Midnight's Seduction (27 page)

He leaned over her and kissed her fiercely, passionately. She wrapped her arms around his neck as he deepened the kiss. And then he began to thrust.

CHAPTER

THIRTY

Saffron’s breath locked in her lungs as he moved with short, soft strokes and long, hard thrusts. He pounded into her, setting up a relentless tempo.

She held on to him, her body no longer her own. It was his to do with as he pleased. And she responded to his every touch, every breath as if she’d been waiting her entire life for him.

Her eyes opened to find Camdyn looking down at her, his dark chocolate eyes capturing hers and refusing to let go. Saffron had never looked into a man’s eyes before while making love.

It had seemed too intimate, too personal.

But with Camdyn everything was different. She wasn’t able to guard herself as she normally did, and somehow she didn’t want to. She wanted to be herself, the person she kept from everyone.

She wound her arms around his neck when he bent and kissed her. The kiss held as much longing and craving as she had seen in his eyes.

He plunged deep within her and held still as he deepened the kiss. It swept away her breath. The walls around her heart began to crack with each sweep of his tongue against hers, with each stroke of his arousal within her.

“Saffron,” he whispered, and kissed down her neck as he began to pump his hips once more.

She lifted her legs and wrapped them around his waist. It moved the angle of her hips and he sank even deeper into her. A gasp tore from her as his rhythm grew faster.

With her arms locked tight, she held on as he claimed her body stroke after stroke. He plunged faster, harder. Deeper.

Her body tightened. The passion rose higher, winding quicker, tighter. Saffron felt the rapid, smooth movements of his hips as his body slid against hers. Into hers.

She closed her eyes, giving her body up to the climax building within her. Her breath locked as she was engulfed by the flames of desire.

A scream tore from her throat when the orgasm hit.

Camdyn leaned up and watched Saffron peak for the third time. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted on her scream, and her back arched.

But it was the feel of her walls tightening around his aching cock that had him fighting back his own release. It had been too long, and he’d wanted her too desperately to hold back the climax.

With the shudders of her last orgasm still racking her body, Camdyn desperately pumped his hips. The combination of her slick heat and need were too much.

He threw back his head and gripped her hips tightly as he gave in to his release. Its power staggered him, amazed him. Astounded him.

Never, not once in his centuries of living, had he ever experienced anything so … poignant.

It was enough for warning bells to go off in his mind, but instead of leaving, he fell next to Saffron. She turned her face to him, locks of hair sticking to her cheek.

He saw the question in her eyes and waited for her to ask why he had come to her. But he prayed she wouldn’t voice it because he couldn’t answer. At least not in the way she wanted to hear.

“I don’t think I can move,” she said with a tired smile.

Camdyn noticed the goose bumps on her skin and rose to pull back the covers before he moved her so that her head was on the pillow. He covered her, but just as he was about to turn away, he found he didn’t want to. He slid into the bed next to her, and the smile she gave him had him grinning as well.

“You should do that more,” Saffron said as she ran a finger lightly over his lips.

He grabbed her hand and turned it so that he kissed the backs of her fingers. “Do what more? Make love to you until you can no’ move?”

“Oh, that definitely,” she said with a breathless laugh. “But I was really talking about your smile. It looks quite charming, you know.”

“I’ve no’ had much to smile about.”

“You will once Deirdre is gone.”

Camdyn sighed and rolled onto his back to look at the ceiling. “I’ve waited centuries for her death. I willna believe it’s real until I see it with my own eyes.”

“Will you tell me what she did to you?”

He looked down at their hands still joined between them. “My story is no’ so different from the other Warriors here.”

“Maybe not, but I’d like to hear it. What is it that you don’t want me to know?”

“Everything. You’re better off no’ knowing me at all.”

“It’s a little late for that.” She turned so that she was on her side facing him.

Camdyn sighed and ran his thumb over the back of her hand. He really should release her, but even that small gesture he couldn’t seem to make himself do.

