Lady of Seduction (28 page)

“The boy had a head wound, but he seemed lucid enough,” she said. “He didn’t say what it was he had found, though, that would
make such trouble.”

Grant feared he knew what it was, or at least he suspected. It was a rebel arms cache. He knelt down beside Caroline and reached
for the basin of water and a cloth. The cut had stopped bleeding but was crusted over and bruised. The wound stood out starkly
against her pale skin.

“You won’t be able to ride tomorrow,” he said.

“Of course I will. I barely feel it now.” She leaned toward him, her brown eyes solemn. “You know what it is, don’t you?”

He didn’t look up from his ministrations. “Know what
what
is?”

Caroline gave a frustrated sigh. “What that poor boy is so afraid of, of course.”

Grant shook his head. He reached for a strip of linen and wound it around her leg. “We need to be away from here as soon as
possible.”

“And in the opposite direction of Kilmarin? I don’t need to be protected, you know.”

“Oh, yes. That’s quite obvious.” Grant gently kissed her leg just above the wound. He held on to her as if something terrible
would happen if he let her go—just as she feared what might happen to him if he wasn’t with her any longer. He could see that
fear in her eyes whenever she looked at him.

“Oh, Caro,” he said. “You were hurt because you tried to come to my aid, just like in that blasted dungeon.”

Caroline shrugged. “I save you, you save me. It seems a good bargain. It’s worked for us so far, hasn’t it? We’re still here.”

“Our good fortune won’t last forever.” Grant wrapped his arms around her legs and rested his head on her lap. He had never
felt such a longing before. No one had ever breached the walls built around his heart like this, and he hated it.

Startled, Caroline laid her hand on his hair. “We’re each other’s good luck, Grant. I know that together we’ll reach Dublin.
I’ve never had anyone as strong as you to protect me before.”

“And I’ve never had anyone to protect me at all,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

He sat beside her on the bed and held her hand in his. He stared down at their entwined fingers. “I don’t really know how
to explain it. You’ve always had your family, and even in a clannish country like ours, the Blacknalls are famous for sticking
together. But I’ve always relied only on myself. I know no one will help me in life, so I’ve always helped myself.” He laughed.
“No one ever waded into a brawl to help me before. My Babd.”

He kissed her hand and pressed it to his cheek, and couldn’t say anything else. All he could do was hold her.

Grant tried to laugh, to sound careless about it all, about the deepest secrets of his heart. But Caroline felt a sharp tug
that was surely her heart breaking. Her sisters often drove her mad, but she had spent her life knowing she could always rely
on them. They were hers and she was theirs, no matter what distance was between them.

But Grant had lived his life alone. He had to take care of his shattered mother, whose family had turned their backs on them
both, and fight alone for his place in the world. Her life was built on warmth and acceptance; his on cold solitude and a
sadness that hardened into bitter anger.

Yet that was not who he was, not really. She had glimpsed his heart on this journey, she had seen how he had changed, and
she knew he did care about people. He cared about Ireland and his place in it.

But still he was alone. If only he would let her in.

“Oh, Grant,” she whispered. “I would wade into a hundred brawls to help you. You aren’t alone on this journey.”

He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it lingeringly.
He pressed her palm to his cheek, cradling it in an achingly tender gesture. “And I will protect you with my dying breath.
I swear it to you, Caroline.”

Tears prickled at her eyes. Caroline blinked hard to try to dash them away, but a few fell anyway, splashing on their hands.
“Please, Grant, don’t talk about dying! I couldn’t bear it.”

“My course is set,” he said. “But yours is not. Your life can be anything you choose to make it, beautiful Caroline, and you
deserve to have all you desire. And I will do everything in my power to make it so for you.”

What she wanted right now, what she wanted more than she had ever wanted anything before, was him. As she looked into his
eyes, that cool, careful mask he always wore was finally gone, and she saw the torment he had held inside for so long.

She went up on her knees on the bed beside him and held his face between her hands. She carefully traced his features with
her fingertips, the line of his nose, his brows, those elegant cheekbones, his sensual lips. He closed his eyes as if to shut
her out from that precious glimpse of his heart. He tried to draw away from her, but she wouldn’t let him go. She was desperate
to hold on to him while she could.

She kissed his closed eyes and the furrow above his nose. He would protect her to the last moment of his life—but she could
tell he was struggling to stay under her touch, to give her that small control.

“Caroline,” he groaned. “I’ve never known anyone like you.”

“Then we’re quite the pair,” she said. “I’ve never known anyone even remotely like you, either.”

She softly kissed his lips, but when he reached for her to
pull her closer, she slid away. She slowly unlaced his torn shirt and took it off him, leaving his chest bare and golden-smooth
in the candlelight. Then she climbed down from the bed to kneel at his feet, as he had done when he bandaged her leg. He watched
her with caution in his dark eyes.

She pulled off his boots, encrusted with dried ale and dust, and tossed them aside. She unfastened his breeches, also dirty
from the fight, and peeled them down over his strongly muscled thighs and calves, roughened with a dusting of bronze hair.
At last he sat before her magnificently naked.

She traced the tense, corded strength of his legs with her palms. Slowly, ever so slowly, he relaxed under her touch, and
her mouth followed her hands over his thigh, the sharp plane of his hip.

