Love Above All (10 page)

“Do you hope I’ll be too drunk to run away
while you sleep?” she challenged him, lifting the flask to her lips
yet again.

“I think you need the fortification wine will
provide,” he said in quiet response to her words. “We can always
refill the flask with water from a stream. There’s no lack of water
around here.”

He rose to lay a fresh log on the fire, while
Fionna drank still more wine. She leaned her head back against the
wall and yawned. Quentin took the wine flask from her unresisting
fingers and put it away. He shook out the cloak he had been wearing
and spread it on the ground, while Fionna watched. Only after he
was finished did the obvious fact that they were going to have to
sleep together sink into her wine-befuddled mind.

She told herself it didn’t matter. She had
already spent a night with Quentin, in a bed, and he hadn’t harmed
her. Of course, during that previous night she had been unconscious
and she hadn’t known Quentin, nor he, her. She was far from being
unaware of him now, and he knew entirely too much about her.

His broad-shouldered presence filled the hut.
All of his movements bespoke an assurance that began to worry
her.

“Can you sleep in chainmail?” she asked,
wondering how the metal links would feel beneath her fingers. If
she rested her head on Quentin’s chest, would the metal rings mark
her cheek?

“I have slept in my armor many times,” he
said. “It’s not the most comfortable way to rest, but it is
assuredly the safest way, when one is in unknown territory. Lie
down, Fionna.” He gestured, indicating that she should lie on the
half of his cloak nearest the wall.

“Do you want me there so I can’t escape
without disturbing your sleep?” she snapped. To her great
annoyance, the words came out slurred. She wished she had been more
restrained with the wine flask.

“I want you there, so I will be between you
and any intruder,” he said. “I am not likely to sleep much.”

“Oh.” Ashamed of her rudeness and suddenly
very sleepy, she stretched out on the cloak. Her next words were
even more slurred. “I am a great trouble to you, am I not?”

“You have no idea how much trouble you
cause.”

He lay down beside her and pulled over them
the cloak she had been wearing. The heavy wool was damp. Fionna
shivered, regretting that she hadn’t thought to hang the cloak over
a couple of the rough spots on the wall, so it could dry. Her dress
was damp, too. She shivered again. Quentin did not move. Fionna
turned on her side to face him. She regarded his stern profile
against the firelight while she wondered what went on behind his
apparently calm facade.

“Your chainmail will rust in the dampness,”
she said, speaking with great care so she wouldn’t slur the
words.

“I’ll clean it when I reach Wortham.”

He turned his head so he could look directly
at her. Fionna couldn’t make herself stop staring at him. It was as
if she was drinking him in through her eyes. Though she was lying
on cold ground on a damp cloak, with another damp cloak over her,
she was growing warmer. Quentin’s warm gaze was heating her. That,
and the wine she’d consumed. She told herself it was the wine that
made her move a little closer to him.

Abruptly, Quentin was on his feet, striding
away from her toward the doorway.

“What is it?” Alarmed, she sat up.

“I thought I heard something.”

He stared out the opening for a time, while
Fionna admired the way the rosy light from the fire made his
chainmail glitter. The thought of being pressed hard against that
mail stopped her breath in her throat.

“Quentin?” she whispered, hoping he’d decide
to rejoin her.

“It’s nothing, just a night noise.” On his
way back to her Quentin paused to add more logs to the fire. The
flames blazed high. He knelt beside her.

She knew she didn’t look her best. Her hair
was coming out of its braid, her hands were dirty, and she was sure
her face was smudged, but Quentin looked at her as if she were a
lady of wondrous beauty.

“You ought to be asleep,” he murmured, and
gently touched her cheek. She pressed her face into his palm.

“I believe I could sleep if you’d hold me,”
she whispered. “I’d be warmer, and not so frightened.”

“I don’t think holding you would be
wise.”

“I don’t care.” She reached toward him,
sliding her hand around his neck to pull him closer. Quentin’s gaze
became so intense that she felt devoured by it.

