“I love you,” she whispered. “I told myself I wouldn’t make it hard, that I’d never breathe those words. But ’tis harder for me to go without saying them. I need to give them to you.”

His breath caught and anguish flooded his eyes. He stilled within her and gazed down at her with such emotion that tears pricked at her lids. When he started to open his mouth she pressed a finger to his lips.

“Don’t say anything. ’Tis no need. I feel the very heart of you inside me, surrounding me. I carry you with me everywhere I go. Do not speak of forbidden things between us. Let it remain my sin alone.”

He crushed her to him and rolled until she was atop him. He kissed her breathlessly, her mouth, her cheek, her eyes, and back down to her chin.

They took each other desperately, feeding as if starved, loving as if this would be their last time together. She knew not what fed the urgency, but she didn’t fight it.

“Ride me,” he whispered. “Take me. Make me yours, lass. Let me hold you in my arms and watch you fly. There’s not a more beautiful sight.”

Swallowing the knot in her throat, she pressed her palms to his chest and began moving over him, sensuously, watching his every expression as she took him deep inside her body.

His eyes glittered and became half-lidded, smoky with desire, and his lips curved into a satisfied smile.

Aye, he was hers. Her warrior. No one could ever take that from her. Another woman might bear his name and his children, but she would own his heart just as he would always own hers.

The power in his body mesmerized her. Every ripple and bulge of his muscles, the broad plane of his chest and the taut surface of his belly. He was all male, all hard, all beautiful.

She hoisted herself upward and then leaned her head down to run her tongue up the middle of his chest. He tensed and held his breath when she nibbled a path to his neck. She nipped playfully and then sank her teeth into the thickly corded column below his ear.

With a groan, he wrapped his arms around her and dragged her down, bucking his hips and driving deep into her softness.

“I love you. I love you.”

It was a litany on her lips, a song from the depths of her soul. Tears swam and slipped down her cheeks as she gathered him in her arms.

His arms slipped around her body like bands of steel. They held tightly to each other as the storm swelled around them. Her release, when it came, was sweet and tender, not the tumultuous tide it had been so many times before.

Bittersweet and aching, it flooded her body, tightening until she came apart into a million tiny pieces.