Keeper of the Dream (24 page)

She lay naked on the bed, the camlet sheets cool and smooth beneath her back, and watched him undress. Candlelight bronzed his skin, it gleamed in the hair on his chest and between his legs. It cast shadows over his face, so she could not see his eyes.

It was so quiet, quiet enough to hear the hiss and snuffle of coals collapsing in the brazier and the lowing of the wind through the eaves. Quiet enough to hear his breathing, and her own.

He stretched out beside her. He smoothed her hair where it was crimped from the braid. His mouth twisted into a wry grimace and in a sudden movement, as if he couldn’t help himself, he buried his face in it. He rubbed first one cheek then the other in it, reminding her oddly of a child cuddling up to a puppy. He made a sound that was halfway between a moan and a sigh. “You smell delicious.”

“Are you thinking of eating me?”

His head snapped up, his eyes wide. Then a laugh burst out of him, surprising her into a blush. She should have known better than to try to play at courtly love speech; she’d never been any good at it.

“Lord God, what an innocent you are,” he said, his voice a little hoarse. He rubbed his curled fingers back and forth over her mouth, pulling at her lower lip. “I had forgotten there were girls like you. Untouched, unspoiled … innocent.”

He pressed his other hand into her scalp and pulled her head up to meet his kiss. Her mouth parted open and he sent his tongue deep. He kissed her a long time, spanning the gamut of passion from the barest, tender brush of lip to lip to thorough, tongue-thrusting kisses that sucked her empty. When he finally released her mouth, her lips were swollen and throbbing and no longer innocent.

He leaned above her on his forearms and traced the features of her face—eyebrows, cheekbones, nose, and her wet mouth. His eyes were heavy-lidded and there was the hint of a smile playing around his lips. She held her breath, waiting for that smile. But suddenly his hand shot out, snatching away a pillow.

Startled, she cried out, “What are you doing?”

“Looking for daggers.”

His hand stretched out for another pillow and she grabbed his wrist. “I am trusting you this night, my lord. Trusting you not to hurt me. Can you not trust me as well?”

The sinew of his wrist tightened beneath her fingers. His eyes had grown cold and his mouth had pressed into a straight line. He was going to pull away from her, to look beneath the other pillows. He trusted in nothing, she thought. And no one.

His mouth relaxed first, though he didn’t come close to smiling. He pulled free of her grip, but he didn’t lift the pillow. Instead he lowered his head, his lips finding the hollow of her throat. She drew in a deep breath of air. Her very pores seemed to fill with the scent of his heated skin.

“Do you want this, Arianna?” His breath washed over her. “Tell me you want this.”

She wondered what he would do if she said no. Would he take her anyway as he had last night? She didn’t want to find out. And to deny him now would be a lie.

“I want this … you,” she said.

His hands drifted over her, tracing the span of bone at her hips, cupping her belly. Her body felt weighted, heavy, her skin too hot and tight. She gasped at a feeling so piercing it was almost painful when his fingers lightly, lightly brushed her mound.

She pushed his hand away. “I don’t think I like for you to touch me there.”

“Liar. You like it too much.”

But he didn’t touch her there again. Instead he massaged her breasts and they seemed to swell and throb in his hands. Heat began to spread from her belly into her limbs as if she were melting from the inside out.

“You are so damned soft,” he murmured into her hair. “So soft …”

She liked the way his hands looked touching her, dark against pale flesh, his long fingers tracing ribs, fluttering across her heart, enveloping her breasts. He lifted them, whisking her nipples with the rough pads of his thumbs.

She had to touch him as well. She smoothed her palms over the curves of his chest, threading her fingers through the mat of hair. She marveled at how his skin could be silken and warm, while beneath it the flesh was so hard, so unyielding. She could feel the leashed power within him as he moved.

But then he shifted his weight, pulling her tighter against him. His member, burning and heavy, pressed between her thighs. She went rigid, pushing against his heavy chest.

His breath stirred her hair. “It’s nothing to be afraid of, Arianna. Touch me.”

She wouldn’t touch him; ’twould be unseemly. But to her utter shock, he took her hand and pressed it against
his stiff sex. He hissed through his teeth when her fingers closed around him.

