Heather Graham (12 page)

“My love,” he whispered. “Easy, my love …”

The voice was his, the whisper his. So tender. A sob tore raggedly from her. She could not escape this. She had taken the beauty of the dream. And now there was this, too …

“No!” she whispered, and her fingers found the richness of his hair, stroked the handsome planes of his face. In the silver darkness, he was beautiful in his strength and nakedness. Her fingers trailed over his shoulders.

“Yes,” he murmured softly, his lips at her earlobe, then upon the pulse at the base of her throat. “Easy …” he whispered again, and she felt the force of his movement. So careful. So slow. So seductive.

Her breath caught. The pain was with her still. But something more. Something within her had been touched. He was arched above her then, a dark form with just the ripple of his muscles touched by a golden highlight of fire. The taut length of him shuddered and tensed, again and again. Deeply in, deeply out. Slowly …

Then rampantly. Like a shattering drumbeat. So swift, so sure. The pain was fading. Still there. But not so acute, and not so vivid as the new sweet aching that swept through her. Again, his every stroke heightened it. Her lips were dry. She wet them. Her breath came in a rush. She felt the movement, felt the wonder it created within her. She closed her eyes and let her senses take her. Swirling, rising, spiraling. It was coming again, the great explosion of rippling sweetness, the force that swept her, bursting …

She was dimly aware of him. His tension was suddenly so great, he might have been composed of steel …

She felt a violent thrust, sinking within her so deeply, they might have been one. He shuddered against her, shuddered again, and fell still.

A dream …

A dream that lay so heavily against her. A dream that was slick and damp. A dream with an arm that lay across her like an iron bar, a dream that left her feeling spent and exhausted and amazed and incredulous and sore …

Her eyes closed. Or had they been closed all along? She didn’t know. She saw silver darkening to gray either way. The darkness came completely, and she slept as soundly as if she were dead.

Eons, eons later, she thought that she heard a pounding. A thundering, like fists against wood. Someone calling to her, she thought vaguely.

She tried to awaken.

She felt as if she were struggling upward from some great chasm. Jesu! She had been so exhausted! She could not find the strength nor the energy to move now, she was so very weighted down.

It had been the wine, she thought. And it was the wine giving her such a fierce headache now, such an awful feeling of lethargy.

For long moments she just lay there, barely awake, aware only of the pounding in her head. Dear God. She’d been drinking wine since she was a small child. But it had never, never made her feel like this before.

Blood suddenly rushed through her.

She tried valiantly to move. She couldn’t do so. She was still so exhausted, so torn with lethargy. She hurt. Her limbs were sore, her body, her …

She wasn’t alone. She felt a shifting. She was lying beside another body.

No. Her heart pounded. Thumped. Ceased to beat.

She was lying in bed with a man. Lying on endlessly white sheets. It was cold. The fire in the room had died. A bronzed arm lay draped haphazardly over her naked back and shoulder. A taut muscled leg, richly furred with crisp, dark hair, lay casually over her hip.

A scream rose in the back of her throat. No dream, it had been no dream, it had all been real. She was lying here and she didn’t even know where …

But she knew who with.

DeForte!

She heard the pounding again, then a voice she knew well, calling out. “Are you alive in there, my friend? Come now, it’s well past morning! Are you all right?”

The door suddenly burst open. Her eyes flew to it. In stunned horror, Rose watched as the king started in, then froze in the doorway.

“Er, well, you must excuse me!” Charles exclaimed, his voice deeply puzzled.

DeForte stirred, grasped his head. Rose nearly screamed out loud in a rising sense of panic. He sat up, magnificently naked, shoulders broad and dark against the whiteness of the bedding. As if he, too, fought waves of darkness, he ran his fingers through his hair. “Your Majesty,” he said thickly.

“We’ll speak later!” Charles assured him quickly. The king’s eyes were on Rose. They swept over her. She stared at him, wanting to protest …

Wanting to die.

DeForte’s eyes fell on her. “You!” he exclaimed. Then he leapt from the bed.

