“Silence, lass.”
Wide-eyed, she stared into his face, searching for some clue that would explain the icy hostility in his eyes.
He forced his muscular leg between her thighs, cruelly pushing them apart. “You’ve been drinking, lass.”
His breath was warm on her face, she could smell the potent stench of alcohol. “So? So have you! And I thought you were in Uster!”
His beautiful lips contorted in a bitter smile. “Aye, I’m quite aware that you thought I was in Uster, wife.” His brogue rasped thickly, betraying the extent of his rage.
“Well, I don’t see why you’re so angry with me! You’re the one who’s had nine million mistresses, and you’re the one who left without saying goodbye, and you’re the one who wouldn’t—”
“What’s good for the gander is not necessarily good for the goose,” he snarled. He twined his hand in her hair and yanked her back sharply, baring the pale arch of her throat. “Neither in spirit consumption nor in lovers, wife.”
“What?” He wasn’t making any sense, talking about farm animals when she was trying to have a reasonably sober conversation with him. She gasped when he bit her gently at the base of her neck where her pulse pounded erratically. If she couldn’t handle this man sober, she certainly couldn’t handle him tipsy.
With excruciating leisure, he traced his tongue down her neck and across the upper curves of her breasts. Her mouth went dry and an entire flock of twittering birds took wing in her belly.
“You wanton,” he breathed against her flawless skin.
Adrienne moaned softly, partly in pain from his words and partly in pleasure from his touch.
“Faithless, cruel beauty, what did I do to deserve this?”
“What did I do—”
“No!” he thundered. “No words. I will suffer no honeyed lies from that sweet snake’s lair you call a mouth. Aye, lass, you have the most cruel of poisons. Better I had let the dart take you, or the arrow. I was a fool to suffer one moment of pain on your account.”
I’m dreaming again? she wondered. But she knew she wasn’t because never in a dream had she been so aware of every inch of her own body, her traitorous body that begged to get closer to this angry man who dripped sex appeal, even in his fury.
“Tell me what he has to give you that I don’t have! Tell me what you hunger for in that man. And after I’ve shown you every inch of what I have to give you, then you can tell me if you still think he has more than I.”
“The smithy?” she asked incredulously.
He ignored her question completely. “I should have done this long ago. You are my wife. You will share my bed. You will bear my children. And most assuredly, by the time I’m done with you, you will never say that word again. I told you the Hawk’s rules once. Now I’m reminding you for the last time. Smithy and Adam are two words that you will never say to me. If you do, I will punish you so innovatively and cruelly that you’ll wish you’d never been born.”
The words were spoken with such white-hot yet carefully controlled anger that Adrienne didn’t even begin to question what punishment he might have in mind. She knew instinctively that she never wanted to find out. As she parted her lips to speak, Hawk rubbed his body against hers, intimately pressing his hard cock between her thighs. The words she’d planned to say were exhaled instead as a soft whoosh of air that tapered into a husky moan. Adrienne wanted to melt against him, to arch herself into his body with complete abandon. She couldn’t even stand next to this man without wanting him.
His smile was mocking and cruel. “Does he feel like this, lass? Does he have this much to pleasure you with?”
No man has that, she thought feverishly, as her hips moved hungrily against him. Hawk growled softly, closing his mouth over hers in a ruthless, punishing kiss.
Adrienne felt his hand, raising her skirt and realized that in his current rage the Hawk was going to take her, right here in the dim and chill hallway. Tipsy or not, this was not how Adrienne planned to part with her hard-kept virginity. She wanted him, but not like this. Never like this. “Stop! Hawk, whatever you think I’ve done—I haven’t!” she cried.
He silenced her with his mouth, his kiss hot, hungry, and cruel. She understood he was punishing her with his body, not making love to her, but she couldn’t resist his tongue and couldn’t prevent herself from breathlessly kissing him back.
Hawk dropped his head and grazed her neck with his teeth, then teased her hardened nipples through her gown. Adrienne was so lost in pleasure that she didn’t realize what he was doing until it was too late.