Knowing she was behaving like a wanton, yet
unable to stop herself, Fionna lay back, drawing Quentin with her
until he was stretched along the length of her body, hard muscle
and chainmail against tattered wool. He braced himself on one elbow
so he was slightly above her, and his mouth was almost on hers.

Fionna moistened her lips, certain he was
going to kiss her. He didn’t. Instead, he lightly traced the bridge
of her nose with one finger, and when her lips parted in surprise
he slid his finger inside her mouth to stroke her tongue.

Sweet fire shot through her veins,
immobilizing her.

He brushed back her tangled hair, then
caressed her temple, ending the slow gesture with his hand cupped
around her cheek. While Fionna held her breath, not knowing what to
expect next, his hand moved lower with tantalizing slowness, down
along her throat to the edge of the wide, round neckline of her
gown. Her skin began to tingle, and she could almost feel her
collarbone beginning to melt in the wake of his fingers.

Then he laid his hand lightly over her
breast. He pressed down more firmly, his thumb flicking across her
nipple. She was aware of his touch as if her damp woolen gown and
her shift were both gone, as if his hand rested on her bare flesh.
Lost in a sensual daze, Fionna heard her own soft moan of awakening
pleasure. She shifted restlessly, not sure what she wanted, but
hoping Quentin would not stop what he was doing until she had found
a release for the peculiar tension that was beginning to build
somewhere deep within her.

Quentin’s hand slid lower still, to trace the
curves of her waist and hip, and then her thigh and knee. Fionna
did not protest when he began to lift her gown. She gave herself up
to the delight of his fingers slowly caressing her ankles and
calves, a sensation so compelling she could not think of words to
describe it to herself. All she could do was enjoy it.

She cried out in shocked pleasure when his
rough palm stroked across the tender skin of her inner thigh. Far
inside her a wild flame uncurled and grew brighter.

His eyes were dark and gleaming as he watched
her reaction to what he was doing. The fine lines of his face were
drawn tight. Inexperienced though she was, still Fionna recognized
in Quentin a mounting desire that was a more urgent, masculine
version of her feminine longing.

He hadn’t kissed her yet. It suddenly became
important to her that he should. She lifted her head, encouraging
what she wanted, offering her lips to his. Quentin did not draw
back. She was aware of a great shudder flowing through his muscular
frame just before she dissolved into the heat of his kiss.

Quentin’s mouth was hard and demanding, yet
tender, too, and when his tongue pushed against her lips, she
opened to him, accepting the surge of his entrance, understanding
how the quick touch of his finger on her tongue a short time ago
had been the merest preliminary testing of her reaction to this
impending invasion of moist sweetness.

The long, heated kiss consumed her, drawing
her onward toward a conclusion she did not yet understand. Her body
began to tighten like a drawn bowstring, and she wrenched her mouth
from his to cry out in mingled apprehension and delight.

With tantalizing slowness Quentin’s hand
moved upward along her thigh until he reached a part of her that
Fionna knew no one should ever touch. She quivered in reaction, but
she did not protest. What she was feeling was too amazing for
protest. Her every nerve and sinew began to vibrate in response to
Quentin’s explorations and she became aware of moistness and
renewed warmth where he was stroking her. Utter bliss engulfed her
senses.

Then Quentin’s fingers slid inside her,
probing gently. Startled by the intrusion and uncertain what he
would do next, she went perfectly still. Quentin probed farther. A
faint discomfort began to cool Fionna’s growing ardor. Quentin’s
fingers reached an obstruction. Fionna winced and he suddenly
withdrew his hand, leaving her aching and empty, wanting something
more, though she knew not what.

“My dear girl, I didn’t know,” he said in a
strained voice. “You were so eager that I assumed – never mind what
I thought.”

“Quentin, what’s happening to me?” she cried.
Unable to stop herself, she was writhing against him, clutching at
him, trying to find whatever it was she needed from him. “Please,
help me.”

“That much I can do.”

His mouth covered hers again, the rhythmic
thrusting of his tongue on hers urging her to greater sensual
heights, though Fionna sensed an odd control in him, as if
deliberate action had replaced raging emotion. Then she ceased to
think, for Quentin’s hand was between her thighs again, not
reaching into her this time, but stroking and teasing around and on
an incredibly sensitive spot. She pushed herself against his hand,
certain there were more delights to come, and sure Quentin would
not disappoint her.

