her cheek with his warm lips.

Her pulse jumped. He did want her after all.

No, this was stupid. Sure, this giant, sexy-as-hell man
wanted her. He was a man and she’d already made her desires known when she
threw herself at him in the forest. What man wouldn’t take advantage of that?
But she had absolutely no business having sex with him. She’d only known him
for a few hours and there wasn’t a condom in sight. No, this definitely
couldn’t happen.

She attempted to turn her back to him once again but he
threw his massive thigh across both of hers. She tried to shove it off and
scoot out from underneath him, but her weakened muscles would not cooperate. He
grabbed both her hands and held them above her head as his body covered the
length of hers, trapping his stiff cock against the soft flesh of her thigh.

“Oh,” she whispered, half in shock and half in wonder. Her
nipples hardened, aching as he shifted his weight and his chest hair brushed
against them. It had been a long time, far too long since the weight and heat
of a naked man pressed down upon her. A swell of warm, wet arousal moved
through her core.

“Well, now, seeing as how I have you in my bed.” Laughter laced
his voice as his lips came persuasively down on hers.

The tenderness in his kiss caused a shiver to run down her
spine. She instinctively parted her lips and he smiled against them.

“I had no idea you would feel so damn good, woman,” he
murmured, slipping his tongue between her lips.

Hot pleasure rippled through her skin and she tentatively
caressed his tongue with her own. But as soon as he released her hands and
separated her thighs with his leg, reality descended upon her. She pushed on
his chest to break the kiss.

“Wait, Galen,” she insisted as he attempted to remove her
hands from his chest. “We can’t be doing this.”

“Like hell we cannot,” he muttered, easily pressing himself
down despite her resistance. He recaptured her mouth, his lips hot and demanding.

The painful throb in Anna’s head responded to his body heat
and faded. A desperate longing to melt into his kisses took over, but her brain
continued to fight against it. “You don’t understand. I think I’m coming down
with a fever,” she replied against his lips.

His head shot up. “What?”

Grateful for the reprieve from the assault on her senses,
she relaxed her shoulders. Now maybe she could talk some sense into him. “I
feel achy and my head hurts.”

Galen pressed his palm against her cheeks and forehead, and
then shook his head. “You do not feel feverish to me. You simply went through
hell today, lass. Of course your body aches.”

“No, it’s more than just that. For all I know, I’ve already
made you sick from kissing you,” Anna persisted. Hopefully, he wouldn’t demand
an explanation. The thought of explaining germ theory to a thirteenth-century
man as he lay naked on top of her nearly overwhelmed her fragile state of mind.
“That’s why we have to stop.”

“Hell, woman, I get feverish just looking at you,” he
grumbled, dropping his lips to the base of her neck.

The searing heat of his mouth liquefied her pulse, sending
weighty waves through her core. She tilted her head back, her eyelids trembling
as they closed. “We shouldn’t do this.”

Undeterred, his mouth blazoned a trail down her shoulder
before moving across the top of her chest. “You go ahead and give me all of
your reasons why not, lass,” he whispered, his tone laced with amusement.

He wove his fingers through hers, drawing her hand up next
to her head. He trailed the back of his other hand down her arm and grasped her
hip as he lightly pressed kisses along the side of her neck to her earlobe,
leaving a mass of tingling nerves in his wake.

Anna swallowed hard, determined to keep focused. But her
body would not cooperate. She rotated her hips beneath his palm and he dug his
fingers into her tender flesh as he traced her collarbone with his moist
tongue. She shivered, goose bumps trailing behind his tongue as the moisture
evaporated from her skin. “Well, we barely know one another.”

“You are a woman. That is all I need to know.” He rocked his
hips against her, rubbing the length of his hot cock against her thigh, and
threaded his fingers through the curls at the junction of her thighs.

She pressed her thighs together and squeezed his fingers
with her hand, resisting the urge to open up to him. “I could be married or
engaged for all you know.”

“Are you?”

She whimpered as his hot breath scorched the cool flesh of
her neck. “No. Are you?” she asked, hoping for something—anything—that would
douse her ardor and bring her back to sanity.

“I have no claims on any other woman.” He chuckled softly.

Damn it.

His hand glided across her waist and she threaded her
fingers through his thick hair as he peered down at her through the darkness.
She chewed her lower lip as a warm wetness gathered between her thighs. She was
losing the battle. She craved his mouth on hers, on her neck, sucking on her
aching nipples. If he continued the seduction she would surrender. She had to convince
him that he really did not want to do this. It was the only way.

“I’m not a virgin, you know.” She was grasping at straws,
but how the hell else was she supposed to turn off a thirteenth-century man?

“I figured as much.” He kissed her brow.

Crap.

She squeezed her eyes shut as he grazed side of her breast
with his palm, sending a thrilling shiver through her nipple and eliciting a
gasp from her throat.

She grabbed his hand and held it still against her as her
pulse thudded in her core. “I could get pregnant.”

His hand flexed beneath her fingers, but they refused to
budge. “I do not know the meaning of that word,” he whispered against her
cheek, gently cupping her breast as his thumb traced torturous circles around
her nipple.

She sighed, half in exasperation and half in pleasure. “A
baby. You could…I mean, I could…”

The pad of his thumb skipped across her erect nipple and she
moaned.

He nipped at the skin on her neck with his teeth and dragged
them across her collarbone. “And if I did get you with child?”

