She lowered herself elegantly, fluidly. Her closeness made him burn. He gazed down on her dark crown while her fingers began an exquisite torture. She caressed his hips and thighs, and finally, luxuriantly, his phallus. His breath caught and a furious, relentless urging pounded through him.

Her breath warmed him, and then, when he was close to begging, her lips replaced her hands. With her first kiss, his mind split apart.

It thrilled her more than she had expected it to. All of it did. The plan had been to defeat him, and show him her strength, but her own yearnings betrayed her as they so often had before.

Even now, as she made love to him, the control was not all hers. Her body cried with anticipation, impatiently demanding its turn. The craving slyly subverted her. Heaven beckoned, a state of bliss where the two of them dwelled as one and the strife that had brought her here no longer existed.

Leaving him incomplete, she rocked back on her heels, and rose.

Control tightened his expression, making him so compelling in his passion that her heart almost couldn’t take it. An angry question flashed in his eyes.

She shook her head in response. Nay, she was not leaving. Not now. That would be impossible.

She went near the hearth, and knelt again, facing it. Sitting back on her feet, she waited for him to join her, so they could finish this with a joining that made neither of them victorious or vanquished.

Time pulsed past, but she could feel him as surely as if they embraced. He was looking at her, and letting the expectation tantalize them both for a while.

“Move your hair off your back, Nesta.”

She pulled it forward, so her back and bottom were bare.

“That is how I saw you in the cottage that day, while you bathed. Your lovely back curving in to your waist, and the roundness of your hips and bottom. You looked very erotic,” he said. “I wanted to stride across that rude chamber and take you at once. It has always been that way between us. Finally having you did not change it, as I thought it might.”

Hoped it might, was what he meant. She had hoped so too. But what wanted to happen between them had always been bigger than mere lust. It had even been bigger than duty, and Wales and England. Bigger and more compelling in ways that frightened her.

She heard him move, and then come up behind her. His leg warmed her shoulder.

A pillow dropped to the floor in front of her.

She looked at the pillow, then glanced up at him. “Only because I choose to, Marcus. Only in our passion do I submit, because it excites me to do so.”