She cried out as unexpected ripples of
intense pleasure coursed through her, releasing all the strange
tension, leaving her breathless and limp when the sensations
gradually ceased. When Quentin finally took his hand away she
protested the loss with a wordless gasp. But he wasn’t finished
with her. He gathered her close to his warm, strong body, holding
her as she had asked him to do, and she found comfort in his
chainmail-clad embrace.

She lay content in his arms for a few minutes
until, having regained her senses, she became aware of a hard,
manly part of him pushing against her thigh, hot and insistent
beneath his armor. Into her mind flashed the memory of the stable
at Dungalash, and of a naked groom and maidservant tumbling in the
hay.

“Quentin,” she said, “there’s more, isn’t
there? You want – you need more.” She reached down between them to
touch his arousal, feeling his flesh springing eager and ready
through the thickness of chainmail and his undergarment. The
immediate response inside her own body answered questions that had
long perplexed her. Now she understood the warmth that spiraled
upward from the spot between her thighs where Quentin had caressed
her. But Quentin was withdrawing from her, pushing her out of his
embrace.

“Don’t,” he commanded with a stern resolve
that communicated itself instantly to her newborn comprehension. He
caught her stroking hand, removing it from contact with his
intriguing hardness. “You are right; I do want, but it’s not
necessary for me to I have what I want. I can bear abstinence. At
the moment, it’s a painful condition, but it’s neither permanent,
nor deadly.”

She considered his words, wondering if she
would have been left in a similar state of aching desire if he had
refused to continue touching her. She longed to give him the same
release he had granted her, but she wasn’t sure how to go about it.
Nor could she think why he was annoyed with her.

“Quentin, exactly what did you just do to
me?” she asked in renewed confusion.

“Nothing to prevent you from marrying any man
you choose,” he told her. “I was surprised to find you a virgin,
but I left you as intact as I found you. You are merely a little
less innocent than you were an hour ago. There is no need for you
ever to tell anyone what happened between us, if you would rather
not speak of it. I swear to you, I do not discuss my private
affairs with anyone. What happened will remain between the two of
us.”

She digested his incredible speech for a
moment or two, before she seized on the words that had startled her
far more than the coolly imparted information that she remained a
virgin.

“Marry whomever I choose?” she exclaimed,
scrambling away from him to crouch at the far edge of his cloak.
“Of course. How foolish of me not to understand. A mighty Norman
baron will not concern himself with a Scottish girl who is too
ignorant to know what he has done to her. Rest assured, my lord, I
will never speak of this to anyone! In truth, I’d be too ashamed to
let my fellow Scots know I was foolish enough to let you put your
hands on me!”

“Not concern myself?” he yelled at her. “I
have concerned myself with little else but you since the night I
found you by Liddel Water. Were it not for you, I’d be riding for
Wortham Castle at this moment, which is what I ought to be doing,
instead of traipsing through a Godforsaken countryside where only
brigands and bandits live!”

“I never asked you to follow me!” she cried.
“But go right ahead, my noble lord; blame me for everything!”

“Fionna, for heaven’s sake, be sensible. Why
do you persist in misunderstanding me?” He reached for her, but she
moved quickly to put more distance between them.

“Don’t touch me!” she screamed. “Don’t even
speak to me, you insufferable lout!”

“Ungrateful wretch! I have been trying to
protect you!”

“Do you call what you just did
protection?”

“I did it because I could tell how
uncomfortable you were, how desperate to find release. I denied
myself the manly pleasure I craved, in order to leave your body
intact,” he told her with lofty arrogance.

“My body?” she repeated. She sniffled and
blinked away tears before continuing in a calmer voice. “I am not
ungrateful, my lord. I am angry. If you cannot understand why, then
there’s no hope for you.”

“I admit to a few moments of most
unchivalrous indiscretion,” he said, “but, I repeat, no permanent
harm was done. I tell you again, you remain a maiden.”