Viking Claim (The MacLomain Series: Viking Ancestors Book 2) by Sky Purington Page A

key because she made her way over. The moment she was within arm’s length, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her the rest of the way until she stood in front of him. He clasped her slender thighs and slowly ran his hands up until he grasped her hips and met her eyes, words hoarse, pleading, “You need to stay away from me.”
    “I know,” she whispered but didn’t move away.
    They stayed that way for several long moments. Him staring up, challenging. Her staring down, not fleeing. Unable to stop himself, he fell forward onto his knees. The shore declined just enough that he could wrap his arms around her lower back and rest his cheek against her stomach. He closed his eyes. “I don’t think you know a thing at all. Not about me. Not about this.”
    Her hand rested tentatively against his head, her words whisper soft. “And I don’t think I want to…but here I am.”
    Raknar turned his nose to her stomach, her womb, and inhaled deeply. She smelled of wet, hot desire, of something he hadn’t paid attention to in a very long time with a woman. Yes, he lay with women when necessary. Enough so that his seed didn’t dry up. But he’d not truly basked in the scent of a woman since his wife, now enemy, Yrsa…and her sister, Aesa.
    But even they had not smelled like this.
    Sweet. Innocent but not virginal. Defiant. Confused. Lost. Ready.
    Veronica smelled of needs he didn’t know he had. Foreign yet familiar. Something deep down inside started to claw its way up. Part man, part dragon, a strangled sound broke from his chest as he pushed up her tunic and pressed his lips against the silky soft yet firm plane of her abdomen.
    “Raknar,” she groaned, the sound strangled as she grabbed his head and whimpered.
    He flicked his tongue in and around the tiny alcove in her stomach that attached to her womb then twirled down until he skimmed it along the line of her trousers. With a quick flick of his fingers, he loosened the strings and yanked down the material enough that he could skim the knob at the top of her pleasure.
    The moment she moaned, he gripped her hips and pulled the pure sweetness into his mouth, licking fast between nips. Delicious. Well worth devouring. When she cried out, he laved his tongue one more time before he grabbed the back of her thighs and pulled her down hard.
    Shocked, aroused, straddling him, she was like liquid in his arms when she slid down against him. He wrapped an arm around her back and cupped her head, his eyes searching hers through the darkness.
    Sinking into her now might mean a direct shot to Valhalla with no hope for return. Death by erotic pleasure. He wanted her that badly. But he wouldn’t take her. Not now. Not this way. But he couldn’t stop his tongue or his need to taste her so he grabbed her hair and tilted back her head. A small gasp broke from her lips as he nibbled then trailed his tongue up her slender neck.
    Veronica stilled when he grasped her tightly, clamped his teeth down on the side of her neck and thrust up his hips. When she again whimpered, blood pooled thickly in his groin. The dragon within was pleased with her submission. The man within was working his way toward something unforgettable…something he knew would be the end of him.
    Her mouth.
    Lips, tongue, teeth, he trailed over her jaw, sampling every inch until he hovered over her perfect lips and breathed in her breath…desperate. Totally his. Vulnerable. Eager. Waiting. Yet he couldn’t close the distance. Raknar tasted her through the scant space between their lips, the heat throbbing through her, through him. He’d never wanted to taste another so much, never wanted to sink into and make another his so much.
    Yet he froze.
    Could not.
    Sensing his hesitation, perhaps even embarrassed by it, Veronica snapped out of the spell she’d been under and blinked. She eyed his lips, still a little dazed, before she abruptly pulled away then stood.
    “Thank God one of us has our wits about us,” she muttered