Moon Awakening

'As you wish.' She turned and started walking away.

'Damn it, Emily.'

She ignored him and kept walking.

His hand heavy on her shoulder, he stopped her in the shadows between an archway and the wall. Neither said anything for several heartbeats.

Finally she asked, 'Was there something you wanted?'

He turned her to face him, his expression an inscrutable mask in the darkness beyond the candlelight. 'You did not request permission to leave me.'

'I do not believe this.' She fisted her hands and settled them on her hips in a way that Sybil deplored. 'I am not one of your clan members. I am only a captive. I do not owe you that courtesy, or any other for that matter.'

'First you speak of loving me and then declare I am not worthy of your respect. Which is it, English?' he asked in a mocking voice that infuriated her.

'I did not say I loved you, merely that I would if I wanted to. You cannot dictate everything, laird. It would take a very stupid woman to fall in love with a man who sees every moment spent in her company as a waste of his time.'

'I did not say that.'

'You did.'

He sighed, conceding defeat in the only way he knew how maybe… silence. After a protracted pause, he said, 'I did not mean to hurt you.'

'I did not say you hurt me and it is horribly conceited of you to assume you did.'

'It is not conceit to note the way your lip quivers when you are trying not to cry or the fact that you cannot wait to be quit of my company because I have told you some unpalatable truths.'

'Your truth, as you call it, is not anything I did not know before. You need not concern yourself and if my lip quivered, it is probably because I wanted to kiss you again. More the fool me. Apparently lust has no limits, even for an intelligent woman.'

'Or an intelligent man,' he muttered. 'Since it is what we both crave, mayhap I should kiss you again.'

'Do you think you can spare the time?'

His answer was a kiss so carnal that her body locked in shock. He forced his tongue past her only partially parted lips and took control of the interior of her mouth like the marauder he was. Where before it had all been about lazy pleasure, now he held nothing back. His hands were everywhere, touching her body in impossible intimacy through her clothes and she did not protest, but begged for more with little mewling noises, arching toward his roaming fingers.

This was what she wanted. This was what she craved.

She felt herself lifted and pressed against the cold stone wall, but she was not cold. She was so hot her skin burned with it. He pressed his big, hard body to hers, the bulge she had felt earlier rubbing against the apex of her thighs through her dress. She shuddered in pleasure and pushed back, seeking a relief from the agony of pleasure spearing through her.

He yanked her skirts up, baring her legs, and she wrapped them around his hips with an instinctual sensuality that she did not question. This time when she rubbed against his hardened flesh under his plaid, arrows of sweet pleasure pierced her with each tiny movement. He surged against her, increasing her enjoyment beyond what she thought her body could bear.

Then as suddenly as he had started, he stopped and yanked his mouth from hers.

'Lachlan?' she asked, her tone pleading and she did not care.

'We are no longer alone,' he whispered right next to her ear before slowly unwinding her legs from his body and lowering her to the floor.

She stood, swaying before him. And it was several seconds before his words made sense to her. Eventually, the other noises in the hall besides her own labored breathing and fast heartbeat penetrated her consciousness. Though she could not see them, she could hear a group of soldiers that had gathered by the fireplace. From their comments it was obvious they were waiting for Lachlan to join them.

Tears of frustration welled and spilled over.

Lachlan said something she did not understand, grabbed her and kissed her again. His hand went down her body and rucked up her skirt and then he touched her sweet spot, once… twice and everything inside her exploded. Her body bowed against his and he kept his hand where it was, increasing the pleasure until she collapsed against him, her legs too weak to hold her.

He finally broke the kiss and then lifted her into his arms as if she were indeed a precious treasure. He said nothing as he carried her all the way up the spiral steps and to her room. He stopped outside the door and lowered her, helping her to lean against the wall for much-needed support.

'I do not want you to leave this chamber for the rest of the night.'

'Are you going to lock me in?' she asked in a voice that sounded slurred as if by too much wine.

'Do I need to?'

'No.'

'Promise me, no leaving for any reason.'

'I promise.' She turned and stumbled into the room, closing the door behind her.

She barely divested herself of her tunic and shift before climbing beneath the covers and sprawling in a boneless heap. The light of the full moon coming in through the windows high in the wall lit her chamber almost as brightly as daylight. Didn't werewolves change at the full moon?

Her thoughts were muzzy from the incredible experience Lachlan had given her, but questions peppered her mind until she was more awake than she wanted to be.

Was that why he had said his control was not as strong as he wanted? Did his animal instincts make it harder for him to control things like lust close to a full moon? She supposed they must. Was her werewolf even now in changed form and hunting, as Cait called it, under the full moon? Would he go to the lake?

Surely Talorc would have been smart enough to leave the island in that case. Or could werewolves tell if another wolf was a werewolf and not just a wild beast? She certainly hadn't been able to tell the difference between werewolves and humans in their human form.

She turned to her side and her body throbbed with remembered pleasure. What had Lachlan done to her? He had touched her and now that she was not drunken with the pleasure that he gave her, the memory of the way she'd responded shamed her. She had made noise. Even with his lips pressed firmly to hers, her moans had been audible.

Especially to werewolf ears, and she somehow thought those soldiers that had been in the great hall were probably exactly that. Had they come to join Lachlan for the hunt? There were so many things she wanted to know, so many questions she had for Cait. But regardless of why the men had been in the hall, they had been there and even knowing it, she had done nothing to stop Lachlan touching her so intimately. She had needed his caresses too badly.

But he had not found the same pleasure in her arms. Had he? In truth, she had no way of knowing, but he certainly hadn't gone limp like her. And that hardness that made his plaid protrude had still been there when he carried her up the stairs.

She chewed endlessly on her thoughts until finally, she was so tired, she could not keep her eyes open any longer. As she finally slipped into sleep, she heard the lonely howl of a wolf and something deep inside her insisted it was Lachlan in beast form under the cold light of the moon.

Lachlan could see the castle tower from his position near the loch. She was in the tower. His mate.

He shook his big wolf's head… the human inside him denying she could be any such thing, but his wolf cried out to her. He wanted to go to her, he wanted to see her through wolf's eyes, not just those of a human. He wanted to smell her, to rub his fur against her and mark her with his scent. Never in his life had his willpower been more sorely challenged than tonight. Leaving Emily outside her chamber had taken all of his strength. If he had gone in with her… he would have made love to her. Over and over again. His need for the change would have been supplanted by sexual fulfillment.