For a moment he was still. Confusion touched his silver eyes. He stared around the room. It was his room, Rose realized quickly. She was in his room. His clothing was strewn over the large chair before the fireplace; his sword and scabbard were there. He stumbled toward the bed for a moment, disoriented. He gripped the bedpost. His fingers tightened around it, then he pushed away suddenly, furiously gritting his teeth as if he had come to some realization.

And he stared at her again. So heatedly that it was all that she could do not to shriek and run naked into the hallway.

She had compared him to a horse, to an ass, to a deer. She’d been a fool. He had the wired tension and prowling menace of an enraged lion right now. Mindless of his nakedness, he circled the bed, staring at her, taut, powerful, the muscles in his arms and chest constricting and rippling as he clenched and unclenched his fists, apparently trying to keep from winding his fingers around her throat. He stared at her as if she were the plague in person, sent down upon him. “You!” he repeated, his voice deep and husky. “My God!” he lashed out. “What have you done to me?”

“Me!” Outraged, she found her voice. She leapt from the bed and pitched herself at him with a wild fury, determined at that moment to tear his eyes out. “Me! Oh, you bastard! What have you done to me?” she cried, a vicious whirlwind of energy.

But he was every bit as enraged, and ten times stronger. She lashed out against him, nails careening across his chest. But that was her last blow. She was plucked up from the floor and held before him. His eyes met hers. She became acutely and painfully aware that they were both naked.

“You little witch! You said that you would have me if you wanted me!”

“I never wanted you!” she lashed back instantly. “I hate you, I loathe you, I—”

“What did you do to me?” he demanded.

“Nothing!” she shrieked, panicking, tears pricking her eyes. Her body was touching his, held against his as he lifted her above him, staring at her. He seemed to realize that they touched. That her flesh was against his. He swore suddenly, violently, pitching her down upon the bed, then walking to her with menace. She struggled up and gasped, horrified as she stared down at the bedding, at the proof that, indeed, the night had been no dream.

He leaned over her. “What did you do to me? How did you drug me? With the wine?”

Fire and fury ripped through her. She slapped him as hard as she could, startled herself by the sound that tore through the room. His hands seized upon her again, wrenching up, shaking her. “Don’t you ever, ever do that again! I shall make you rue the day that you were born—”

“Get your hands off me! Let me go, let me be! I shall scream and summon the king—”

“The king indeed! That’s just what you intended, isn’t it, my beautiful little Rose! Well, it won’t work! I won’t marry you—”

“Marry me!” As tautly and dangerously as he held her, she had to be insanely furious to fight him still. But she did. She was near tears, confused, aching, physically, in her heart, in her soul. Oh, God! She hated him.

“I will never marry you, DeForte! Never! There is no more detestable creature alive! I would rather wed a leper! I despise you! Idiot, this was not my doing! My God, what you’ve done to me …!” Despite herself, her voice trembled. And she was suddenly shaking fiercely. She wanted to cover her face, she wanted to die. She wanted to sink back to the bed and close her eyes and never awaken.

There was a light tap at the door again. A throat was cleared. The king, once again. “Pierce, I need to see you.”

Silver eyes sizzled back to her own. She didn’t know if he believed her or not. Oh, God, that he could think that this was some kind of a marriage trap! She couldn’t bear it.

He set her back upon the bed. Once again his eyes fell to the sheets. She saw the working of his jaw as his gaze touched hers. She scrambled for the covers, anxious to clothe herself. “Understand this!” she hissed vehemently, fighting the tears. “I truly loathe you! I have no desire to marry you. You wretched fool! You have wronged me incredibly! I will never forgive you for this! I am the one who has lost—oh, God!” she cried, remembering the night. “I’d give my eyeteeth to see you hanged. Drawn and quartered. I tell you, I had nothing to do with this.”

He turned from her, stumbling for his trousers. He laced them about his hips. Shirtless, shoeless, he cast her one last furious and condemning stare, coming to within a step of where she lay in the bed, his fingers twined into fists at his side.

“Pray that you are innocent! For if I ever do discover you to be a part of it, you will pay dearly, I vow it!”