What? How could he
not
be freaked out by that
thought? She sure as hell was. “I could be socially ostracized as a whore or
something, couldn’t I?” she whispered, fighting the urge to draw his hand
between her trembling thighs.

“I would kill anyone who dared call you that.”

Her defenses worn thin, she arched her back as jolts of
electricity shot directly from her nipple to her clit, causing her vision to
blur. The last threads of control were slipping from her fingers and she could
only come up with one additional reason she shouldn’t surrender to him.

“You could break my heart.”

Galen paused for several long, agonizing moments. Her nipple
throbbed under the weight of his thumb. His cock, so hot and hard against her,
fairly beckoned her to part her thighs and wrap them around his waist in
complete submission.

He brushed the hair away from her face. “I would sooner
die.”

Anna’s resistance melted and she descended into molten heat
coursing through her veins. She threw her arms around his neck and pressed her lips
to his jaw as the last threads of coherent thought slipped away. Her head swam,
lost in the hard smoothness of his massive form as it pressed her into the hard
ground. She inhaled his heady, masculine scent, allowing it to fill her lungs
and seep into her blood.

She slid her fingers along his shoulders, tracing around
each muscular bulge. Was any of this even real? Or was she dreaming?

“Kiss me,” she whispered, parting her thighs.

She had finally surrendered. Galen crushed his lips to hers,
slanting his mouth over hers again. Her hips rocked beneath him, rubbing his
swollen shaft back and forth against her soft flesh. If the woman was not
careful, he was liable to spread her legs and shove his cock into her right
then and there. He grabbed her hips in an effort to still them and tore his
lips from hers, determined to make her come apart in his arms before he made
her completely his.

Cupping one velvety breast in his palm, he bent his head,
inhaling her honeyed scent. He flicked his tongue over her nipple, awed by the
sweet taste of her skin, and she dug her fingernails into his shoulders. He
dragged his teeth across the swollen bud and then circled it with his tongue
before taking it into his mouth.

She entwined one of her legs around his, rubbing her silken
inner thigh against his hip and groaning his name as he dragged his tongue
across her chest to her other nipple. Sexy little whimpers escaped her throat
with each flick of his tongue. The moist heat of her arousal cradled his
testicles and he trembled against her.

Damn, the woman made this difficult for him. Between his
near-to-bursting cock and her writhing hips, he was certain to black out if he
did not fuck her soon. Kissing a path up to her neck, he shifted his weight off
her and flattened his palm against her stomach. He slid his hand downward,
slowly skimming one inner thigh and then the other, determined to end the sweet
torment. He threaded his fingers through the curls at the junction of her
thighs and grazed her clit. She moaned, bucking against his hand, and he
slipped two fingers into her slick folds.

A jolt of energy surged through his cock and he groaned in
wonder. He had not expected her to be so hot and wet for him so soon. He needed
to make her come. Now.

Anna’s equilibrium tossed about like driftwood on ocean
waves. She groaned, opening her thighs as wide as she could, desperate to ease
the empty ache pounding through her core.

Galen nibbled her earlobe. “You belong to me now, Annie. Do
you understand?”

His strange words filtered through her haze of arousal,
causing her to hesitate for a brief moment in uncertainty.

“I care not about your past. Only that you swear to me now
that you are mine.” He brushed her clit with his thumb and she jerked, as an
intense electric surge shot through her.

If she didn’t know better, she would have sworn she detected
worry in his voice. Her heart swelled and a mystifying desire to put his mind
at ease arose within her. She caressed his cheek as she nodded, pressing her
hungry lips against his.

“Yes, Galen.”

Stunned by the words that had just fallen out of her mouth,
the logical part of her brain broke through and screamed at her.
You did not
just do that! How the hell can you promise yourself to a man you don’t even
know? Remember what happened the last time?

But then his thumb circled her clit as his fingers delved
between her swollen, aching folds and the admonitions faded. She squeezed her
eyes shut, her body twitching. She bit her lower lip and sucked in a deep
breath through her nostrils, sinking into the waves of pleasure, the flashes of
heat, until her heart began beating again and the pleasure hummed through her
core rather than shocking her into convulsions.

His hot lips dragged down her neck and captured her nipple,
sucking it into a hard peak. She groaned and rocked her hips in rhythm with his
skilled fingers as shock waves spread outward from her clit toward her thighs.
The pressure mounted impossibly higher, her need for completion throbbing hotly
through her skin.

All sounds from the encampment fell away as Galen’s aroused,
ragged breathing filled her ears. Her head swam as his masculine scent teased
her nostrils. Her blood surged and her skin tingled with fire, sending her head
spinning faster and faster as warm moisture seeped from her core. Gasping and
whimpering as tremors pulsed through her pussy, she dug her nails into his back
and arched toward him. For one brief moment, her heart stilled, her core
gaping. And then she exploded, spasming around his fingers as she cried out his
name.

Galen grunted his approval in her ear, shoving his fingers
into her hard, over and over again as she convulsed beneath him. “Yes, lass.
Yes.”

Anna’s eyes rolled to the back of her head as hot, furious
tremors built up and spread within mere moments, seizing all control of her body.
She tore her nails down his arms and lifted her hips to force his fingers
deeper. Her core contracted around them and she cried out half in gratification
and half in frustration over needing more.