Rexanne Becnel (38 page)

Yet how often would that be? she wondered as reality returned with unpleasant force. Where would he and his wife reside, and how frequently could he spare time for his … his mistress?

She took a shaky breath and swallowed the lump that had formed so quickly in her throat. To hide the sudden mist in her eyes, she made a slow circuit of the room. Strong walls, broad hearth. Even the floors were good, flat boards laid over a stone base.

But no matter how fine the accommodations, they were missing one essential. This house would always lack a husband. Cleve did not offer her love and marriage. He offered her lust and a well-constructed cottage. Though he thought it enough—and a part of her was willing to accept it as enough also—she knew it was not. She already had a cottage—a manor house in fact. And as for lust, she feared that was a far too common emotion. Love was far the rarer, and it was love she must have.

With a determined lift of her chin she turned to face the man who meant to break her heart. “ ’Tis a lovely place, and with some work it shall make a handsome home.”

He stared at her through the dim and dusty atmosphere. “Does this mean you’ll stay? Is that what you’re saying, Wynne?”

She forced a smile to her face and fought the burning tears away. He looked so dear at that moment. So tall and virile, with the light of eagerness burning in his devouring gaze. At least he wanted her, she told herself. At least she had that to remember and cling to.

Without answering his question she crossed the room to him. Her hands cupped his face to bring his lips near to her own, and at the first touch of them his arms circled her in a breathtaking hug. Like an explosion they came together, every repressed emotion swelling to bursting, every starving sense filled to saturation in one violent melding.

“Jesu, woman. I will never have my fill of you,” he whispered against the seeking heat of her mouth. Then his lips pressed down on hers as his tongue surged deep into her mouth. Neither of them held back as their tongues thrust and parried, slid and danced together. His boldness was driven as much by triumph as by desire, she suspected, while hers was formed of love and impending loss. But he did not need to know that, and anyway that did not lessen the overwhelming physical pleasure of it.

His hands slid along her back: one up to become lost in her hair as he held her steady for his sweet, invasive kiss; the other down to cup her derriere and press her urgently to his loins.

I love you,
her heart spoke directly to his as she clutched him closer.
I love you.
But they were words she could never speak out loud.

Yet for one fanciful moment she thought he might actually have heard, unspoken though the message was. He pulled breathlessly away, just an inch or two, and searched her eyes as if surprised or confused.

“Wynne,” he began hesitantly, although his eyes burned into hers with fierce emotion.

But Wynne knew the time had long passed for talking. The courses of their lives had been set long ago. They were born of the wrong lands and in the wrong time, and events of the past weeks only served to seal their separate fates further. Overcome by sorrow for what could never be, Wynne reached up on tiptoes to kiss him again. She slid her tongue out to trace the seam of his lips, to silence his words. Then she closed her eyes and willed him to do the same. This time was for remembrance, for imprinting every detail of him into her mind so that, awake or asleep, she would ever be able to summon the memory. The day might come when he would forget, but she never would.

As he met her questing kiss and his body pressed demandingly against hers, she knew also that this time would be for love. At least for her. He might never recognize it as such—in truth she didn’t want him to. But she knew.

With a groan against her mouth Cleve lifted her so that her feet no longer touched the floor. She reveled in the violent emotions that erupted between them. No magic had ever been stronger than this. No spell she had ever cast had matched the power of this moment. He’d charmed her from the beginning, from his first step onto her lands.

The tiniest gasp caught in her throat. He walked them back into the second room of the cottage, deepening the kiss with every step, devouring her with lips and hands and the very force of his will. But it was not entirely for passion that she gasped in startled realization.

Her lands. Her Radnor Forest. Come to her through the women of her family. Just as the line of seeresses carried that spark of dark knowledge, so did it also convey rights to the vast lands of wild Radnor Forest, from one generation to the next. The far-flung hills and valleys nurtured all within its bounds. But the people of those lands turned to Radnor Manor for guidance, just as Lord William’s people turned to him.

