Claiming Her (Renegades & Outlaws) (10 page)

But for all the talk of Fate and Heaven and Hell, the world let a man make of himself what he would. Required him to. Men were as persuadable as sheep, and the world, be it civilized and courtier-laden, or savage and howling with wolves, responded to whatever a man made of himself. If a man acted great, a great man he was. If he sold himself as a pastry, he would be consumed as one.

How could it not be true for women as well? The world did with one as one allowed it to do. No one knew its vicious appetites better than Aodh.

So, instead of laughing at Katarina and her ridiculous statements about being something other than chattel, he said, “Then you will suit just fine.”

She smiled slowly and shook her head at him. “You
are
mad. And if
you
do not suit equally well?”
 

He grinned. “I shall.”
 

“Saying yes would make me quite as reckless as you, sir.”

“I am relying on it, lass.”

A dark feminine eyebrow winged up. “And if I turn out to be stubborn instead?”

“Then I will have miscalculated.” But he hadn’t. He knew it. He was as certain of this as he’d been of anything.
 

Deep inside, desire began to move thickly through his blood. It was her smile. This one was so small and enclosed, like a house with all the curtains drawn; anything might be happening inside.

He wanted in.

Her cheeks flushed, but her clever gaze never strayed from his. “You might be sorry, you know. I neither stitch nor sing, and most consider that a blessing, as I am without talent in either.”

There was a note of earnestness, sincerity, as if it mattered that he not be taken in by some false promise of her…domesticity? “I consider myself forewarned.”

“Neither do I play an instrument.”

“No mind. I do.”

“The tennis court is entirely ornamental; I cannot play.”
 

“But you have a wheel-lock,” he said admiringly. “And a snaphance.
Five
of them.”

Her eyes widened, then she laughed and leaned back against the chair, momentarily relaxed. The bodice of her green gown tossed off darts of light from the silvery threads, and her long dark hair was still tousled, coif long forgotten, smiling at him. He wanted more of that from her. Wanted it badly. He had no idea why, and was not wont to examine it too closely. All he knew was he must keep Katarina upended. Keep her smiling. Keep her looking at him.
 

“That is the oddest measure of matrimony I have ever heard,” she mused.
 

“Aye, we’ll be quite a pair.”

Head still back against the chair, she turned to him. “You do not fool me, Aodh Mac Con. This is not a pairing. You are a conqueror to the marrow of your bones. Your coup will be complete if you wed me. You will have the lady.”

“I will have the fire.”

One eyelid drifted down in suspicious regard. “I do not know where you have collected your notions of me, sir, but I am the furthest thing from a fire of rebellion that exists in all of Ireland.”

But Aodh wasn’t thinking about rebellion. He was thinking about the fire of Katarina. The heat, the passion, the
fuel
of her.
 

Aodh himself was comprised of ice, so hard and carven and unstoppable, he’d achieved everything everyone had ever intended for him, and more. He felt like a glacier that had pushed aside even the intentions of a queen. Nothing could stop him. He was a block of ice, moving through the world. Not even fire could penetrate him. Nothing could warm him. Nothing touched him. He barely felt the flames roaring only a few feet away.

But he felt Katarina.
 

He sat forward, chest pressed to the hard edge of the table, surprised to find his heart beating fast.
 

“Lass,” he said, very low. “Are you going to marry me?”
 

Chapter Ten

KATARINA’S BODY felt as if she were a candle he had lit. Chills and heat warred across her skin.
 

Marry Aodh Mac Con, thief of castles, warlord who made her blood boil and who did not punish her, soldier unafraid of the Queen of England, who had trekked across hostile lands and—
I do not disapprove
—dispensed velvety wine and said her name like a hymn?

It was so unfathomable, so outrageous, so…unattainable.
 

She could not marry an Irish warlord.
 
It was ludicrous. It would be treason at best. At worst…

Every man you’ve ever met. Every one but me.

Simple, then. Say no. Get to her feet and decline this treasonous offer, close the strange, unforeseen door he’d thrust open with his coup and his eyes that heralded ice and sadness and his offers of marriage and
I do not disapprove
.
 

Just say no.

And then, through the long skein of the rest of her days, what then?
 

A jagged-edged chill cut down her belly.
 

“Katarina, regard,” he said quietly. “Whether you wish it or no, I have uncovered the truth. You hold Rardove with ten men. I cannot fathom how you did it, but that time is over. People are going to come for this place.”
 

“Yes, Bertrand of Bridge.” A tragically, violently well-suited man for the task of subduing anyone.
 

“And you wish for that?”
 

The question disrupted her tenuous composure more than anything else that had happened since entering this room, and a great many things had already blown against that thin veil. This
detecting
of her inner thoughts was most unnerving.

“What does it matter what I wish for?”
 

“Right now, it matters to me.”

A sensation fluttered up in her like birds taking flight. She brushed her fingertips over her cheek, unnerved by the way he’d upended her life.
 