She marveled at how hard he was. And the heat of him—it was like holding her palm right above a candle’s flame.

“Tighter. Harder. I won’t break,” he said, though he sounded as if he were already in pain.

She tightened her grip, stroking him more roughly. His eyes clenched shut. The bones of his face seemed to sharpen, the skin to draw tauter. His whole body began to shudder. She felt a heady sense of power suddenly, that she could do this to him.

“Jesus, I can’t …” He grabbed her hand. “Enough.” He buried his face into the curve of her neck, then he laughed, his breath blowing hot and moist. “Something tells me you’re going to get very good at that very soon.”

His hair lapped her neck, brushing across her chest as he lowered his head. His lips poised above a nipple and she watched, eyes wide, as he drew the whole of it into his mouth as if sucking a cherry off a stem. The pleasure was so exquisite she almost screamed. And almost screamed again when he cupped her mound, thrusting a finger deep inside. Her back arched off the bed, and she squeezed her legs tightly together.

He went still, and in the quiet her panting breaths sounded harsh and loud. She opened her eyes to find his lips only inches from hers. His breath filled her mouth, followed by his words, “Spread your legs for me.”

Her thighs fell open.

His finger withdrew, entered, withdrew again. With the pad of his thumb, he gently stroked the lips of her sex, sliding upward. It was like touching a candle to a pitch torch—she burst into flames. She was burning, burning up inside, burning and swelling and splintering apart all at the same time. She heard herself whimpering and knew she was undulating her hips shamelessly, and she didn’t care, didn’t care, didn’t care….

Her nails dug into his shoulders and her head thrashed back and forth. She thought if he didn’t stop she would explode. She would shatter into a thousand pieces and never find herself. The fire blazed, building higher and hotter, sucking the air from her chest so that she couldn’t breathe and her heart stopped and she was sure that she would die, that dying would be a relief.

Yet still she held back, held back, held back….

“Give yourself to me, Arianna,” he whispered harshly into her neck. “Give to me….”

“Nay, I cannot!” she cried on a sobbing breath, not sure what it was he asked of her, only that she could not. She couldn’t give him this last surrender, it was too much like giving him a part of her soul.

Her chest heaved with the effort to breathe and the blood rushed in her ears. She opened her eyes onto his face. He was not going to have her. He shouldn’t have her, because he didn’t really want her. Not the part of her that mattered.

He covered her with his body, his sex, hot and smooth, sliding across her belly. He rose up to rub the broad tip of it along her woman’s flesh. He spread her with his fingers first, then eased into her. She winced, but the discomfort faded to be replaced by a sense of fullness and of being stretched wide and wider still as, slowly, he buried all of himself inside her.

“Jesus God … you are tight.”

Her hands moved restlessly over his back and she shifted her hips. He slid in deeper and he groaned. “You feel good, so good …” His hands cupped her hips, pulling her tighter to him at the same time that he thrust upward and she gasped.

“It’s hurting now. Stop.”

“God, wench, I can’t stop …”

He pulled out of her, then pushed in again, slowly at first, then faster. His hands spanned her hips, moving them in a rhythm with his thrusts, and the pain went away
a little, though not completely. She clung to him without even knowing that she was doing it. The reality of being penetrated, of being possessed by him, was frightening. But it was also in a strange and savage way exciting. A tense, tight feeling curled low in her belly, spreading outward, filling her chest until she couldn’t breathe again.

The skin of his back went slick with sweat and his panting breaths rasped harshly against her ear. He arced upward as he drove into her hard and fast. Then he reared, throwing back his head as he surged deep inside her. She felt his shudders and opened her eyes in time to see his face contort as if in agony.

“Arianna, God, God, Arianna!”

The cry was raw, sounding torn from his throat as if he had tried to stop it, but couldn’t. I didn’t surrender, she thought. I gave him my body but I didn’t give him
me.

So why then did she feel so sad?

It took a long time for him to get his breath back. He lay partly covering her, one leg pinning her hips to the bed. His rib cage pushed up and down against her breasts, pumping like iron-banded bellows.