In her own way—in the unique way of the Welsh—she was as much an heiress as Edeline.

Cleve halted at a raised bed furnished with a simple mattress and clean linens. He put her on her feet, but his arms did not entirely release her.

“Many nights we shall share in this very room,” he whispered hoarsely. His fingers loosened her coif so that the last of her hair was freed to spill down into his hands. “Sweet witch, you long ago caught me within your magic web, but I vow to weave as potent a spell around you.”

Wynne stood still beneath the heady caress of such sweet words. But even as they warmed her battered heart and she held to the comfort of them, she nonetheless could not shake the troublesome thoughts that assailed her. If he knew what lands might be gained through a marriage to her, would he veer from the course he had so long been set upon? If she told him, would that change everything?

One of his hands worked to release the tie at the neck of her bliaut, while the other pulled her face up for another kiss. Like one starved he devoured her mouth, and like a living sacrifice Wynne offered herself body and soul for the taking. The bliaut slipped off one shoulder, then the next. As it slithered down her body, he worked the fastenings of her kittle. Wynne shifted and twisted as necessary to aid him, yet their lips still clung and their tongues still danced in an ancient rhythm.

For this man she would offer herself like a maiden of old. She would fling herself upon the fire for him, or cast herself upon the blade. But could she use the lands of her mother’s family to lure him forever to her side?

She gasped when he palmed her loosened kirtle down her shoulder and arm and let it slide over her bared breast. As if she were two separate parts of the same person, she arched instinctively under his possessive caress. Her body desired him—so fiercely, she truly thought she might go up in flames from the burning need in her. Her heart, too, desired him. But there was that part of her that could not bribe him to take what she so desperately wished to give. Her love was something apart but no less real than her physical need for him. Only if he wanted her love—for love’s sake only—could he take it. Not for desire. Nor for lands either. A piercing pain, as real as a dagger through her heart, brought a cry to her lips, and unbidden tears rose in her eyes.

He paused again. Did he sense her every emotion? she wondered disjointedly. But Wynne refused to let the moment last. She slid one hand down to his girdle and the other lower, tentatively rubbing along the hard bulge that strained his braies.

At once he surged against her hand, and a groan broke free of their joined lips. “Sweet Jesu, Wynne. Don’t do that.”

With an effort he pulled away from her. They stood one long seething moment, she barfed to his eyes as the kirtle was freed to slip down past her hips and settle upon the floor, and he gasping for breath and fumbling with shaking hands to release his own clothes. The tunic he flung aside. The chainse he whipped recklessly over his head. Then, clad only in boots and braies, he reached for her once more.

“You are magic, woman,” he murmured as his hands lightly traced parallel paths down her shoulders and arms to her hips. He splayed his fingers wide, letting his thumbs press the soft flesh of her belly while his fingers curved around to the upper swells of her derriere. All the while his eyes swept over her, seeming to possess her lips and breasts and more with their burning touch.

“You are magic,” he repeated. “Dark and blistering, drugging me. You make me want—” He broke off, and she saw him swallow and shake his head. His eyes bored into hers.

“Do you know the things I want to do to you?” he asked in a tortured voice. “Can you sense what I would have of you? There are things between a man and a woman, things never spoken of in the women’s quarters.”His hands moved down so that his fingers delved beneath her buttocks into the warm place between her legs. A low moan—her own?—broke the stillness, and her eyes fell closed. She wanted to know everything that might be between a man and a woman, so long as he was that man and she that woman.

“I want to worship your body, Wynne. To touch and kiss and know you in every way. Sweet and loving, hard and demanding. Do you understand? I want to bend you to my touch and know that whatever I demand of you, you will comply.”

A violent quiver shook her, but it only served to further incite him. He fell to his knees and pulled her against him. One of his fingers slipped farther, up inside her, and she thrust instinctively against him, almost collapsing from the heat that pulsed through her. Her hands clutched his sweaty shoulders, and when he nuzzled her amulet aside to get to her breasts, her fingers dug deep into his skin.

