20 Shades of Shifters_A Paranormal Romance Collection

by Demelza Carlton

  "No one sacrifices humans in this day and age," she snapped. "Only primitive people do that, and they died out a long time ago. Much like the bears in your story, I'm sure." She bit into the rolled up flatbread in her hands, then moaned as the combination of honey crusted ham and soft cheese wrapped in that crisp shell exploded in her mouth.

  Bernard's eyes darkened as he looked at her for a long moment. "If my lady likes it so much, then I must make more." He set the frying pan over the fire again.

  Things would change when the spring came, Ursula knew, but for now she was happy in her bower, with Bernard and whatever the winter held.

  Chapter 26

  Honestly, I'm not sure why we're all told it's so dangerous, for an unmarried girl to share a bed with a man. You've been the perfect gentleman, every night. To hear my father talk, I thought every nobleman was a monster, wanting to ravish me the moment he got near me. Whereas you haven't even tried to ravish me. Not once." Ursula sounded almost disappointed.

  Bernard laughed softly. "Your father knows all men are tempted to do such things, but honour keeps them resisting temptation. In the Holy Land, the men are not so restrained, or so I must assume. The women there cover not only their hair but their faces, too, and their dresses are shapeless, so no man is tempted by what is hidden underneath. They do this because their men apparently turn into ravening monsters if they see a woman's uncovered face." He shrugged. "Some of the men thought this was because the women there are more beautiful than the ones here, but I cannot agree. You are lovelier than anything I saw in the Holy Land."

  She slapped his arm lightly. "Flatterer. All you saw were veiled women in shapeless dresses. Under that, those women may have been beautiful enough for men to lose their minds, like the fabled Helen of ancient times."

  He considered for a moment, then said, "Perhaps it is not about beauty at all. I met a eunuch in the bathhouse who had once been a pleasure slave in the Sultan's harem. He said the women there have appetites for pleasure just as great as the appetites of men. Maybe even greater, for a woman can have as many men as she wishes in a night, while men rarely last beyond one or two lovers."

  It was Ursula's turn to laugh. "As many men as I want in a night? That sounds…wrong. What husband would allow his wife to have so many lovers? How would he know her children are his?"

  "Do you know what a eunuch is?"

  "Isn't that the name of some sort of court official in one of the desert kingdoms?"

  "No. A eunuch is a man who is no longer a man, because someone has cut off…the parts that make him a man." Bernard hoped the darkness would hide his blush.

  "You mean his…?"

  "Yes."

  "But wouldn't that hurt?"

  "Immensely, yes."

  "Then why…"

  "Slaves have little choice in it, and that's what he was."

  When Ursula fell silent, Bernard continued, "He told me there are a thousand and one ways to pleasure a woman, while men have only a hundred." He dropped his voice lower. "Most of them women learn when they are still maidens in their fathers' harems, so that they will know what to command of their slaves when they are wives in a harem themselves."

  "But don't they have to be maidens when they marry? Or is that different, too?" There was such yearning in her voice.

  "Oh yes. They are stricter about such things than we are. If the girl is not chaste, her husband is allowed to kill her, and they do not consider it murder." He heard Ursula's gasp of horror, but he went on: "Perhaps that is why there are a thousand and one ways, and most of them leave a girl's maidenhead intact. She may have both honour and pleasure, and her husband will never know."

  "Can you show me one?" Ursula's voice came out as a barely audible whisper, as if she hardly dared say the words. Yet she crept closer to him, until her head rested on his chest. "Please?"

  "Are you sure?"

  He wasn't. Once he started, he wasn't sure he'd be able to stop.

  Her hand slipped under his tunic and squeezed his cock, leaving him gasping for breath.

  "Yes, I'm sure," she said smugly.

  He peeled her hand off him, then said, "Most of the ways involving that part of me will most definitely make you lose your maidenhead. But if I use my fingers, and my lips, and my tongue…"

  "Ohh yes."