Her body felt heavy and sore as if she’d been pummeled by a whole army of washerwomen. He was inside of her still, and it ached there. But when he started to pull out of her, she tensed her thighs. She didn’t understand why, but she didn’t want him to leave her. She felt empty inside. And sad.

They lay together in silence a while. Then he rolled onto his side, slipping out of her. He propped himself up on one elbow. “It will get easier by and by,” he said. “When you fear it less, you can begin to take more pleasure in it.”

“I knew my duty was to submit, my lord. Is it now my duty to feel pleasure as well?”

“Aye, dammit. And don’t call me ‘my lord’ when we’re in bed together.” His eyes glittered in the candlelight,
hard and flat like beaten silver, but he traced the outline of her mouth with a finger that was incredibly tender. “ ’Tis said a woman is more likely to conceive if she is pleasured.”

“That is all you care about—having an heir!”

His head lowered, his breath was warm, as tangible as a caress in her hair. “Not all,” he said, soft, low.

His lips brushed over her cheek. Her belly tightened with anticipation. He was going to kiss her and she was beginning to like being kissed very much. She sighed as her mouth parted open.

His head jerked up, and he froze. Then his hand lashed out above her head. A pillow went flying. Within a heartbeat he had the blade of the dagger she had hidden there pressed to her throat.

He held the honed edge a hairbreadth from her skin. Fury narrowed his eyes, his mouth had hardened into a ruthless line. He looked as he had the first time she had seen him. In her vision.

She felt his grip tighten on the hilt. His lips pulled back over his teeth. “ ‘Trust me,’ you said.”

He didn’t move and neither did she, not even to breathe. His eyes stared into hers, pale and hard, colder than the northern ice floes.

She swallowed and felt a sharp sting as the blade nicked her skin. “It’s hard to talk with a knife at one’s throat.”

He snarled a curse and flung the dagger over her head. It twanged as it bit deep into the headboard; the hilt quivered, then stilled.

He grabbed her between her legs and she swallowed a startled cry. “What did you think I would do, Arianna—stick my tongue into your honey pot again?” He thrust his fingers up inside of her, hard. “Do you still think this too rich for a bastard’s tastes?”

“I didn’t know
what
you’d do! I am surrounded by Normans and have only myself to defend me. I thought you would want to punish me for all that happened yesterday
and I couldn’t let you—for honor’s sake I could not let you shame or abuse me …” She could feel tears welling in her eyes, but she held them back.

“For honor’s sake,” he repeated, as if her words astounded him.

He stared down at her, his thoughts inscrutable, his mouth so hard. His hand was still between her legs, his fingers inside of her. She felt hot down there, and wet. He pushed his fingers farther into her and she moaned, squeezing, sucking them even deeper.

She watched the change come over his face, the tautening of the skin across his cheekbones, the darkening of his eyes until they were sooty, hungry. His chest pressed against hers and she felt the hitch in his breathing.

The words came out of her, without thought. “Kiss me …”

“Ah, hell,” he said, and kissed her.

Arianna came abruptly awake. She sat up, pulling the fur coverlet around her against the chill. With only the night candle burning, the room was full of shadows. She held her breath, listening for the noise that had roused her, but heard only the wind and the scratching of mice in the walls.

It felt late, deep in the night. She turned her head to see the time. Much of the candle had burned down; it lacked only three marks until dawn.

They slept with the bed hangings tied back, for Raine insisted on fresh air over privacy. Her husband was oddly contrary in that way, wanting the bed curtains open, the shutters left unbolted. Just as he did not sleep with a nightcap. When she had reminded him that evil spirits could come flying through the open window and snatch his soul out the top of his head he had only laughed. He’d said evil spirits were no match for the Black Dragon. In that he was probably right.

It was because she was thinking of evil spirits that when the candle went out she almost screamed.

But of course it was only a draft, and she laughed beneath her breath at her own foolishness.

Until the music filled the room.

As a child of Cymry she had been weaned on the sounds of the harp, but this music could never have been made by the hands of any earthly bard. Ringing, bell-like chords surged and crested, shattering into a waterfall of crystalline chimes. The music was clear, vibrating, like thin sheets of ice. So piercing in intensity that she could almost see it.