Knights of de Ware 02 - My Warrior (26 page)

After several moments, when her blows subsided and he could feel wet, warm tears on his hand, he leaned over her, speaking in gentle, controlled tones.

“It’s over, Cambria,” he said softly. “Their souls are at peace now.” He squeezed her shoulder. “The Scots knew the cost. All men know the price of battle. It’s not pretty. At times, it’s not even noble. But it’s the way of war.” He enclosed her hand in his own. Her fingers were callused, the nails bitten to the quick, but her hand was much smaller than one would expect, just as her heart was much softer. “Did you dream of the battle?”

She nodded. He could feel the tension in her, her brave attempts to stop the telltale hitching in her chest, and it clutched at his heart. He longed to take her into his arms, the way he’d wanted to comfort that wretched wildcat. But she was the Gavin. She was the laird. And lairds probably didn’t cry. For her pride’s sake, he’d ignore her tears.

He reached out and absently rubbed a lock of her hair between his thumb and finger. “Tell me about your father.”

She was silent so long that he thought she’d drifted off to sleep. When she spoke at last, her voice was quiet, tentative.

“He was a great laird. He loved Blackhaugh. He loved the land, and he loved the clan. He loved my mother so much that he never took another to wife…even though it left me as sole heir. He taught me everything—hunting, hawking, and ha-…” She sniffed. “Swordfighting. He bought me a palfrey when I was three years old and taught me to lead cattle raids when I was eleven.” She gave a little laugh. “I remember my first raid. I was so excited and proud riding up to Blackhaugh with a dozen stolen cows that my father didn’t have the heart to tell me they were Gavin cattle.”

He chuckled. He’d never led a cattle raid, but he’d gotten into plenty of mischief as a boy. “Your father must have been a great man.”

She sniffled. “I miss him,” she murmured. “I miss him.” And then she dissolved into tears.

A deep sigh emptied Holden’s chest. With one hand, he reached out and caressed the back of her head, and with the other, he pulled her slowly up to him in a gentle embrace. He murmured assurances to her as he placed her head against his good shoulder, rocking her back and forth a long while.

At what point the change happened, he wasn’t sure. Gradually Cambria’s soft weeping at his throat turned to kisses she bestowed there. His stroking of her hair took on a sensuous design. He took her chin in his hand and kissed the salty tears from her face. She touched her mouth to his with the delicacy of mist kissing the surface of a loch.

And then, emboldened, Cambria took his face in both her hands and kissed him full on the mouth. It was a kiss of absolution, he sensed, a bittersweet attempt to eradicate the nightmare of Halidon and her father’s loss. A tortured groan slipped from his throat.

His will was too weak. If she continued, he’d do things she would regret on the morrow. He couldn’t let her go on. He couldn’t endure another night like the last one, fanning the flames of her lust while denying his own. He put an end to the kiss by covering her eager lips with his fingers.

His gesture did nothing to dim her smoldering desire. She ran her palms across his chest as if she sought a way to his heart. He caught her stray hands and pushed them away.

“Nay,” he said thickly. “I…want you too much.” A wave of desire coursed through his loins, lending proof to his words. “I won’t be able to stop myself this time. I’m sorry.”

Cambria swallowed hard. Curse her promise, curse her pride, curse her marriage of political convenience, she wanted Holden. And, she decided, calling upon her renowned Gavin stubbornness, she’d be damned if she’d take no for an answer. Before she could change her mind, she began to push down the coverlet between them.

Holden sucked in a quick breath when he realized what her overture meant. He hoped she realized what she was doing. He rolled back slowly while she moved the furs out of the way, as if moving too fast might give her second thoughts. He didn’t want to frighten her. He prayed he had the control not to hurt her. Suddenly, absurdly, he felt as awkward as an untried youth.

Cambria’s hands found him in the dark. His body was magnificent, proud, lean, contoured as flawlessly as a fine blade. She shivered as her forearm brushed the bold manifestation of his desire that seemed to her a brazen lance. The implication gave her pause, but she was committed now, and she wouldn’t retreat from the challenge she’d issued. With clumsy fingers, she began to pick at the back laces of her kirtle.

Holden retrieved his dagger form the swordbelt beside the pallet and sliced the laces neatly. The garment dropped from her shoulders like a dying rose, and she willingly, breathlessly removed her linen underclothing, baring her body.