  Chapter 27

  Bernard pushed her off him, so she landed on the pillow beside him. Rejected, she rose onto her elbows to protest.

  But his hands were already untying the laces of her shift, pulling it down until her shoulders and then her breasts were bare.

  Instinct made her bring her arms up to cover herself.

  "If you have changed your mind, only say the word, and I shall stop," he said. His breath was warm against her forearm, as though his lips were close enough to kiss her arm. Or her breast.

  What would that feel like? Pleasure, like he'd promised?

  She forced her arms down by her sides, baring herself to him.

  "Beautiful," Bernard breathed, close enough for the breeze of it to tickle her nipple.

  Ursula gasped.

  Then he kissed her breast, tracing a slow circle around her nipple until he suddenly sucked it into his mouth, and she cried out, arching her back. How could that one touch send a jolt of pleasure so deep inside her?

  When he released her nipple, her whole breast tingled. Then he turned his attentions to the other, until, it, too, tingled like she'd been numb her whole life, and feeling was only just returning.

  "That's one," she heard him say. "There's another way, which involves my hands, leaving my mouth free for…better things."

  His hands cupped her breasts, his thumbs pressing against her nipples in small circles. On flesh already made sensitive in his mouth, this was pleasurable torture like nothing she'd ever known before. Then he kissed her, his tongue tracing circles around hers in rhythm with his hands.

  She let out a little moan, muffled by his mouth on hers.

  When he heard it, he stopped. "Too much for you? Or you don't like it?" Bernard's hands left her breasts.

  "I do like it. I just…I have never…is it wrong to feel so good?"

  He laughed, but gently. "I doubt it. Perhaps I should have started with the way every girl learns, so that she might prepare herself for her wedding night."

  "Yes. Please." She'd have agreed to anything at this point, just to feel his hands on her again.

  He pushed up the hem of her shift, just as slowly as he'd bared her breasts. Giving her time to hesitate, Ursula thought. But she didn't want him to hurry. The warm caress of his hands on her thighs, as he slid the cloth higher, was worth savouring. He didn't stop until he had it up around her waist, baring…well, everything but her belly, really. She considered taking the whole thing off, but his hands had crept down to her legs again, stroking the inside of her thighs. She spread her legs wider, wanting to give him more space.

  Then his thumb found a spot at the apex of her thighs, a spot that make her nipples tighten in loving memory as he started to move his thumb in tight circles, never leaving that spot, and yet…and yet…

  "Oh my God, Bernard!" she shrieked as pleasure crashed down on her like an avalanche.

  When she emerged from the snow flurries in her head, some moments later, she found him staring at her with something like wonder.

  "What's wrong?" she asked.

  He just shook his head. "The men of the Holy Land have the right of it. A beautiful woman at the peak of her pleasure is enough to make any man lose his mind. At a word from you, I would gladly spend all night and the rest of the week, showing you the other nine hundred and ninety-eight ways over and over until you had picked a favourite, just so that I might do that one to bring you pleasure again."

  She blushed, not daring to look at him. He did not sound like a man who had lost his mind. It felt like she had lost hers, shattered into a million pieces before it put itself back together again, but not the same way as before.

  "It sounds so se
lfish," she said.

  "It is. You are a pleasure to watch, Goldilocks." He reached up to tangle a finger in her curls. "Would you like another?"

  "Yes, please!"

  Chapter 28

  There were a dozen days and nights of Yule, and Bernard made Ursula a gift of every one. Despite her pleas for more, they had not even reached a hundred ways, for she kept asking for the same ones again, and he was only too happy to oblige her.

  He'd never wanted a wife, never wanted to be forced to share a bed with anyone, ever again, but Ursula could confine him to her bed for the rest of his life and he'd spend every day happy. There was a joy in her he couldn't resist, and he didn't want to. Between her golden hair and golden-brown eyes, her skin glowing gold in the firelight, the name of Goldilocks had stuck.

