He shut the wardrobe and advanced on her. “I willna allow it,” he threatened. “Ye’ll remain here in my employ, and that is my final word on the matter.”
She whirled around and stomped in his direction until they met in the center of the room beneath the silver gaze of the moonlight streaming through her window. She could have been the goddess Danu, her red hair billowing around her, her robe flowing with the force of her truncated movements.
“Don’t you think for one minute that you can order me about like one of your subordinates.” She spoke slowly, enunciating her indignant words with abject clarity. “You may be a Highland laird, and you may be a marquess, but that doesn’t give you one ounce of dominion over me, Liam Mackenzie.” Her breasts heaved with her increasingly forceful breaths. Her voice shook with anger and her pale jade eyes flashed silver with wrath and moonlight.
Something about her temper gave Liam the most excruciating erection he’d ever had. He stepped forward, wanting to reach for her, but for every move he made to close in, she took a step back.
“I might be afraid of you,” she confessed, her voice losing some of its fervency as he stalked her in the dark. “But mark me, I’ll never cower to another man. I am my own self. I am a woman with free and independent will. I deserve to live for no one’s whims and pleasures but my own, and I don’t have to follow your commands.” Her back found the wall, and suddenly there was nowhere to go. Liam knew it. And so did the lass.
“Do what you will, you high-handed, imperious, overbearing brute, but if I want to leave, you’ll not sto—”
Liam cut off her words with his mouth.
It was a movement born of panic and instinct. He hadn’t been thinking. He just … couldn’t bear to hear her say that she was leaving one more fucking time.
He’d kissed her before, and still he hadn’t been prepared for the complexity of sweetness that he found on her lips. It inflamed him. It humbled him. It held him in a thrall he knew full well he’d never escape. So here he stood, a willing slave to his own desire. A helpless victim of the debilitating lust that flared in his loins and boiled through his blood. He was hard as a diamond, the cords and sinew at his hips rolling forward to press against the softness of her belly.
Liam would never have enough of her, not if he fused their mouths for an eternity. Each drugging sweep of their lips only intensified his hunger. Nibbling at her lower lip, he sampled the flavor of her skin, then licked at the seam of her full mouth, silently requesting admittance into the honeyed heat he was certain to find inside.
He swallowed her shocked gasp and plundered her with his tongue as though she were a lifelong conquest. Digging his fingers into her ribs to keep from taking what she did not offer him, he deepened the kiss, using his tongue to convey what he could not find the words to say.
She wasn’t the only one who was afraid. Liam was terrified.
Of losing her.
Of loving her.
And at this moment, he was in mortal danger of both.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The flavor of Ravencroft’s lips pushed Mena past shocked to absolutely witless. She wasn’t pliant so much as thunderstruck. She didn’t kiss him back, but neither did she push him away.
The sweet burn of whisky on his tongue caused her jaw to sting with overwhelming thirst as her mouth flooded with moisture. She closed her lips to swallow convulsively, and instantly his hands were there, his thumbs dragging the corners of her mouth open so he could thrust his slick tongue back inside.
A growl caught in his throat, quickly turning into a groan. The calluses of his palms abraded her skin as he cupped the side of her face, lifting her to give him better access.
He might be a little drunk, but Mena knew she was on the edge of pure, carnal intoxication.
It was impossible to tell what was harder, the wall behind her, the man trapping her against it, or the length of his sex pulsing as hot as a branding iron against her belly. His arousal was as incomprehensively large as the rest of him, enough to send her thoughts scattering to the most indecent places. Its purpose unmistakable, his desire inescapable, Mena found herself rocked by sensation so thoroughly that she feared she would lose consciousness. Dizzying chills racked her frame until she trembled as though she’d been left out in the bone-chilling cold. But it was liquid heat spreading through her, settling in her core and causing a rush of alarming moisture to pool there.
She’d been angry, hadn’t she? Mortified, hurt, and … leaving? She’d been afraid. Should be afraid. This was wrong, though she couldn’t at all remember why. Somehow Liam Mackenzie was able to dissolve her ever-churning thoughts into a puddle of nothing. With one kiss, he’d morphed her into a creature as instinctual and primal as he, with just as much difficulty controlling her most secret and basic of needs.
The sharp scent of his soap and the musk of something darker, earthier, invaded her senses and Mena breathed it in, making it a part of her. His kiss gentled from bruising to merely relentless. His movements against her lips were urgent and greedy, but strangely unhurried as he penetrated her deeply, searching the recesses of her mouth with a tender sort of aggression.
Mena waited to feel the inevitable revulsion that came with intimacy, the forbearance, the distaste and apprehension. As hands trailed down the fragile skin of her neck, evoking shiver after shiver, she couldn’t believe those terrible emotions never found her. It was only anticipation that coursed through her as his powerful fingers curved down her shoulders.
“Kiss me, Mena,” he moaned against her mouth, his hot, sweet breath fanning over the moisture on her lips. “Touch me. Teach me to keep the demon at bay.”
She could only see the whites of his eyes in the dim light, circling the obsidian of his pupil and iris in such a way that truly seemed demonic.
With trembling fingers, she reached up to softly test the shape of his masculine jaw. Bristle scraped against her fingertips as they explored the raw, hard features that she’d always wanted to study, but didn’t even allow herself to look at for too long, lest she be lost.
How fierce he was all the time. How strong and capable and remote he had to be. Never showing weakness, never allowing vulnerability.
Except in this moment. With her.
He turned into the press of her fingers, seeking more of her touch as a primitive sound escaped him on a shaken breath.