“Say you’ll submit to me, Wynne. There will be no secrets between us, not of the body nor of the mind. Offer yourself to me completely, and I promise I shall do as much for you.”

His finger began a rhythmic stroking deep within her velvet folds, while his other hand found her right breast. One aching nipple he teased with his tongue, while the other he rolled between his thumb and forefinger, until she was writhing in a blind agony of desire.

“Say you will be mine, sweet witch. Say it,” he persisted between hot, sucking caresses.

Wynne ground her belly against his heated body. She would give him everything, if only he were ready to accept it. “What shall I have of you?” she whispered against the dark silk of his head. She raked her hands through his hair, then knotted her fingers within it and with a rough tug forced him to look up at her. “What shall I ever have of you?” she cried in desperation.

“Everything,” he swore, meeting her stark blue gaze with fiery intensity. “Even in mastering you I seem ever to be but your slave. You have only to demand it of me—” He broke off with a muffled oath. Without warning he stood up, lifting her high in his arms as he pressed his cheek against her breasts.

“I have no right to you save what you grant me.” He laid her down upon the bed, then braced himself over her and stared down into her huge eyes. “Grant me those rights—every right. To your body.” He stroked one finger down her throat, between her breasts and then brushed his knuckles lower to the top of the curls that marked her -most secret place. “To your mind.” The same hand moved to caress her hair back from her face, and he lowered himself to kiss her brow. “To your heart,” he finished in a hoarse whisper. He pressed a chaste kiss to the upper slope of her left breast, then slowly lowered himself to lie over her—heart to heart, she thought as love welled painfully in her chest. How she ached to vow her love then and there, to tell him of the lands he might claim through a marriage to her. Their children might not be born to English titles, but they would be heirs to a history fully as noble and proud. A Welsh history.

But then what, she wondered as misery overset her foolish imaginings. Though he lay upon her in perfect intimacy now, his cheek pressed near to hers, she knew her happiness could not be gained thus. He must choose her for herself as she’d chosen him. Not for family, nor title, nor lands. Only for love.

He lifted his head, and she opened her eyes to meet his gaze. “What shall you grant me, Wynne? Tell me.”

She swallowed as she searched his agate-brown eyes. “Whatever you would have of me, my lo—my lord. And more,” she added, conscious of how near she’d come to saying what she could not reveal.

“And I’ll grant you as much,” he swore before he lowered his face to hers. “More,” he finished as their lips met in fiery collision. His mouth slanted across hers with startling vehemence, forcing her lips apart and taking absolute possession of her. Like some warring angel he laid claim to all her senses, robbing her of every thought, every memory, save of him.

Wynne responded to his urgency with a demand equal to his own. She welcomed every thrust of his tongue, every stroke of his hand. She arched in reckless need beneath his rock-hard body and fumbled desperately at the waist of his braies. He raised his hips slightly so that she might find the tie, then helped her drag the cloth down his hips.

How he shrugged out of them she did not know. She was too aware of the demanding length of his fully aroused maleness to note the details of anything else. He was there, poised above her, ready to possess her, and she was ready. This time was for love, she thought as emotions clogged her throat. This time was for love.

Then he pulled one of her knees up and, like one truly maddened with desire, he thrust possessively into the damp, receptive core of her. Wynne groaned with the fierce pleasure of it—the joy of being joined to him this way.

“Sweet Jesu,” he muttered. “Are you angel or demon to so possess my soul?”

Again her joy surged even higher and more intense, for it seemed that she did possess him as fully as he possessed her. That must be the source of perfect happiness, of perfect love, she thought. To possess and be possessed equally. To give and receive as much from another.

Then he moved his hips, starting that achingly perfect rhythm, and she thought no more. All was centered in the place of their joining. He sunk deep within her, then withdrew. He thrust again and slowly pulled out. Like a perfect promise and the threat of leaving, he tortured her needy body. He might give, but he could also take away. She might have all, but she could lose everything. In and out he drove, and with every exquisite stroke and every excruciating withdrawal he pushed her beyond the limits of her control.