“Betrayed you to my father, what else?”
Sebastian brushed a lock of her unruly hair gently behind her ear and blew his own away from his lean, black-browed face. “That sounds very terrible, very dramatic. The reality was far more commonplace.”
Melissa waited, wishing she could be tall and beautiful and blonde to shield Sebastian from what was coming. She huddled closer.
“I wrote her a poem, comparing her to a rose, of course. She appeared delighted with my efforts and begged me to recite it to her that evening in the great hall, in front of everyone. Blindly, gladly, I did as she asked.”
Sebastian rested his chin briefly on Melissa’s head. “People tried to be kind, at first. But then Baldwin and his company started to change my words, mimic my delivery, copy the lumpen way I stood to deliver it. Titters became giggles, turned into laughter. In the end the whole hall was mocking me, most kindly perhaps, but I was twelve. A year or two younger and I might have cried. Older and I would have gutted Baldwin with his own knife. But at twelve I had no idea what to do.
“That was not the worst of it.” Sebastian sounded weary. “I fled the hall, scrambled out onto the ramparts. Rosemond was there. I hoped she would explain, say something against Baldwin. I waved to her but she did not notice me. She had not come out to find and comfort me, she was strolling with Baldwin. Their heads were close, their arms linked. She glowed in the summer light like a poppy, beautiful in love, pretty even as she called me ugly. ‘A loathsome, ugly boy, with dirty-looking stubble. Useful, at least.’ I heard them snorting and smirking while Rosemond shredded the parchment I had given her.”
“She was wrong,” Melissa said, after an unwelcome, storm-heavy silence.
“You are eighteen.” Sebastian rapped back his answer. “Too young and inexperienced to know better.”
“Why was my mother right and me wrong?” Melissa persisted.
But Sebastian hooked his arms under her arms and legs and rose, kicking the chair back behind him. In the firelight his saturnine, thin-lipped face was as sharp as a blade, a dark blade. She trembled, an icy shudder blasting through her previous warm contentment.
Sebastian noticed—he always noticed everything. “Anything else?”
She could not tell if he mocked her or not. “I—I was raised by the church, until I was seven and my aunt and uncle brought me out of the convent to serve in their household,” she stammered, wondering why she was troubling to answer the man’s much earlier question. Perhaps because she wanted to show that, unlike her mother, she kept her promises. Perhaps because she was seeking to recapture their earlier closeness.
But in that it seemed she was woefully unsuccessful. Sebastian gripped her tighter. “A convent wench. No wonder you are so ignorant and intolerant.” He showed his long teeth in a humorless smile. “Bed. If you wish to pursue your argument, do it there.”
Oh, God. Wrapped into his arms, surrounded by that effortless strength, Melissa’s light-headedness returned with a vengeance. What now?
Chapter 4
Sebastian tossed her lightly onto the bed. His girl had surprised him several times tonight with her trenchant defense of him. He had thought she would make excuses for her parents—they were, after all, hers—but for her to speak out against her mother in the way she did had been unexpected. Knowing Melissa a little now, he had not thought that she would laugh at his past humiliation but he had not been ready for her sympathy. Yet why not? We have both known little love and much hardship in our lives. There is a bond between us.
But right now he had a panicking virgin to deal with and that in itself was a challenge. His previous lovers had been experienced and his age, not a wide-eyed, flushed innocent who surged up from the sheets as if ready to flee.
He reached down with a long arm and pinned her to the mattress. “If you continue to thrash about, Melissa, you will remove the pillow between us.”
His weight and strength and, he suspected, even more the tone of his voice did it. She rolled slightly, not away but toward him, and fought to be still and quiet—an impossible task, since she was breathing heavily. Should I add to her blushes by studying and commenting on the interesting rise and fall of her breasts, noting the particular way the firelight gilds and sparkles on the trim of her new gown, flattering the sweet curves? Should I let her know that I ache to unlace her, free her nipples, fondle and lick them, kiss between and beneath and around her breasts? Perhaps not. I am not the eighteen-year-old here.
