Born in Sin (19 page)

Callie’s breath caught at his words. Dear saints,
she did know. That horrendous agony that had clenched her heart day after day as she feared she would never see her beloved Highlands again. It had been unbearable.

“Why did you marry me?” she asked quietly, half afraid of the answer he would give.

“Because I knew no other way to get you home. I saw what the others did to Jamie, how they treated and scorned him. He’s a good lad with a good heart. I didn’t want him to become like me. So, I brought you back here before it was too late for the two of you.”

Callie froze at the wealth of emotion that overwhelmed her. In that moment, she knew she loved him. There was no doubt. The fierceness of the emotion ripped through her, filled her and made her want to take him into her arms and hold him for eternity.

This man, so strong, so full of pain, who could look beyond himself and still help others even though no one had ever helped him. It amazed her. It scared her, but most of all it touched her profoundly.

She ran her hand along the edge of his jaw. “I am going to make you want to stay here with me.”

His eyes turned dull. “I assure you, you can’t.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“Nay, dove. Merely a statement of fact.”

Maybe in his mind, but in her heart it was a challenge, and Callie loved a good challenge. Somehow, some way, she was going to break through his defenses and find the heart inside him. She would make him want to stay. She would be what he needed and how he needed it.

No matter what.

Sin rolled over and gave her his back. He expected her to get up. She didn’t.

Instead, she settled down behind him and traced the scars along his back. It was such a strange sensation, to have her hand giving him pleasure over the things that had brought him such tremendous pain.

When she leaned forward and placed her lips over the arrow wound, he trembled. His body burned with desire for her. It would be so easy at this moment to roll over, take her into his arms and plant himself deep inside her. To ease the ache between his legs with her body.

He swore he could already feel her breasts in his hands again. Taste the sweetness of her skin.

But it was a fool’s dream.

There was no safety in this world. No happiness for someone like him. Love was for other men. Men who were lucky and blessed. Men who knew how to love someone.

Tonight, though, he felt his loneliness on a level he’d never experienced before. He was cold. Empty and aching.

And all he wanted was respite from the pain inside him.

Before he realized what he was doing, he rolled over to look at her. Her eyes were so gentle that they warmed the cold place inside him. When she reached up to place her fingers against his lips, he felt his resistance to her shatter.

How could she be so open and giving?

He would never understand this woman.

She opened her lips in invitation to him. And without thought, he took it.

Callie moaned at the taste of him as he pulled her forcefully into his arms. His kiss was one of pure passion and of longing, and it stole her breath. She felt him fist his hand in the back of her kirtle as he pressed her closer to his body. He plundered her mouth as if it held all the treasure of the earth and he was desperate for it.

His arms clutched at her as his tongue danced with hers in a heated, intense rhythm that made her breathless and weak.

Heaven help her, but she wanted this man. It didn’t matter to her what crimes he had committed. What he had done to survive the horrors of his past. All that mattered was the way he touched her heart.

He made her laugh, made her feel needed and desirable. Most of all, he made her feel like a woman. He awoke something deep inside her. A part of her she’d never known existed.

When she looked into his eyes, she could see the future. See the children she wanted to birth and the home she wanted to make for all of them.

Sin couldn’t fathom why he didn’t shove her away from him. He should. It would be the noble thing to do. But then, he and nobility were strangers. He was a beast who knew nothing save basic survival skills.

He only knew how to protect himself from harm.

And yet, when he looked at her, he could only think of being the man she needed. Of holding her close for the rest of eternity.

How he wished there were some way he could erase his past and be the kind of man a woman like this deserved.

“I want you, Sin,” she breathed against his lips.

God help him, he couldn’t resist that plea.

But he wouldn’t take her here on the floor with no regard for her comfort. Animal he might be, but she was a gentle-born lady.

Against her protests, he picked her up in his arms and carried her to her bed.

“You’re hurting your shoulder,” she said, holding him tight so as to present as little weight in his arms as she could.

“You don’t weigh enough to hurt me.”

She looked doubtful as he laid her back against the feather mattress, her hands resting gently on his shoulders. The softness of her touch singed him, and Sin took a moment to savor the sight of her, warm and waiting for him. She lay there with her green eyes staring up at him as if he were all the things he’d ever wanted to be.

In her eyes, he was noble. Decent. Heroic. He was the man he’d always wanted to be.

He should leave. He knew it. He had no business doing this with her.

Yet he couldn’t leave. He doubted if anything on this earth or beyond could get him out of this room tonight.

Callie saw the look in his tormented eyes and for a moment she thought he would pull away from her.

Instead, he untied his laces, removed his chausses and joined her in the bed. She shivered at the sight of his naked body lying beside hers.

His power and lithe grace was overwhelming. Her body ached and burned for his. She throbbed with a need she barely understood. All she knew was that she wanted him. She wanted to feel him inside her and
share herself with him, to let him take whatever comfort or solace he could.

He lifted his hand to the laces of her kirtle and slowly opened the neck of it until she was bared to his hungry gaze. Callie shivered at the dark, intense look on his face as he stared at her naked breasts.

She moaned as he trailed his hand over her tight, swollen nipples as if savoring the sight and feel of them before he took one in to his palm and gently squeezed. She hissed at the pleasurable sensation and her body melted. She was so hot and wet for him, aching with her need and with her heart.

Callie wanted to claim his body, too, to touch him in ways she hoped no other woman had ever touched him. Tonight he would be hers and she intended to do whatever it took to make him understand just what a hero he was to her.

He buried his lips against her throat, his breath branding her with heat. She’d been so drunk the last time that she could barely recall him. But this…this was vivid. Vivid and hot, and she was filled with fear and curiosity.

She explored his body with her hands and delighted in the lean, masculine planes and dips. He was so hard and firm compared to her. His cheeks were scratchy from his whiskers. And the manly scent of him sent her reeling.

