A Little Fate by Nora Roberts Page B

longed to stroke her finger over the lightning-bolt scar above his eye. “Do you fear witchcraft, Thane of the stables?”
    Those eyes fired at the insult, as she’d hoped. “I don’t fear you.”
    â€œWhy should an armed man and his faerie guard fear a lone witch?”
    â€œLeave us,” Thane demanded of Kern, and his gaze stayed locked on Aurora’s face.
    â€œAs you wish.” Kern bowed deeply, then disappeared.
    â€œWhy are you here?”
    â€œPrince Owen needs a wife. Why shouldn’t it be me?”
    He had to choke down a rage, bubbling black, at the thought of it. “Whatever you are, you’re not like the others.”
    â€œWhy? Because I walk alone at night in the Black Forest, where wild beasts are said to roam?”
    â€œYou’re not like the others. I know you. I do know you, or what you were once.” He had to curl his hand into a fist to keep from touching her. “I’ve seen you in my dreams. I’ve tasted your mouth. I’ll taste it again.”
    â€œIn your dreams perhaps you will. But I don’t give my kisses to cowards who fight only smoke.”
    She turned, and was both surprised and aroused when he gripped her arm and dragged her around. “I’ll taste it again,” he repeated.
    Even as he yanked her close, she had the point of her dagger at his throat. “You’re slow.” She all but purred it. “Release me. I don’t wish to slit your throat for so small an offense.”
    He eased back and, when she lowered the dagger, moved like lightning. He wrested the dagger from her hand, kicked her feet out from under her before she could draw her sword. The force of the fall knocked the wind out of her, and she was pinned under him before she could draw a breath.
    â€œYou’re rash,” he told her, “to trust an enemy.”
    She had to swallow the joy, and the laugh. They’d wrestled like this before, when there had been only love and innocence between them. Here was her man, after all.
    â€œYou’re right. The likes of you would have no honor.”
    With the same cold look in his eyes that she’d seen when he fought, he dragged her arms over her head. She felt the first licks of real fear, but even that she held tight. No groveling stableboy could make her fear. “I will taste you again. I will take something. There has to be something.”
    She didn’t struggle. He’d wanted her to, wanted her to spit and buck and fight him so he wouldn’t have to think. For one blessed moment, not to think but only feel. But she went still as stone when he crushed his lips to hers.
    Her taste was the same, the same as he’d imagined, remembered, wished. Hot and strong and sweet. So he couldn’t think, after all, but simply sank into the blessed relief of her. And all the aches and misery, the rage and the despair, washed out of him in the flood of her.
    She didn’t fight him, as she knew she wouldn’t win with force. She remained still, knowing that a man wanted response—heat, anger or acquiescence, but not indifference.
    She didn’t fight him, but she began to fight herself as his mouth stirred her needs, as the weight of his body on hers brought back wisps of memories.
    She’d never really been with a man, but only with him in visions, in dreams. She had wanted no man but him, for the whole of her life. But what she’d found wasn’t the wolf she’d known, nor the coward she thought she’d found. It was a bitter and haunted man.
    Still, her heart thundered, her skin trembled, and beneath his, her mouth opened and offered. She heard him speak, one word, in the oldest tongue of Twylia. The desperation in his voice, the pain and the longing in it made her heart weep.
    The word was “Beloved.”
    He eased up to look at her. There was a tear on her cheek, and more in her eyes where the moonlight struck them. He closed his own eyes