A Year & a Day by Virginia Henley Read Free Book Online Page B

brought her up to the ramparts knowing it was a place where they could be alone together. Robert stood so close to her, their bodies almost touched.
    Jory had to lean her head back to look up at him. His dark eyes licked over her like a candleflame. "I know Wigton intimately. It was one of the castles we seized when Baliol came to the throne and we were at odds with the English."
    Jory gazed up at him. "I can see you now, breaching her defenses, forcing her to your will, making her yield."
    He lifted a tress of silver-gilt hair that was being ruffled by the breeze."Conquest is in my blood."
    As Jory looked up at him she pictured a conqueror, his claymore and battle-ax dripping blood. He wore a breastplate over his massive chest, but his arms and shoulders were naked, travel-stained with dirt and sweat.
    Marjory felt her legs grow weak and her body begin to tremble uncontrollably as she watched his fierce gaze sweep over her. Her breath stopped in her throat. "Robert!" She felt herself sway.
    He lifted her effortlessly, carrying her toward the stairs. How did he know her own legs were too weak to carry her to her chamber? Jory could not tear her eyes from him. He glistened with sweat and dirt, and the hard metal that covered his chest was hurting her breast that was pressed tightly against him.
    She welcomed the hurt! With each step he took the world and everyone in it receded farther away.
    An ache began deep in her belly, then spread up through her heart and into her throat. Her very skin became sensitized as the wool of her gown touching her body made her want to scream. His arms were so powerful and made her feel so secure, she wanted them about her forever.
    Jory was lost, utterly lost. She was limp no longer, and neither was he. He filled her with energy, he filled her with hunger, he filled her with lust! She had no previous experience of the pure animal need.
    Her swiftarousal staggered her. She knew he was experiencing an arousal of his own. No! It wasn't a separate thing
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    at all. They shared the same arousal. Equally. It bound them together inextricably with its chains.
    Jory flung an arm in the direction of her chamber and he understood the gesture without need of words. He carried her inside, kicked the door closed, then set her feet to the rug while he unbuckled his breastplate. She clung to him to keep from falling, wondering at the madness that gripped her to possess him, and to be possessed.
    He had the broadest chest she had ever seen in her life. She couldn't tear her gaze from it. He looked as if he'd been sculpted from bronze; he felt as hard as metal too. Her hands came up to glide over the superb musculature. "Robert!"
    His mouth came down to taste his name on her lips. There was nothing tentative about the kiss. It was hard and savage and selfish. Jory realized at this moment that he was uncivilized, and heaven be praised, so was she. Together they tore off her gown and stripped the Bruce naked. Before the last garment fell away, Jory was climbing him as if he were an oak tree. Always before, when she had been intimate with her husband, she had been bathed and scented in the bedchamber. Now she smelled like nothing but a woman. He smelled like a man ripe with lust.
    Robert grasped her buttocks, anchoring her as he impaled her on his upthrust shaft. Both cried out with the glory of it. Jory was panting with need, moaning and clawing and crying like a feline in heat.
    Fused together, they fell to the bed, his weight crushing her. He infused her with so much sexual energy she arched beneath him, lifting his magnificent body for the pure sensual bliss of feeling him plunge ever deeper.
    It was as if he were storming her defenses with a battering ram. Jory threw back her head and laughed wildly. Her defenses had come down before he'd ever touched her. Robert's own laughter rolled over her as he pounded his body into hers. It was rough and elemental and like nothing she'd ever experienced in her