“Feel me, lass. Feel what you do to me!” He pressed his body against hers and rocked his hips, making sure she felt the swollen manhood that rose beneath his kilt and teased the inside of her thigh.

And there was the wall; it had been just behind her back all the time. Cool stone to her back and the inferno of the Hawk searing her through the front of her gown. She raised her hands to pummel him, but he caught and pinned them above her head against the wall. His strong fingers splayed her grip, twined with and teased her hands. Palm to palm, flat against the stone.

“My sweet falcon,” he breathed against her neck. “Fight me as you will, it will come to naught. I have set my mind on you, and this is your first time to be seeled. In this blackness you will come to know my hands as they touch every silken inch of your body. I will not take from you any more than that. Just that you suffer my touch, you needn’t even see my face. I will be patient while you grow gentled to my hands.”

His hands were liquid fire, sliding her gown up and over her thighs and oh! She hadn’t had the faintest idea where to look for undergarments this morning. His hands, his strong, beautiful hands were kneading her thighs, pushing them gently apart to slip the heat of his muscled leg between them. He purred, a rich husky growl of masculine triumph, when he felt the betraying wetness between her thighs. Adrienne flushed furiously; despite her intentions her hands fluttered up to rest upon his shoulders, then slid deep into his soft, thick hair. Her knees, already weak, went limp when he eased the bodice of her gown aside and dropped his head to her breasts, licking and grazing the swollen peaks with his tongue, then his teeth.

She scarcely noticed when he pushed his kilt up; but she definitely noticed when his hard, hot, heavy arousal rose against her thigh. Adrienne made a throaty sound: half whimper, half plea. How had he done this to her? Merely by touching her, the Hawk had somehow managed to unravel every ounce of resistance she’d so painstakingly woven into the cloak of aloofness she wore.

It had never been like this with Eberhard! Her mind fled her body and she clung to the hand that had seeled her. The hand that had denied her sight she tasted with her lips—turned her head to catch his finger with her tongue. Adrienne almost screamed when he took that same finger and placed it inside the slick heat between her legs. “Fly for me, sweet falcon,” he urged, cupping one of her heavy breasts with his hand and licking its puckered crest. He teased her mercilessly, nipping her gently, touching her everywhere.

His lips returned to claim hers with desperation sired of a hunger too long denied. A hunger that might never relent. His kiss was long, hard, and punishing, and she reveled in his unspoken demands. A whimper escaped her when the pad of his thumb found the tiny nub of heat nestled between her folds, and Adrienne’s head dropped back as a burgeoning wave cast her up and up. Yielding to his fingers, his tongue and lips, she sacrificed the last vestige of her restraint.

“Adrienne,” he whispered hoarsely, “you’re so beautiful, so sweet. Want me, lass. Need me like I need you.”

She felt the heat of a place with no name she’d ever been taught—luring her deeper.

Adrienne struggled to say the words she knew must be said. The one word that she knew would free her. This legendary seducer of women—oh, how easy it was to understand just how legions had fallen before him! He was so good at it. He almost had her believing that it was for her and only her that he hungered. Almost a fool again.

But that was why they called them rogues. Lotharios. Don Juans. They applied the same skill and relentless determination to seduction that they applied to the art of war—to conquests of any sort.

Resurrecting the tatters of her defenses, she steeled her will against his advances.

The Hawk was lost. Lost as he’d been since the moment he’d laid eyes upon the bewitching lass. No matter her strange fancies risen from some secret and terrible past. He would discover a way to erase all her fears. The things Grimm had told him signified nothing. With love he could overcome any obstacle in time. His lady hawk she would be, for now and always. He treasured her yielding to his hands, savored like the rarest delicacy the sweet honey of her lips, trembled at the thought that she would one day feel for him as he felt for her. With her it would never be like it had been before, empty and hollow.

Nay, with this lass he would mate for life. She had no eye for the beauty the other women had so adored. This lass possessed secrets of her own. Horrors of her own. Depth of her own. All in all, a rare lass indeed. He was sinking, sinking into her depths … the kiss deepened ferociously and he felt her teeth graze his lower lip. It maddened him beyond control.