In a whirl of fury, he strode from the room, slamming the door so violently behind him that it cracked.

P
IERCE FOLLOWED THE KING
down the stairs, and Charles instantly shooed away the servants delivering hot chocolate where he sat before the warmth of the fireplace.

“I’ve some understanding of what has gone on, I believe,” Charles said wearily. “It seems that Lord Bryant has spirited Anne away.”

“He’s kidnapped her!”

“She is gone,” Charles said softly.

“I will find her!” Pierce replied quickly, turning toward the door.

“Wait!” Charles called.

“I cannot wait!”

“Dammit, listen to me! I am returning to the court immediately. When you’ve cooled down, you will find me there. And take care if you find them. I do not want to see you hanged for murder. You had best control your temper.”

He gave the king little heed. Fear and guilt were ruling him now. He had to find Anne.

“Forgive me, Your Majesty!” he said, bowed deeply, and exited the inn with long strides, seeking Beowulf in the stable. He accepted no help from any groom, but saddled the horse quickly himself, and began to ride.

For endless hours Pierce prowled London and its environs, trying to discover just had happened, his emotions in a tempest.

Once he was fully awake, it became obvious. They’d been duped as easily as a pair of children, he and Anne. He had wakened beside Rose Woodbine, and Jamison had spirited Anne away somewhere—surely with Jerome’s help. He was afraid for Anne. He had to find her.

He didn’t want to think about the night. He definitely didn’t want to remember that he had desired the girl with everything within him. He had gotten what he wanted. She had been all that he had imagined and more, pure magic.

And in the whole of his life, he had never felt more guilty.

Or furious.

Rose Woodbine had told him that
she
would have
him
if she wanted him. Had she decided that she did? Had she been part of the plan, crying innocence now that the others had disappeared?

She would not get away with it! He would find Anne, and Jamison and Jerome, and so help him God, they would pay. They had gone too far.

He rode all through the surrounding countryside. He threatened, bullied, and bribed, leaving many a man shaking in his boots, but he failed to discover where Anne had been taken. They had not gone to the Jamisons’ family estate, but he had known they would not. Nor had they retired to either the London manor or the north country estate owned by Anne—and Jerome.

The hell of it was that he didn’t even know which way they’d gone. In all his searching, he found only one young farm girl who could help him, and she had scarcely been three miles from the Norman inn. She had seen five riders encompassed in heavy cloaks, riding hard from the inn during the middle of the night. The girl was too simple to remember their direction.

He would never find them alone, he realized. He was going to have to return to court, and seek help from Charles.

Actually, he had left in such a rage that it was only now, when his exhaustion had overcome his temper, that he realized Charles probably already had men out looking for his wayward subjects.

Bone-weary, in dire need of a shave and a bath, he returned to his quarters at court. He had barely left Beowulf with the grooms when the summons came to appear before Charles—just as soon as he had bathed and made himself presentable.

Sunken into a hot tub, miserable, weary, desolate, he leaned back, feeling a sense of guilt stealing over him again. He prayed that Anne had not suffered too greatly, and he wondered for what seemed like the thousandth time if Rose Woodbine had been used as he had been used, or if she had been part of the scheme. Closing his eyes tightly, he tried to remember everything that they had said to each other. She would have what she wanted, she had told him. And if she wanted him, she would have him.

But she would rather wed an ape, she had said also.

He sank beneath the water, soaking his dark hair and his face, feeling the anguish that tore through his body. Anne. What ill had she come to when he had been dreaming his sweet dream of ecstasy?

Jamison adored her. He would never hurt her. Jerome was the treacherous one, he thought wearily. Jerome had surely planned this.

It didn’t matter who did the planning. When he got his hands on the twosome, they were dead.

But they would know that. That’s why they had disappeared.

And then there was Rose Woodbine …

A peculiar tremor shot along his spine. His fingers curled around the rim of the tub and he dunked his face forward in the scalding water.

He leaned back, inhaling deeply, wondering if some part of his violent rage was not directed straight toward himself. He hated to remember the night. There had been the mist …

He had been exhausted; there had been a woman’s body beside him. Naturally. Anne.