  On the twelfth night, he watched her brush her hair, a mane of curls that stretched halfway down her back, before she slipped out of her clothes and joined him in bed. No shy modesty for her any more – she wanted his eyes on her, almost as much as she wanted to feel his hands and his lips and his tongue…

  But tonight she knelt on the bed, her hands folded demurely in her lap, hiding the golden curls that tickled his nose when he kissed her in that hidden place between her thighs.

  "I've been thinking," she began. "Thinking that…you are so kind to me, teaching me about these thousand and one ways…but perhaps I should learn at least…at least one. Of the hundred. The hundred you mentioned…"

  "The hundred ways of pleasing a man?" Bernard finished for her. "I thought you wished to keep your maidenhead."

  She turned from gold to red. "I do, but if there is a way…a way perhaps I could…return a little of the pleasure you have given me, without giving up my honour, then I would like to try."

  Shades of Dulcinea. Bernard wanted to turn her down, but he knew this was not the same. He'd offered to teach Dulcinea, not the other way around. And Ursula didn't just want to practice on him. She wanted to give pleasure to him, like he'd given to her. Could he deny her that?

  "You could take me in your mouth," he said.

  Her eyes widened. "It's too long. It won't fit."

  "Yes, it will. Like all things, there is a trick to it…"

  He started to explain, and after a while she nodded. She cradled him in her hands, and he was just thinking how exquisite her strokes felt along his length when her mouth engulfed the tip in glorious heat.

  It was his turn to moan, as she slid the length of him down her throat and back out again. The vision of her curly golden head bobbing over his groin, the combination of her lips and tongue and occasionally even her teeth driving him to an impossibly high peak…it all made him wonder if somehow he'd died and gone to heaven.

  He felt the pressure build, so powerful it was almost painful, that he barely shouted a warning in time. He pulled away from her, catching the mess in a cloth before he spilled his seed in her mouth.

  She looked hurt. "What did I do wrong?"

  He could scarcely breathe, the pleasure had been so great. The man who won her for a wife would be a lucky man indeed.

  "Nothing," he panted. "Nothing. You did everything so perfectly I was quite overcome." He held out the wet cloth in explanation.

  Understanding dawned in her eyes. "I thought you said you can drink it down."

  Memories of choking on the stuff rose unbidden into the back of his mind, and Bernard forced them down with a shudder. "You can, but sometimes it comes so fast, you can choke."

  She nodded. "Next time, with your warning, I will be ready."

  Next time? He was lightheaded at the thought. He'd definitely died and gone to heaven.

  Chapter 29

  The weeks passed with freezing cold days and mind-shatteringly hot nights. Every night he spent with her, only made him want her more. He never wanted to leave her, and the thought of the coming spring sent daggers through his heart.

  Impossible though it should be, Bernard was in love with her.

  And he began to think up ways he might get to keep her, if the lady was willing.

  His father would surely need someone to govern this place in his stead, and Bernard was his son. None of his other brothers would want the responsibility of a single, tiny valley when they had so much more. Father might choose to offer one of his knights the honour – Gosse, if the man had survived the winter – but Bernard would have to convince him he was the best man for the job. If anything, it would place him far from his father, where he wouldn't disgrace the family any more.

  There was the matter of Ursula, too, of course. Father would not want to let her live, but if she was married to Bernard, Father might change his mind.

  Father had to change his mind, for Bernard would die fighting to defend her.

  Chapter 30

  Ursula ran up the stairs, barely noticing the weight of her basket. After months of carrying wood up the stairs, her strength had increased so much her arms barely ached at all any more. Add that to all the snow she'd had to shovel every morning to reach the woodpile in the first place…she was lucky her arms had been thin to start with, or all her gowns would need wider sleeves.

  "This is the last of the duck confit. I know it's your favourite, so we have eaten a lot of it, but I was sure there were more the last time I looked," she said, then stopped. "What in heaven's name are you doing?"