“Unlike the others, Deirdre didna have family to use against me. I was an orphan. My mother died giving birth to one of my brothers who didn’t last the night, and my father a year later in battle. I was only a small lad at the time with nowhere to go. I was raised by the clan.”

“I don’t understand.”

He shrugged. “I was passed around from family to family.”

“What of your brothers and sisters?”

“My sisters were put to work in the castle, and my brothers were taken by different families.”

“That’s so sad. Were you happy?”

“I didna know any other way. As soon as I was old enough, I had to earn my keep in the clan since I had no family. I hunted for food as well as watched over the sheep. The next step for me was defending my clan and learning to use a sword.”

“I gather you were good.”

He turned his head to her when he heard the smile in her voice. He raised a brow, one side of his lips rising in a smile. “I was verra competitive.”

“Was? You aren’t anymore?”

“Maybe a wee bit. Immortality tends to change a man’s views.”

“Did you go to Deirdre as Logan did, then?”

Camdyn shook his head. “Nay. I was in the middle of a battle between my clan and another. I’d been injured. A sword to the stomach.”

He paused when her finger traced the faint scar on the left side of his stomach slowly, her touch light.

“I knew it was a mortal wound, but I continued to fight. I killed the man who had wounded me. I doona know how long I fought before I’d lost too much blood to continue. By that time we were winning. I tried to make it back to my horse. But it was too late.”

“You didn’t die, did you?”

“It was close. I was out of my mind with the pain as well as delirious. I thought the beautiful woman with white hair and eyes was just something I made up in my mind. And the wyrran that dragged me into the woods and away from my kinsmen I thought were just children.”

“So you didn’t know what was going on?”

“Nay. I could hear her speaking, but I couldna understand what she was saying. And then the real pain began as she unbound my god.”

Camdyn paused, because even nearly seven hundred years later, he still could feel the way his bones had popped out of joint and broken as his god stretched. He could still feel the way his muscles had shredded before they’d knitted back together.

“It healed your wound, didn’t it?”

He nodded. “Aye, but it left the scar because I was still mortal when I received the wound.”

“I see. What happened next?”

“I think I lost my mind for a time.” He couldn’t believe he’d said that. It was a secret he’d kept from everyone.

Her soft hand lay over his heart. “And only a Highlander as strong as you could have found your way back.”

“Only because I was left alone. She had others who she was trying to turn to her side, and since I was on that road already, she focused on them. But that solitude gave me the time I needed.”

“Today was the first time I’ve actually seen Deirdre,” Saffron admitted. “I’ve only seen her in my visions, but it’s so much worse seeing her in person. Her evil. I can still feel it on me.”

Camdyn found himself pulling Saffron into his arms. He didn’t think about his reason for doing so, only allowed himself to feel the rightness of it as her head rested on his chest and her body molded against his side.

“The evil of Cairn Toul is just as bad,” Camdyn said. “It seeps from the rocks and surrounds you until you are suffocating with it. Combine that with your god, who is raging inside you for control, and it’s no wonder so many Warriors succumbed to her.”

“It must have been a lot for you to deal with in addition to seeing your wound healed.”

“I never saw the wound heal, but looking down and seeing the flesh mended, as well as hearing and feeling the god inside me when I knew it was wrong, was too much for me. I tried to go back to my clan, but Deirdre stopped me and brought me to Cairn Toul. She threw me in her dungeons where other Warriors battled themselves for control. So few won.”

“Who is your god?”

Camdyn released a long breath. “Sculel, god of the underworld.”

“How did you gain control?”

“I doona know exactly. I’ve always been stubborn, so maybe it was that I never gave up, no matter how easy it would have been. I fought against him day after day, decade after decade.”

Saffron’s fingers leisurely traced designs upon Camdyn’s chest. “How long were you in Deirdre’s mountain?”

“A score and ten years.”

“Thirty years?” she echoed and looked up at him. “And how did you escape?”

Camdyn smiled then. “Deirdre liked to see us fight. We were immortal after all, and as long as we didna take each other’s heads, we could survive to fight another day. The Warrior I was supposed to fight had given in to his god fully. It took nothing to get him agitated enough that he began to slash his claws at those around him.

