He surged into a sitting position even as she sank her fists into his tangled hair. His arms came around her waist. Her legs were still on either side of him, and he yanked her down onto his pelvis so that the empty part of her that ached so desperately slammed onto the hard swollen length of his erection. He jammed his open mouth over hers.
Then they were together, locked in the same place of extremity, shoving their tongues into each other. Nothing about it was gentle or civilized. She jerked at his hair, pulling it with enough force it had to have hurt. He hissed against her lips. He pulled her lower torso closer as he ground upward onto her, hard, with his hips.
She was locked rigid into place, her need so severe that when she tried to pry her fingers out of his hair, she couldn’t. All of her plotting, all of her fine thinking, was vaporized until what was left came out of her in a thin, shaking animal whine.
His lungs worked like bellows. Heat blazed out of him. The rough vibrating rumble in his chest turned into a raw groan. He ran one hand up her spine to grip the back of her head, supporting her head and shoulders on his arm. With his other arm, he clenched her hips firmly against him. She took the hint and wrapped her legs around his waist as he rose up on his knees. He bent over to place her on the floor and then he came down with her, until there it was, what she had envisioned for what had seemed like forever, as she lay down with weighted limbs and his heavy body settled full on her.
Then she was able to loosen her grip in his hair only enough to hook her fingers into his T-shirt. She tore the cotton down his back, baring a wide expanse of muscle that flexed as she dug her fingers into him. He dragged his mouth away from hers with a shaken gasp. She had no idea what he said, but it seemed like it was in the form of a question.
“I hate your clothes,” she muttered.
He flattened his hand on her breastbone just under her throat and held her down as he reared back to stare at her. He was so roused, a luscious flush of blood darkening his tanned skin, those lion’s eyes glittering brilliant with desire, his face taut.
“I hate your stupid clothes too,” he said. He took the neckline of the caftan and ripped it wider, baring her breasts.
The door to the cottage opened, and a chilly rush of wind entered the room. Rhoswen stood in the doorway, clutching the dog under her arm. Rasputin erupted into a frenzy of snarling and barking. Moving almost quicker than sight, Rune lunged forward to cover Carling. She turned her face into his chest, not from any modesty but from the need to continue touching him in any way that she could.
He cupped the back of her head, shielding her face from scrutiny, and growled again, and this time there was no mistaking that low menacing sound. The heavy bones in his broad chest seemed wrong, as though he might have flowed into a partial shapeshift. She thought of Tiago’s monstrous partial shift when he had come after Niniane, both at the hotel and later when Niniane had been kidnapped, and need pulsed through her again. Carling closed her eyes and opened her mouth on Rune’s skin. She drank down his feral emotion like wine.
In her precise, Shakespearean-trained voice that was frigid with bitterness, Rhoswen said, “Apparently this was not the best time to say good-bye.”
ELEVEN
Carling coughed out an incredulous laugh that had nothing to do with amusement. The snarl that came out of Rune sounded infuriated, guttural. “Get the hell out and SHUT THAT GODDAMN DOOR.”
There was a frozen moment, filled only with Rasputin’s frenzied barking. Carling closed her eyes and leaned into Rune’s hot body, and his arms tightened on her in a hard, possessive hold. Then Rhoswen slammed the door, the sharp wooden report echoing through the shadowed cottage.
A corner of Carling’s mind worked hard to process what just happened. The rest of her was shaking with the aftermath of the firestorm that had swept through her. She felt like a drug addict coming down off a high. Rune knelt on one knee as he held her. His heartbeat thundered in her ear. His T-shirt hung in shreds off his tightly bunched biceps, and his body vibrated with such tension he felt poised to attack something.
Then he released the tension on a sigh, and she felt his body flow back into its normal lines. He stroked her hair, threading his fingers through the loose, tangled strands. He said roughly, “You all right?”
She gave him a jerky nod. It was almost a complete lie. Need still pulsed low in her pelvis, a sharp, empty pain that was shocking in its intensity. She didn’t recognize herself in the untamed creature that had launched at Rune.
He said, “I’ll be damned if I apologize for any of that.”
She stirred and managed to find her voice. “What would you apologize for?”
“Throwing my own shit fit. Yelling at Rhoswen.”
“I’ll make a pact with you,” she whispered. “If you don’t apologize, I won’t either.”
“It’s a deal.” He kissed her temple. Then, after a pause, he said, “She interrupted us deliberately, you know.”