She smiled, but her eyes were suddenly glistening with tears. “I don’t care,” she whispered, her breath warm on his lips. “One day I shall be married and I shall never again know…”
“Know what?” he demanded angrily. “What will ye never know? Another man? That’s the way of life, leannan. Ye make yer choices and ye live with them. Ye donna seek a man’s kiss when ye love another, aye? And ye donna risk losing everything for just a bloody kiss, no’ when ye are on the verge of winning everything ye’ve desired!”
A single tear slipped from the corner of her eye, and Anna closed her eyes, tilting her face up to his, her lips almost touching his. “I don’t care!” she said again, and collapsed into him.
The warmth of her body and the desire raging through him clouded his thoughts and knocked him off balance. Grif went down on one knee, pulling Anna down to her knees with him. “Criosd! I canna understand ye, lass—have ye no’ dreamed of being held in some esteem by Lockhart?” he demanded angrily, shaking her. “To know his lips on yer lips? His hand on yer body?” His gaze roamed her lush, full lips, the milk-white flesh of her bosom, and he imagined his own hand on every part of her body. On her breast, on the flat plane of her belly. Between her legs. “Is that no’ what ye’ve wanted?”
Anna closed her eyes and let her head fall back, exposing the smooth curve of her neck to him.
“Is it no’ what ye wanted!” he demanded again, shaking her.
She opened her eyes, abruptly caught his head between her hands, and touched her lips to the corner of his mouth. “What I want, above all else, is for you to kiss me.”
Fury and desire exploded within the wall of his chest, and Grif crushed her to him in the circle of his arms, his mouth wildly seeking hers, filling her with his kiss. Anna’s hands cupped his face, and she eagerly drank him in, her body lithely arching into his, molding to him. He surged upward, to his feet, pulling her with him, then hoisted her up in a tight embrace so that her feet dangled just above his, and moved deeper into the rose garden, around the fountain, and into the arbor.
Anna’s hands flitted across his temples, his shoulders, his neck. She kissed him deeply, kissed him like a woman who enjoyed and desired the many pleasures of the flesh, and Grif’s body hardened quickly in response. He stopped somewhere beneath that glorious moon and let her slide down his body while his hands explored her every curve, dipping down so that his mouth could seek the creamy skin of her bosom. With his hand, he freed her breast from the low décolletage of her gown, and took it into his mouth. Anna sucked in her breath above him, and leaned limply over him as her breath began to come in pants. Grif ravaged her breast, teething the rigid nipple while his hand slid down to her bottom and kneaded her flesh, pushing her into him.
They drifted onto the bench beneath the arbor, Anna leaning against the latticework, her hands in Grif’s hair, Grif at her breast, his hands wildly roaming the curves of her body. “Leannan,” he murmured against her skin. “God help me, but I canna resist ye, mo ghraidh.” He rose up and roughly caught her face between his hands, caressed her hair, and looked into the copper of her eyes. “Boidheach,” he murmured.
She smiled, wrapped her hand around his wrist. “I don’t know what you are saying, but it sounds sweet on your lips.”
“Beautiful,” he said with a smile, kissing each eye. “Ye are beautiful, lass.”
“Beautiful,” she echoed softly, and surged forward, throwing her arms around his neck to kiss him. Grif dragged his lips to her cheek, her neck and shoulder, her bosom. His hands swept down her sides, to her waist, to her hips, and lower.
“God in heaven… Grif,” she moaned on a whisper as he took her in his mouth again. “Let me feel it all again,” she whispered plaintively above him. “Let me feel you again, your hands on my body. Everything.”
How he wanted to give her that, how he wanted to fill her completely, let her feel everything that was inside him. His hand slipped to her knee, down to her ankle, and gathered the silk fabric of her gown, pushing it up so that he could slip his hand beneath it. His hand found a smooth velvet-soft leg, and he followed it up, past her knee, to the pliant flesh of her thigh, and onward, between her legs, to her damp core. She sighed longingly into his hair, and Grif felt himself straining to the point of bursting, feeling the overpowering need to be inside her.
He loved her. He realized that it was love filling him, bursting within him, and he loved Anna more than life. He moved between her legs, pressed himself against her, his wish to respect the sanctity of loving her fading in the heat raging through his body.
“I would know love at your hand,” she whispered into his hair, and desire surged like a rough wave through him. “I don’t want to marry without knowing what it is to love—”