And it was no hardship to look at her face. Her mouth was half-open and very red, as he imagined it might be after kissing. Her eyes were half-closed now, a gleam peeping from the long, curling lashes as she accepted he was not about to ravish her. Her hair was a tangle again, wild and warm. He wanted to nip her lush bottom lip and suck along her slender neck. He wanted to make her look even more undone. Melissa mussed and sleepy after love—a delicious idea. But she was calming and he should not tip her back into fear. I need a challenge for her, something she can answer.
“So your mother was wrong?”
Her gasped breaths became a hiss. “Yes!”
Sebastian straightened and folded his arms across his broad chest. “And you would prove that how? By kissing me, perhaps?”
Got you. Braced for hesitation, fluttering, protests—everything short of fainting or horror—Sebastian found himself tumbling backward a half step and then forward as the exasperating, unpredictable creature latched onto his mouth. Her kiss, inexpert and bump-nosed as it was, plunged him into a dizzy heat, making him hard, turning time back on itself so he was a youth again, half-lost in passion and sensuality.
“Mistress Felix.” He shifted her wiry little arms from clamping across his throat so she would not throttle him in her enthusiasm and took control of the kiss, cradling her head in his hands, feeling her skull beneath the tips of his fingers, catching her against him in his arms and deepening their embrace. “Surprising as ever.”
She moaned, her mouth yielding, her tongue flirting with his. She likes me. That sweet and tender pleasure was swiftly overwhelmed by raw need as Sebastian maneuvered them both onto the bed, and he lay for the first time with Melissa in his arms. Her scent, her heat, her pliant strength were all amazing, so much so that although she was much smaller and lighter than him he felt that she was surrounding and supporting him. And still the astonishing little wench was not stopping.
“You have beautiful eyes.” She leaned up and kissed each in turn, her soft lips trembling against his eyelids.
“You are impossibly tall.” She kicked off her shoes and brushed her toes against his calves, her touch going straight to his groin.
“Powerful.”
He drew her on top of him, feeling her shudder at the impact of their bodies, knowing she must now know he was aroused. Not truly so bold, then. He traced the line of her cheek and chin. Her skin was smoother than eastern silk, or cotton. “Do you say these things for pity or flattery, Melissa?”
She shook her head, burying her face against his neck, sliding into the crook of his arm as if she had always rested there. She was shivering now, and he thought he understood why.
“Has your notable courage deserted you, my Melissa? As I told you on your first night together, you need have no fear.” He stroked her back, marking how she rocked beneath his hand as if seeking to both sink into him and arch into his touch.
“I can claim no special indulgence,” she said quietly, keeping her face hidden. “I am not blonde.”
He heard the fear, the years of neglect, of being dismissed, because of a foolish accident of color. “Neither am I,” he answered, and kissed her on the top of her bowed head. “And you are mine. I hold and protect what is mine.”
He thought he heard her mumble, “Make me yours,” but that was surely a fantasy, and even if real she was nowhere ready. He clasped her chin and raised her face. She looked like a spirit of fire, bright as a ruby.
“Have you touched another before?” he demanded. He would
caress those places in turn, make her forget anyone but him.
“No, sir.” She swallowed and tried to duck away. He tightened his grip about her, tight enough so she knew she was held, and his.
“Kissed?”
“Children, as a comfort.”
Not like your mother, then. The retort scalded his tongue but he clamped his teeth on the bitterness. Melissa was not her parents, was only herself. She had asked him not to insult her mother because it hurt her and, although he had not said anything aloud, he had agreed not to, for her sake. Now he would honor that silent promise.
She pressed a hand to his chest, over his heart. “I am sorry.”
“Foolish little Felix.” No one else had kissed his girl, no other had run fingers through her hair, nuzzled her throat, made her squeak and gasp. “Mine.”
“Yours, sir?”
Was it wistful imagination, or did he hear yearning in her question, see yearning in her open face?