Sin shook from the force of his raw emotions. She touched him on levels he’d never known existed. As he looked into her eyes, he saw heaven itself. No woman had ever touched him like this. He’d never allowed himself such a comfort.

Never dared hope to possess it.

She was so giving to him. He drank the tenderness from her lips and tasted the goodness that was innate to her and so missing from him. She was an angel, and when he looked at her, he could almost believe in such things as heaven.

Rolling over, he pulled her on top of him so that he could cup her face in his hands and just stare into those precious green eyes and the promises they held.

Dare he believe them?

She moved her head and kissed his open palm. The gesture shook him. His heart pounding, he watched as she kissed her way up his arm to his lips.

Closing his eyes, he pulled her kirtle over her head, and relished the feel of her naked body against his. Tonight, he would do what he had never done before. He would open himself up to her and pray that on the morrow she wouldn’t despise him for it.

Callie moaned at the heat of his body under hers. Desire swept through her. She hated that she had no memory of him from their wedding night. No memory of holding him in her arms.

He gently rolled her over and placed himself between her legs. She felt the hairs of his legs rubbing against her inner thighs as he kissed her, his hard shaft resting against her thigh.

It was such a strange feeling, to be so exposed to him. And yet it was so natural that they would share themselves. She reached up and ran her hands along his cheeks to bury them in his hair as she saw the needful hunger in his eyes.

“I am so glad you are my husband,” she breathed.

Pain and ecstasy mixed in his dark eyes as he stared at her as if unable to believe he’d heard her.
He looked as if he were dreaming and terrified of waking.

His muscles rippling beneath her hands, he pressed the tip of his shaft against her core.

Callie held her breath. After tonight, there would be no forgetting the feel of her husband.

He brushed his hand against her cheek. His eyes held hers as mutual understanding and care passed between them. It was a priceless moment of sharing and it went a long way in giving her hope for them.

Then he dipped his head and claimed her lips in a passionate, fiery kiss. He drove himself deep inside her body.

She tensed as pain overrode her pleasure.

He froze.

“I’m sorry,” Sin whispered. “Does it hurt much?”

Callie swallowed and shook her head. The pain was already subsiding into a dull ache as her body stretched to accommodate the large size of him. It had just startled her. Since she had already lost her maidenhead, she’d expected tonight to be free of pain. At least that was what she’d been told.

He braced himself on his arms to look down at her. Callie stared up at his face and the concern in his eyes as she felt him deep and hard inside her body. He was so incredibly handsome.

“I am fine, Sin,” she said, offering him a timid smile. It was so very intimate, to look at him while they were joined this way.

With every breath he took, she could feel him throbbing inside her. Feel him rigid and hard all over and in her.

Instinctively, she moved her hips, drawing him in
deeper as her muscles tightened around his shaft. He growled in response, and a look of such pleasure crossed his face that it spurred her to bolder actions as she writhed beneath him.

Sin held his breath at the sight of her lying beneath him while she milked his body with hers. He held himself rigidly still, even though it was killing him. He wanted her to want him, not to fear the desires of her own body.

She should take as much pleasure from this night as he did. More so, in fact. And he loved watching her discover her sexual power and bliss as he did the same.

Growling at how good she felt, he thrusted himself deeper into her. They hissed in unison.

Never once had he dreamed making love could be like this. Never had he dared to hope of a night where he could be with a woman so unreservedly and know that she was with him by her own free will.

Her red curls fanned out on either side of her face, reminding him of some beautiful fey creature who had stumbled upon him and claimed him with her magic. And she felt so good surrounding him. Surely there was no better pleasure than her warmth.

She ran her hands over his chest, up his arms and brushed them through his hair.

He lowered himself to her and gathered her into his arms. Then, slowly, very slowly, he began to gently rock himself between her thighs.

Callie sighed in pleasure at the feel of him so deep, hard and strong inside her. How could she have forgotten this? She wrapped her arms around him and listened to his rapid breathing as he moved.

Arching her back to draw him in even deeper, she
kissed his uninjured shoulder and inhaled the scent of him. He quickened his thrusts, sliding himself in and out of her, deeper and deeper. Her head spun from the sensations of his skin on hers, of his breath against her neck.

She breathed his name as she clung to him and met him stroke for stroke. Her body felt out of control. She was hot and tingly. And just as she was sure she would die from the pleasure of him, her body erupted into an ecstasy so intense that she screamed from it.

Sin ground his teeth at the sensation of her body gripping his while he kissed her deeply. Holding her tighter, he felt his own body release. With one last forceful thrust, he buried himself deep inside her and felt the waves of pleasure rippling through him as he gave her a part of him he’d never given another single soul.

He lay completely still, holding her for what seemed an eternity, and yet it seemed no time at all.

“Is it always like that?” she asked, her voice awed.

Sin drew a ragged breath as he drifted down from heaven, back into his body. “I don’t know.”

He tensed as soon as the words left his lips.

She looked at him curiously. “Don’t know or you won’t tell me?”

He started to cover the slip with a lie, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Nay, he wouldn’t lie to her. Not after she had given so much.

Embarrassed, he looked away. “I’ve never been with a woman before tonight.”

Callie was shocked by his confession. How could that be? She’d heard numerous rumors of his sexual conquests from other women in London.

Of course, she’d also heard that he ate small chil
dren every morn, and had horns that sprouted from his forehead whenever he neared a church.

“What of our wedding night?” she asked.

“You passed out before we finished.”

“But the blood that was on me and in my bed—where did it come from?”

“It was mine. I didn’t think you’d want to suffer the humiliation of Henry’s physicians examining you and finding you virgin, so I opened up one of the cuts on my arms and used the blood to shield you.”