  "Getting up," Bernard said. He beckoned her closer. "After ten weeks, I'm allowed to get out of bed and walk. I'm supposed to do it with a crutch, but unless you can find me one, I hoped you might let me lean on you."

  She set down her basket and moved to his side. Bernard laid his arm across her shoulders and hoisted himself to his feet. He was a surprisingly light burden, until she realised he still had his other arm resting on the bedhead. When he let go, she almost staggered under his weight, but she managed to stay on her feet. How had she not realised how much bigger he was than her? She was lucky he hadn't just flattened her to the floor on the day they first met.

  "No." Bernard sat down on the bed again. "I’m too much for you to bear. Do you know if there is anything in the castle that might serve as a crutch, or that I might be able to fashion into one? A walking stick, or a shepherd's crook. Anything."

  Ursula thought for a moment. "My grandfather had a walking stick. Big and solid. He used to carry it wherever he went to keep everything in order, he said, and even the goats would eye it warily, and goats fear nothing. But toward the end, he leaned on it more, especially that last winter. The cold got into his joints, he said, and froze them solid, just like the river that year. He never saw the spring. I don't remember what happened to that stick, but it was a fine thing. Geoffrey used to call it his sceptre of office, like Grandfather was a king instead of a mere baron, and say it would be his one day. I wonder…"

  She hurried down the stairs, determined to help Bernard in any way she could. If it weren't for him, she'd have gone mad this winter, all alone.

  Rats or ghosts, she wasn't sure which, had stolen their stores from the kitchen or the larder, so she'd had to make two trips to the deep cellars to see them through the winter.

  But Geoffrey's chamber, the one just past her father's, she hadn't entered since he died. She pushed the door open with no small amount of trepidation, not knowing what she would find. Not his body, surely, for he'd died on the threshold of Father's chamber and no doubt been buried with the rest in the churchyard.

  His bed hadn't been slept in – he'd been awake when the Lord Vauquelin's army arrived, then. Perhaps he'd decided to join the guards on the gate, or simply gone for a walk because he could not sleep. Maybe he'd chosen to attend the wedding of Durward's daughter in town, and he'd run with Durward to alert the castle, only to arrive too late. Or perhaps he'd been the one to send word to the townspeople, before returning to the castle to discover he'd warned the wrong people.

  No. The townspeople did not deserve to die while her family lived. She was not so selfish that she'd want that.

  Whatever Geof
frey had been doing that night he died, he'd carried that secret to his grave. Along with all Father had taught him about being the next Baron of Berehaven.

  Ursula wished she knew even half of it, but Father had never meant her to be the heir to Berehaven. That's why the books about the history of their home sat here in Geoffrey's room, gathering dust on the table beside his bed.

  Bernard might like to read them, in between trying to walk again. If only she could find that walking stick…

  She searched under the bed. She rifled through the chest of clothes Geoffrey would never wear again. It wasn't until she opened the chest that contained his weapons and armour – which she wished he'd been wearing that night – that she found it hiding among a surprisingly large collection of bows.

  Why Geoffrey had wanted so many bows, Ursula had no idea, either. And she would probably never know.

  She tucked the heavy walking stick under her arm, seized the stack of books, and headed back to the tower.

  In the tower, there was brightness, and Bernard, and life to be lived. Here, there was nothing for her but sorrow.

  Chapter 31

  Bernard told Ursula how grateful he was for the walking stick he'd been given, but that was before he'd used it. After two days of painfully slow and painfully painful steps crossing the tower room, he was ready to pitch the thing out the window.

  But he did not. Firstly, because it would be absolutely mortifying to have to ask Ursula to go and retrieve it, after he'd thrown it in a particularly childish tantrum, but also because he knew it was the only way he would ever walk again.

  Ursula deserved a whole man for a husband. And if he wanted to demonstrate to his father that he was strong enough to hold the barony for him, he didn't dare to appear to be the cripple his father expected. The only thing his father respected was strength, which Bernard sorely needed.