She found that tracery of scars on his torso and etched its texture with the tip of her tongue. How well she knew his taste
now. How she craved it. She knew his body, how it felt and smelled, how it fit with hers. How wondrous it made her feel. But
she wanted to know his mind and heart, too. All of him. Everything was different,
she
was different because of him.

Through that white-hot blaze of desire, she felt him take off her gown and chemise even as he continued their desperate kiss.
The whole universe was only a humid blur of their mingled breath and lips, their sighs and incoherent whispers.

His mouth slid away from hers, and her cries of protest turned to a moan of pleasure as he took her aching nipple deep into
his mouth. She threaded her fingers through his hair and held him against her.

But he moved away from her and kissed the curve of
her waist, the flare of her hip. He gently urged her to lie back on the bed and spread her legs wider as he knelt between
them.

As Caroline watched him, trying to breathe, he lifted her legs over his shoulders, parted her damp womanhood with his fingers—and
kissed her just
there.

A lightning bolt of pure, hot pleasure shot through her, and she cried out. “Grant!”

“Shh, Caroline,” he muttered. “Just let me. I have to taste you.”

She closed her eyes tightly and let him do what he would—and it was
delicious.
She had never felt anything like it before, the wet heat of it, the pleasure that built and built until she would scream
with it! Grant was—oh, he was so good at
that.

She bit her lip to keep a scream from escaping as her climax exploded. Through the cloud of glittering sensation, she felt
his body slide up hers, felt his open-mouthed kiss on her breast, her neck. And she needed him all over again.

She spread her legs wider as he thrust into her, deep and hungry. She arched up to meet him, their movements as one now. He
kissed her mouth, catching her cries and half-spoken words of need. He tasted of—of
her
, and of his own need that met hers and drove it higher and higher.

She dug her nails into his shoulders and felt the heave and drive of his body as he thrust into hers faster and faster. Behind
her eyes, she saw only a silvery, magical sun, hot and sparkling as her release built up again, deep inside her.

“Caroline!” Grant shouted, and his back arched as he found his own release. In that instant, they were as one. He was hers,
and she—oh, God help her—she was his.

She fell back to the mattress, her entire body feeling so
heavy and weak. She wrapped her legs around his hips as he collapsed against her shoulder.

She feared she would cry with the overwhelming emotion of it all. She kissed his shoulder and held on to him to keep from
falling.

Grant wound Caroline’s long, tangled hair around his wrist, watching how the fading candlelight brought out the gold, shining
threads among the brown. It was so beautiful, just as every part of her was. Even that stubborn, kind, tenacious heart, that
refused to let go of its hold on him.

She sighed in her sleep and burrowed closer to him. He would have to wake her soon so they could pack their meager belongings
and be on their way. But he couldn’t do it quite yet. She looked so young and free as she slept, free of all the trouble he
had brought into her life.

When they had danced tonight, before the fight broke out, she had laughed with such glorious abandon. She made him laugh,
too, and he could just be in that one sweet moment of happiness with her. Moments of happiness in his life were so few and
far between, he hardly recognized it for what it was until it was nearly gone. Holding her in his arms, hearing her laughter—yes,
it was happiness. As fleeting as a rainbow after a storm.

He wanted her to laugh again, because he sensed that her moments of pure, exhilarating joy in life were just as few as his.
He wanted to give her a lifetime of only such moments, but that was one thing beyond his power.

He feared he could only give her happiness by letting her go.

He kissed her bare shoulder, and she sighed as she snuggled closer to him. He carefully slid away from her and retrieved his
breeches from the floor. As he dressed, his gaze caught on their travel bags, and he remembered how she was reading
The Chronicle
earlier. He remembered the way her eyes glowed as she examined the pages.

He took it from the bag and gently opened the soft, worn cover. The old vellum pages fell open to the story Caroline was reading—the
tale of the dragon of Adaislan. It
would
be that one. That story had turned his life upside-down once he realized what it was really about. But he wouldn’t let it
hurt Caroline and her family, too.

“Grant,” he heard her murmur. He turned to see her sitting up in bed, blinking sleepily.

“I’m here,” he said. He went back to sit beside her on the bed.

“Is it morning? Do we need to depart?”

“Not quite yet. We have a little time.”

She leaned against his shoulder and reached out to touch the book he held in his hand. “You were reading
The Chronicle
?”

“The tale of the dragon of Adaislan. I think you were reading it in Killorgin?”

“Yes,” she said carefully, and he knew that she had grasped the meaning of the story as well.

“Then you can see why I let no one read this,” he said. “Especially this tale.”

“It’s only a story,” Caroline said. “A myth.”

He gave her a wry smile. “Do you believe that, my dear? You, who have made a study of the myths and history of Ireland and
how they tie together? Adaislan is Adair, and those are the lands ruled by queens. Passed from mother
to daughter, even if it must be through a son—and my mother was the only female of her generation.”

“If that old tradition had stood, then you would hold the lands for your own daughter,” she said, and he knew that she understood
why he hid that book. “In the old times, such things did happen. There were lands ruled by women by ancient traditions. But
why…”