Her lonely, windswept life.
 

I do not disapprove.

A ribbon flicked inside her, hot and low in her belly, raising paradoxical little chills across her skin.

She got to her feet, but could not look away from him.

He sat watching her, the power of him flickering in shadow and light. Dark hair, pewter eyes, warrior’s body, weapons hanging across him, he was everything she knew to fear. And did fear.
 

That
must
be fear, rushing through her in hot, shaky sweeps.

“Is that an aye?” he said as the silence extended.

One beat, two. His eyes never left hers.
 

Then he pushed to his feet.

She half-turned away. She was breathing too fast; her head spun. She could not think straight. She heard him coming, the silvery jingle of spurs, the soft tread of boots on plank floors. She curled her hand around a hairbrush on the dressing table, its gilt silver handle a cool thing of solid sanity, for this thing happening now, it could not be real.

But it was. He came up behind her, stood at her back, not touching,
emanating
. He was a fire burning in the room.
 

She parted her lips to inhale, trying to slow her racing breath, her spinning mind, her thundering heart.
 

“I cannot,” she said. It was more breath than word.

To her horror, she realized it sounded like a question:
Can I?

He bent his head beside her hair. “Your people are frightened, Katarina. Their lives have been disrupted. They need you to calm them, guide them. You and I have armies to integrate,” his dark coaxing went on. “My men…they have been too long amid the fight. They need civilizing.”

She gave a broken laugh. “They will hardly find that here.”

“And you.” His body was heat and hard power, a bare inch away. “You must ache for a husband.”
 

She meant to shake her head, deny his words, deny everything. She moved nothing.
 

“On occasion, aye?”

She tilted her chin up and drew in a breath.
   

“At night, when you are alone?”
 

He tread too close. In every way.

His fingertips touched down low on her back. “I would do my part to make it pleasing for you.”

Her breath stopped. His fingertips skimmed up her back. He might as well have raked a hot poker up her spine, dragging streams of fire behind. Her body remained frozen as his hand slipped under the weight of hair at the base of her neck and brushed it aside.
 

He lowered his mouth to hover just above the exposed skin.
 

“Breathe,” he said quietly.

Her breath rushed out.
 

He did not touch her, but his breath skimmed across her skin as he spoke. “You would not suffer for the union.”

He presented it as a choice, but all would bend to his will. She knew it, he knew it; his presence was a decree. But still, he stood, restrained, head bent, a hand brushing the hair off the nape of her neck, coaxing her.

Seducing her.
 

Inside, she felt like dying coals awakened, as when a door is opened and the wind sweeps in.
 

“Contrary to what you might think, Katarina…” Oh, he
must
stop saying her name in that dark, lilting Irish voice. It would make her do something
mad
. “I do not take my pleasure in unwilling women.”
 

“No?” she whispered.

“Nay.” He rested a hand on her waist. “I prefer to make them willing.”

Fire coursed through her body. “How?” She meant
how on earth could you ever think to make me willing?
It was a rhetorical device, a defiant query, a breathless taunt.

He took it as an invitation.

He pressed his knee to the back of hers and lowered his mouth to her neck, and if Katarina had thought him dangerous before, now she was educated on the true peril of Aodh Mac Con.
 

He was spark, and she was nothing but tinder.

Hot and confident, his mouth laid whisper-light kisses across the base of her neck, raining chills down her spine, then his wide palm came to rest flat against her stomach.
 

Shock reeled through her. She made the smallest push against his arm, and he dropped it at once. He did not move his mouth, though, and she did not move her body.

Wicked girl, she did not move anything at all.
 

He gathered her hand in his. Not hurrying in the least, he entwined their fingers and lifted them to his mouth, kissed each of her knuckles in turn. It was as if he’d laid tiny torches to the never-tended skin.
 

She was breathless and had to open her mouth to inhale. He touched each finger until he reached her orphaned thumb, then turned their hands over and pressed a kiss into the center of her palm, a slow, lingering kiss, his head to the side.

Her knees almost buckled.

The day’s growth of hair on his jaw scraped against her palm, and she curled her fingers into it for a brief, mad second. Her head was a whirling thing, a dervish mind.

Which had to explain what happened next. How she allowed him so much. How she took so much.

He shifted behind her, and she felt his hand slide up the mound of her breast. No, not his hand, hers, their fingers intertwined, sliding over her breast, making her stroke herself, brushing her knuckles over her nipple, coaxing it to a hard nub.
 

He was making her caress herself.

Their breaths were loud in the room. She felt as if she’d drunk a dozen cups of wine. She should have shouted no, stopped this reckless thing, but she said nothing, for she knew if she so much as whispered no, Aodh would stop.
 

And if he stopped, she would die.
 

Passion had never, ever served her. But oh, how it pleased.
 

What Aodh was doing, how it pleased.

He curled a finger around the collar of her gown and tugged it to the side and skimmed his tongue over the new territory.