“I waited until everyone was trying to pull him off one of the Druids Deirdre used as slaves and then I ran. I had met Galen years before and he’d told me of a second exit that he knew of. I chanced everything on Galen’s word and ran for that exit.”

“And you found it.”

“I found it.” Camdyn looked at the ceiling, memories of that day assaulting him. “And I ran.”

CHAPTER

THIRTY-ONE

Saffron ached for all that Camdyn had been through. His reservations about being close to anyone made perfect sense now that she knew he’d been an orphan.

At least she’d had the love of her father. It also put her life into perspective. Even with a mother that was a first-rate bitch, her life had been good. She’d been safe, clothed, fed, and loved. She’d been able to live a life she’d wanted for the most part.

“Once you left Cairn Toul, what did you do?”

As soon as the question left her mouth and she felt Camdyn tense, she knew it had been the wrong thing to ask. But she wanted to know all about his life.

“I wandered,” he answered blithely.

“If you don’t want to tell me, then just say so. But don’t lie,” she said, and sat up to turn away.

She found herself on her back with Camdyn leaning over her in the next heartbeat. His face was inches from hers and she felt his cock harden against her leg.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Why did you want to know what Declan did to me?” she answered with a question of her own.

Camdyn gave a slight shake of his head. “You doona want to know about my life.”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t wa—”

Her words were cut off as Camdyn kissed her. Fervently. Ravenously. Frantically.

In an instant her body came alive. His hands were everywhere, touching every part of her as he kissed her senseless, kissed her so that she forgot who she was. Forgot everything except the man touching her.

Saffron found herself flipped onto her stomach with Camdyn’s hands on her hips as he raised her so that she was on her knees. She had her hands beside her, ready to push up when he put a palm between her shoulder blades.

“Nay,” he whispered between kisses he rained upon her back.

She stayed as she was, her body ready and open for him. His hands glided down her back, over her bottom to the crease between her buttocks. He stopped short of touching her sex.

Saffron groaned at the need coursing through her. Once more his hand ran down her back and between her bottom, and this time, his fingers skimmed her curls.

She sucked in a gasp when there was a feather-light touch on her already swollen clitoris.

“Camdyn. Please,” she begged when he teased her twice more.

He leaned over her, his mouth next to her ear. “What do you want?”

“You. I want you.”

His teeth lightly scored her skin where her neck met her shoulder before he kissed it. “I want you screaming.”

At the rate he was going Saffron knew he’d get his wish. She’d never known her body could react like this, never knew a man could bring out her passion so diligently.

The engorged head of his arousal brushed against her sensitive sex. Saffron leaned her hips back for it, but Camdyn held her still.

He reached around and cupped a breast to gently massage it before pinching her nipple. Saffron gasped as her breasts swelled at his touch.

“Yes,” he whispered in her ear.

She could feel herself growing damp the more he teased and touched. Her sex throbbed, ached. She’d never been so close to release with so little touching.

Her breath hitched as he thumbed her turgid nipple and his cock slid along her sex. She rocked her hips back and was rewarded with a groan from him.

“Minx,” he muttered.

Saffron stilled, her fingers digging into the rumpled covers as the head of Camdyn’s cock filled her opening. His hands held her hips tightly so she couldn’t move no matter how hard she tried.

“By the saints, you’re wet,” Camdyn said.

Then slowly, inch by agonizing inch, he filled her.

She whimpered into the blankets as her passion rose the more he entered her. She wanted him hard and fast, and he was making her wait, prolonging her desire until she was in a fever pitch to have him.

When he was fully seated, he rotated his hips. Saffron moaned, wanting, needing more. She was exposed to him, her body at his mercy. And he was giving her more pleasure than she’d experienced in her life.

Slowly he pulled out of her until only the tip of him remained. And then he thrust deep.

Saffron cried out from the feel of him sliding inside her, deeper, harder than before. His fingers bit into her flesh as he pulled out again, this time holding still longer.