A Perfect Knight For Love by Jackie Ivie Page A

stimulation and pure need. She was afire with it. His fingers slid higher, wrapping about her to cup one side of her buttocks. Then Thayne tightened to lift her, yanking her against something so hard and foreign and large that she stiffened. Everywhere.
    “Doona’ fear. I’ll be gentle. It’s just—!”
    He’d moved his kiss to her ear, whispering words that sent shivers racing to curse the rest of her. They sprang from his breath in a flood before pooling at her center, where he was sliding his hard shaft along her belly flesh and then back to the juncture of her thighs, moving closer to her core with each move. And trembling the entire time.
    “Thayne! I—!”
    Amalie’s voice choked off as he angled his head into the space beside her shoulder, planting it on the wool in order to release his other arm. Fingers slid down her side, reaching her buttocks, and using full handfuls to lift her, holding her in position, creating an opening for him. And she was going wild. Her own lunges were trying to match against the heat and bulk filling the space he’d created. Then he stopped and a shudder ran him, strong enough to shift her along the fabric beneath them.
    “Thayne?” Her whisper carried her tension. Desire. Inflamed craving.
    But he stayed unmoving for the longest moment, save for where he pulsed in place, touching her innermost flesh and driving her into an arch of reaction that reached where he hovered.
    “Ah . . . lass !”
    The words were grunted as he moved finally, sliding along where everything was quivering and grasping and needy. Amalie was near bursting with the combination. He pushed his upper body against her, forcing her prone with the weight of him. Amalie was in a torture of inhaled breath, her hands gripped to his upper arms while her entire being felt poised in time, held alert, expectant, frustrated . . . and completely and totally ready.
    “You’re wet. But so . . . tight! I’ve but— Christ !”
    He’d been huffing heated air all over her with the words, and then with the curse he’d stopped. Everything on him stilled. He wasn’t even breathing while Amalie had her eyes scrunched so tightly, it hurt. Her throat felt raw with a denied scream. Her entire body was in a torment of expectancy, fueled by excitement and whirling with passion and fervor . . . and he stopped?
    Light speared the darkness as the door flew wide, sending cold everywhere. It was accompanied by a slap of wood against an obstruction of wall. Within a blink, Thayne was on his feet and backed to a wall with her shoved between bare skin and peat insulation that crumbled onto her back. The boom of the door startled the babe into a cry from where she was suspended from a jut of log to the side of them. Amalie glanced at the make-shift cradle before looking at the mass of shadows in the aperture, highlighted by the torches they carried.
    “Thayne?” The largest of the intruders bellowed the name.
    “Jamie?” Thayne replied, the name rumbling through the back she leaned against.
    The speaker stepped in, bringing a torch with him and lighting just about everything; Thayne’s nakedness; the discarded plaid on the floor dented with the shape of her body; the squalor of the hut. Amalie glimpsed a large bloodied bandage on the other man’s shoulder and bluish bruising about his eyes before closing hers and hiding as if that muted or changed any of it.
    She didn’t have to even ask. She knew the MacGowan chieftain instantly. He’d looked the same size and coloring as Thayne. And close to the same handsome features. But something was different. She’d have looked again if she could vanquish the weakness of a full-body flush and a space filled with embarrassment. Her ears got bombarded with the sound of clanking weaponry amid rumbling sounds of speech. That started the babe to kicking and fussing. Amalie wasn’t capable of moving. Her knees wavered. She’d have fallen if the pressure of Thayne’s body wasn’t preventing