“You have had no one to want you.” He traced her feather-arching eyebrows with his thumb, turning every gesture into a claiming. “They did not see you. But I do. I know you, my Melissa. You are mine now, my prize, my bride by right of conquest.”
He felt her whole body shudder and knew it was not fear, or rather merely the fear of the unknown. She sighed, relaxing against him, her fingers cupped around his arm. She truly wants to belong to me. His possessive nature, so often the scourge of previous lovers, had become a blessing.
“Hush now.” Ignoring his own wants, he continued to shower soft kisses onto her face and ears and mouth, worshipping every dimple, curve and crease, nipping and tonguing the tiny pink mole on her left ear. I shall woo her. He smiled, his mouth tingling as her lips curved against his in silent answer. His body throbbed with tension, but he was also at peace.
To the crackle of the fire and his wolf’s low snores, Sebastian fell asleep, fully clothed, with Melissa in his arms and the pillow behind their heads.
Melissa stirred, blanketed in warmth. Artos lay beside her on the bed and Sebastian prodded the wolf so he could sit down close to her.
“Good morrow, my Melissa. It is snowing hard again today, blizzard snow, so no raiders will be out. We have the day in peace together.”
He smiled and her spirits soared. He still wants me. She nodded and he chuckled. “Up with you then, little lazy. You do not even have to dress.”
Giving her no time to answer he swooped down and gathered her up, plucking her from the bed and striding to the door. “It is a day for bathing, music, and playing merrils.”
“Merrils?” She knew it was a kind of game but, living on sufferance at her aunt and uncle’s, she had never been allowed to play.
His arms tightened briefly, deliciously, around her and he checked his long pace a little. “A foolish diversion, made of counters, played upon a board.”
“Like chess, then.”
His chuckle rumbled in his chest. “Nothing so grand.” Sebastian leaned down and kissed the tip of her nose, then looked surprised at his own action.
“You will teach me?” she asked, to divert him, feeling a blush seeping into her face as she considered what other things he might choose to teach her. She braced herself for a mocking answer but he merely nodded.
“Of course,” he promised.
This time, when he smiled, Melissa grinned back. She could hardly wait.
They did not bathe that day, but it did not matter. Sebastian cut and burned wood to heat great cauldrons of water for others to bathe—Sebastian was insistent everyone had that comfort before he did. He had asked Melissa if she wished to bathe but she had shaken her head. “I will when you do, sir.” He had smiled at her, a warm, approving look in his dark eyes, and she had felt as if she had drunk a whole flagon of mulled wine.
After that they had been busy, working together. Sebastian showed her how to use a wood-axe to split and section the logs and later he taught her what herbs were best for washing. In the evening he and Robert played merrils, with Melissa watching the board and Sebastian following her suggestions as to where to place the counters. She had never played the game before Sebastian had shown her but unlike her aunt and uncle, if she caused Sebastian to lose he merely smirked and challenged Robert to another game. By the end of their third game, Sebastian had started to win.
“You have a natural gift for strategy,” he told her, and Melissa basked in the praise.
By nightfall, when the blizzard had died down, Sebastian was summoned to drive off a Viking night raid. Following him to the head of the great spiral stair, Melissa stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek before he left. “Good luck, sir.”
Surprise glinting in his hooded eyes, he brought a hand up to his face where she had embraced him, as if to catch her kiss like a butterfly, and then shook himself. “I must go. Wander as you wish in the tower. Ask what questions you like and people will answer you.”
“I will.” She wanted to fling her arms about him and beg him to stay, safe in the tower, but she knew he would never desert those in his care who lived outside. “God speed.”
His thin mouth quivered. “A month ago you would have said Lucifer speed was more fitting for me.”
“That, too,” she whispered. She watched him stalk away with that long, imperious stride, wishing she could go with him, shield him somehow, although she was far from a warrior. That night she dreamed of kissing him again, delighting in the way his fine black hair fell and swirled about his lean face and long nose, in the way it stood out from his neck, particularly it seemed when he was startled. She wanted to touch his hair, run her hands through it, make it as stuck-out and shaggy as the head of a dandelion clock, a black dandelion.