Holden cradled her face in his hands. He kissed her deeply, hungrily, and she responded with a ferocity that nearly unleashed his own tempered passions. She was like soft, warm velvet against his body, and the sweet, smoky smell of her hair and the weak moans in the back of her throat were calling him to answer. He knew the answer, longed to give it, but couldn’t, not yet.

“I’ve given you my word,” he murmured against her cheek. “I won’t consummate this marriage until you wish it so.”

Cambria trembled in his arms. The silence between them grew as taut as the long, last moment before the release of an arrow from a bow.

“I wish it,” she finally whispered, “I wish it so.”

Holden wiped the sweat from his lip, and then lowered her to the pallet. It would cost him much to subdue his own desires as he worked to satisfy hers. Her responsiveness had the power to intoxicate them both. He had to bear in mind that this wanton vixen was still a virgin. She’d require patience.

He hovered over her, kissed her eyes, her hair, her fingertips, shuddered when her hands unabashedly reached up to explore his body. With a helpless groan, he bent and captured a succulent nipple in his mouth. She moaned beneath him, brazenly lifting her hips to contact his. He gasped, and then stifled the sound, suckling at her breast like a starving man. His fingers traced a leisurely path up to the juncture of her thighs, and he pulled gently at the hair there. Moving upward again, he kissed her open mouth, letting his tongue dance with hers and graze the edges of her teeth. At last he eased his large body down over hers, covering her completely.

Cambria strained instinctively upward against him, burying her head in the crook of his neck, overcome by the sensation of the powerful muscles enveloping her, the full, warm shaft brushing her skin. His hands found hers, locking her fingers in a gentle bondage.

“Easy, little sprite,” he said huskily against her ear as he bent his head to kiss between her breasts and lower, to her navel.

She stiffened with a faint protest and tried in vain to extract her fingers from his. Surely he didn’t mean to… Ah God, she could feel his breath upon her woman’s curls. His mouth nuzzled her, and she cried out, squeezing his fingers. He moved between her thighs, and when his tongue grazed her flesh, she turned her head onto her shoulder, squirming in sweet distress. Again and again his tongue lapped at her, savoring her like honey from the comb. She could feel her face turn to flame, but not for the world did she wish him to stop.

Holden had to stop. He was in danger of losing control. Breathing raggedly, he placed a single, final kiss upon the soft, dark flower of her blossoming womanhood, and then kissed his way to her mouth.

Cambria was astonished by her own pleasant, musky taste on his lips, and she let her tongue venture into his mouth, trailing across the rims of his teeth and lapping at his tongue. As she explored, he released her hands and placed his palm against the wet curls between her legs. She writhed against him, wanting more, aching with a hunger she didn’t understand. He stroked her with a moist finger, edging more and more deeply into her while his thumb stroked delicately above. She rocked her hips in a steady rhythm, counter to his movements. The pressure was exhilarating, and she couldn’t stop the cries that came to her lips.

The sounds she made almost drove Holden over the edge of desire. While one hand continued to pleasure her, he tenderly wiped the beads of perspiration from her brow with the other.

“Cambria,” he said hoarsely, “I must cause you…pain…this first time. I don’t wish to, but I will. It will be brief, I promise, and then you’ll never endure it again.”

Cambria paid little heed to his words. She was a Gavin. She feared no pain. Every nerve in her body was awake and crying out for succor.

“I’m ready, Englishman,” she said in a voice that was half plea, half demand.

Holden wasted no time. He coaxed her thighs apart and entered her fully, groaning as her warm sheath surrounded him like a blanket.

Cambria was stunned by the burning that knifed through her loins. But she was a warrior. She’d never cried out in pain. She wouldn’t do so now. Clenching her teeth as he waited for her to adjust to his invasion, she willed the sting to recede, and it did.

When her hands relaxed upon his shoulders, Holden began to move, very slowly at first, letting her grow accustomed to the feel of him.

Cambria learned quickly. Once the pain had diminished, she couldn’t get close enough to him. She pressed upward against the bones of his hip, and he squeezed her buttocks, urging her higher. She wrapped her long legs around him, and Holden gasped at her welcome boldness. He’d never experienced such ferocity in a woman before, and it excited him beyond control.

