Warrior's Moon by Lucy Monroe Page A

passion?” she asked, wondering if Caelis would let himself understand.
    “Nay! I am more furious with that liar than I was before. What you and I have just shared only shows what he tookfrom us
both
with his lies. He robbed me of my sacred mate, of my son.”
    As Caelis had allowed the man to rob her. She did not say it, having earlier made her point on that issue.
    Instead, she reiterated, “So, the pleasure did not negate the pain?”
    Sighing, Caelis shook his head. “You are saying you do not forgive me, either.”
    “No.” Though maybe she was beginning to.
    He frowned, his overt satisfaction all but gone. “I see.”
    Perhaps he did. Mayhap he even realized that only time would prove him more worthy of her trust than she now held him.
    “You have grown into a hard woman, Shona.”
    “Circumstances have forced me to draw on strengths I did not know I had.” Though the strength to resist him clearly was not among them.
    He nodded. “When you realized you were indeed pregnant, why did you not send word?”
    “You assume I had some way of doing so. I did not, but even if I had, I
would
not have. You had already told me you would consider my child someone else’s by-blow.”
    “I did not mean it. You had to know that. You were untouched the first time we shared our bodies.”
    “I did not know it. You said it after rejecting me; why would I believe you would want me even if you knew of the babe?”
    “I am not a man who would abandon my child.”
    “Tell yourself whatever you like, but you already had.”
    He stared at her, his expression clearly showing how foreign he found the concept of her words, but then great sadness came over his features. “You are right.”
    She knew she was. So, why did seeing his grief hurt her as it did?
    He turned and moved as if to leave the bed.
    Her hand moved out to touch him before she could snatch it back. “Where are you going?”
    “Back to the hall.” His massive shoulders hunched. “I have no place in your bed.”
    “You are already in my bed.”
    He merely shrugged, but he did not stand.
    “I do not want you to go.”
    “That cannot be true.”
    “It is.”
    His head turned so he looked at her over his shoulder. “Because of my wolf. Because we are mates.”
    “Maybe. I would like to think so. It paints me a stronger woman, but all I know of a certainty is that when I am with you, I have peace I have not had these past six years.”
    “Even with all the anger you have toward me?” he asked with disbelief.
    His reaction was understandable. She found her own desires and behavior very confusing indeed. “Prove yourself trustworthy to me.”
    “How?”
    “Begin by not leaving my bed now that you have gotten what you wanted from me.”
    “You think one moment of passion is all I want from you?” he asked, this time the disbelief huge in his tone and demeanor. “I have gone six years without you. We could spend until the next new moon in this bed and I would not have gotten all I wanted of your body.”
    And suddenly, the desire was rolling off him again in hot waves that reached out and covered her. Inexplicably, but not surprisingly, her own rose to match it.
    This time, their coupling was no less hungry than the last. In fact, his body moved against hers with greater urgency, though he still refused to enter her. And a part of her was grateful for it.
    She did not want another pregnancy outside the bonds of matrimony. The last had cost her dearly.
    Though as he’d pushed her to admit to him, she would never truly regret it.
    When their passions had been spent, Caelis lowered himself to lie by her side. “Tell me about Percival wanting to make you his
lehman
.”
    “The disgusting degenerate. He’s not content to
tup
half the serving wenches and his own poor wife, but he wanted to make me his official mistress, thereby making my children by his father at risk for being considered natural, rather than legitimate.”
    “Is that the way it works in