Slumbering in the great bed, on Sebastian’s side, her nose pressed deep into his pillow, inhaling his scent, Melissa chuckled in her sleep.
She did not see Sebastian then for two days and the stone walls of the tower seemed to close in on her. She wandered through the chambers and up and down the staircase, watching the others at their work, asking questions and seeing and hearing how content each person was.
“What work have I to do?” she asked Robert.
The squire shook his head. “You are already doing it, my lady. You are learning the tower.”
On the third evening, just after she had washed herself quickly in the bath-house, Robert escorted her back to the highest chamber.
Sebastian was kneeling by the fire, his face half in shadow. He was stripped to the waist and, as she halted in the door, transfixed by the giddy joy of seeing him afresh, Melissa realized he was injured.
She gasped and Sebastian half turned instantly, hiding his hurt from her.
“It is but a scratch, little Felix,” he said, clapping a large hand over the spreading patch of darkness on his forearm. “Robert! I said I should treat this first—”
“Do not blame him, please,” Melissa interrupted, hurrying into the chamber, stepping round the basin and cloths and joining the tall, dark figure on the rug. “I begged to see you. Please, sir.” She reached out, frowning at the blood seeping through Sebastian’s fingers. “Please let me help.”
Hard, dark eyes raked over her, but Melissa refused to back down. “Tell me what I can do,” she said softly, kneeling close enough to feel his body heat and breath on her bowed head and neck, both warmer to her than the spitting fire. “Please don’t send me away.”
Sebastian nodded, jerked his head to dismiss the hapless Robert and removed his hand from a puckered, torn wound full of grit and matter. It still bled, but slowly, so Melissa lifted her head.
The man kneeling before her looked lean and gaunt as he always did but with no fever shining in his cheeks or eyes. He held himself very straight, as he did when standing, and his lips were red.
Do not think about kissing him now. Running through what she had learned from Sebastian during her month at the tower, Melissa felt her heartbeat slowing. I can do this. “It will be all right,” she murmured, leaning forward to sniff bo
th wound and man. Neither smelled rank or unwholesome. A swirl of cinnamon, cardamom, smoke and earthy musk crept into Melissa and remained, a welcome guest. “Can you move without pain? Can you make a fist?”
Sebastian, thick black eyebrows raised in what she hoped was amusement, did as she asked. “It smarts a little,” he admitted.
“So it hurts like Lucifer,” she answered, using bravado to propel her through this. She no longer feared for him but being so close, remembering what his mouth tasted like—these were distractions. “I must clean it with wine and water. It will…sting.”
At his nod, she hesitated. “Do you think it needs sewing?”
“Not for a graze.” With both of them on their knees he loomed above her but she sensed his approval. “The wine is there.” He pointed to a jug beside the fire.
I am going to touch him. Once begun, the process of dipping the cloth in the basin of water and wine, wringing it over the grazes, rinsing, repeating, was oddly satisfying. She fell into a rhythm, aware each time she bent to the wound of Sebastian holding himself perfectly still, his eyes and breath on her.
“Done.” She did not bandage the cut too tightly but found herself reluctant to shuffle backwards, away from the sheltering reach of Sebastian’s arms. “What did this?”
“A battle axe from a dead man.”
“Are the Vikings gone?”
“I am back here, am I not?” answered Sebastian, and he smiled, removing any possible sting from his words. “What now for my recovery?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to say “A kiss,” but Melissa was not bold enough yet for that. Swiftly she glanced at the table with its bundle of petitions and the rare book Sebastian had shown her, filled with wonderful illuminations. She could not read yet, but—
“Do you like stories, sir, old legends and such? I can bring you wine and tell you some.”
“If you sit with me.” Sebastian settled cross-legged and patted his lap. “Here.”
Melissa tore her eyes away from staring at the long, strong thighs, that inviting space between, and hastened to obey.
Sebastian the Alchemist and His Captive [Medieval Captives 1] (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Page 4
