Whoa! He shook his head.
He gave her buttocks little bites that made her laugh, even while they aroused her. Then he turned her over to kiss her breasts again. How did she smell so good?
He played with her nipples as he worked his way down. He paused to stick his tongue in her belly button. As he moved lower, he felt her tense. He rose up to kiss her for a long while, his hand between her legs.
“You will like this, I promise,” he said next to her ear before he moved back down to show her.
She did. Her release was so exciting he thought he would have his own against the bedclothes. Sweet Jesus, she was going to kill him.
Sometime later, he once again had her on the edge, just where he wanted her. She was clinging to him like warm honey. He hovered over her, teasing her—and torturing himself. It took all his strength of mind not to plunge into her.
“Now.” She wrapped her legs more tightly around him, her voice was urgent. “I want you inside me. Now.”
“Say you will marry me first.”
She made an indecipherable sound.
“You must say it, Isobel,” he insisted. “I will not again risk giving you a child unless I have your word.”
“I cannot!” she half moaned, half cried. “Do not make me, Stephen. Please. Please. Do not make me.”
Even in the midst of passion, she would not give in to him.
A man can take only so much. When she lifted her hips to him, he let his shaft slide over her. He closed his eyes and moved against her, again and again, until he spurted his seed over her belly.
He rolled off her and lay on his back, arms crossed over his face. He’d never felt worse in his life. The humiliation alone might kill him. But it was nothing to this aching hole in his chest where his heart had been. He wanted to crawl off into a corner like a wounded animal. But he could not move with this heavy sadness lying over him like a great weight.
Though they did not touch, he felt the heat of her body next to him and heard each shallow breath she took. There was one demand he had to make. Though she won all else, he was determined to have his way in this one thing. He gathered his strength and what little pride he had left, and said it.
“I will not allow another man to raise my child.”
He let the silence linger to give her time to absorb this before he told her how it would be.
“ ’Tis unlikely,” she said in a bare whisper. “I have never conceived. I—I may not be able to.”
He was resolved in this, and he would have her know it. Fixing his eyes on the ceiling, he let the coldness he felt show in his voice.
“You will find a way to delay your marriage to de Roche until you know for certain,” he said. “If you are with child, I will give you two choices. You can marry me, or you can have the child in secret and give it to me to raise.”
He got up from the bed. As he pulled on his clothes, his hurt and disappointment turned into something cold and hard within his chest. The silence was thick between them as he sat and methodically put on one boot and then the other.
He was not going to slink out of Isobel’s bedchamber half dressed. He was not that kind of man anymore. He had tried to do the right thing. He still wanted to.
Gritting his teeth, he strapped on his belt and sword. Only then did he look at her. She was sitting with the bedclothes clutched to her chest, her hollow eyes fixed on him.
“Understand me. I will not allow you to pass my child off as de Roche’s,” he told her. “I would kill him with my bare hands before I let that unworthy piece of shit have a child of mine.”
She nodded.
It was enough. He turned and left her.
Chapter Twenty-five
Stephen waved aside the guards’ cautions and rode out the gate. Brigands and renegades be damned.
Lightning liked galloping in the dark. Stephen gave the horse his head, though it risked both their necks. The cold helped clear Stephen’s mind. When Lightning slowed to a walk, he looked up at the star-filled sky and tried to draw hope from it.
After he left Isobel, he was in such a tangle he awakened Catherine for advice. She showed no surprise at his intention to marry Isobel. Good God, was he so obvious?