They strove together like well-matched champions, meeting blow for blow, straining in ecstatic battle, attacking and retreating, only to advance again. Before long, they were mating in a frenzy of passion and instinct. Holden pounded into her like the surf of the North Sea. She clawed at his back as if he’d save her from drowning in the sensation. With each thrust, she felt herself being purged of the horrifying images at Halidon, and she clung fiercely to him, willing him to stay with her forever.

They rode passion’s wave together, and just as they reached the crest, Cambria looked impossibly through the darkness into Holden’s eyes, blue crystal shooting fire into green, green smoldering back into blue. At that instant of vulnerability, she felt their souls meet, and she knew that neither time nor distance nor death itself could ever part them. Then the wave crashed thunderously, and with a primal cry of relief, they fell to the earth like castaways on a forbidden shore.

The pain was excruciating. Owen shivered with nearly uncontrollable panic and dread as he groped for the edge of the lichen-covered boulder. With a grunt, he fell against it, bruising his shoulder. Then he lay back, rolling his eyes skyward to the shifting pine boughs, catching his breath. Every limp had been an agony. He’d cursed the name of Cambria Gavin at every step. But when he finally reached the cover of the wood, he was certain he’d lost his pursuer.

He wanted to sleep now, to close his watering eyes and drift off to oblivion. But then she wouldn’t be punished. She’d go on living. And more than sleep he longed to see her suffer.

He knew what he must do, even as he whimpered against the thought. With trembling fingers, he ripped the bottom two inches from his blood-stained tabard. As he hitched air into his lungs, he balled the cloth and shoved it solidly between his teeth.

The arrow had surprised him—it had been loosed not from enemy hands, but from behind their own English lines. Incapacitated by the pain, he’d nonetheless instinctively sought out his attacker. How unmanning it had been to find the culprit was a peasant woman. Then he’d seen her face, and in that brief moment of recognition, he’d known hatred beyond all reason. Only his desperation to survive had prevented him from crossing the space between them and tearing the Scots bitch limb from limb with his bare hands.

His nostrils flared with the effort to breathe. For now, he’d retreat. He’d withdraw like an injured animal, lick his wounds, and curl up within himself to heal. There’d be time later to kill her, her and her lover. He giggled nervously in anticipation. He wanted to take his time with her, and for that he’d need strength.

Sweat beaded his clammy face as he shuddered and put both hands to the arrow protruding from his thigh. His eyes bulged from their sockets while he exerted steadily with almost inhuman might. At last, the point budged, and he pulled the shaft slowly from his muscle. The balled cloth muffled his screams of torment as the point tore backwards through his flesh till it was free.

The ragged wound bled furiously. He nearly fainted from the loss. He tore the rag from his mouth to stanch the flow, certain he’d live now. He fell back against the boulder, swatting clumsily at insistent flies, drifting into a long-awaited, troubled sleep. The midday sun pierced through the forest canopy and cooked him in his armor.

Hours later, with the sun well into its downward climb, the point of a sword jostled him awake. For a moment he was disoriented. Then the throbbing in his leg brought everything back.

A dozen savages surrounded him, their grimy faces peering down at him with contempt. They were Scots, their diverse somber plaids draped haphazardly across their shoulders, and the lot of them looked eager to spill English blood.

“Owen?” the one with the sword asked.

Owen recognized the lilting accent and red hair, even if his vision was too blurred to see clearly. It was the Gavin rebel. Damn his luck, he’d have to think quickly. And it was so hard to think when one was in pain.

“Is it you, Robbie?” he wheezed at last. “Thank God!”

The rebels eyed him warily.

“On your feet!” Robbie commanded, prodding him with a sword.

Owen’s voice was a weak croak. “I’ve been sorely wounded, Robbie.”

Robbie glanced cursorily at Owen’s bloody leg. “You’ve given us no new information since the attempt on de Ware’s life. Have your loyalties shifted then?”

“I still bear messages for the rebels,” Owen lied. “I was sent by them to find you. Why were you not at Halidon?”

Robbie’s eyes flared at the slight, and he puffed up his chest. “My men were the eyes and ears of the Scots. We weren’t at Halidon, because we traveled with the English, under their noses. We knew their number and strength days ago.”