by Hale Deborah
“There are others you’d relish, too, unless I miss my guess.” Con picked up a washcloth. “Shall I tell you about them while I scrub your shoulders, my lady? By your leave, of course.”
What could it hurt if Con swiped a cloth over her shoulders or prated on about the Holy Land? It would pass the time till morning.
“Very well.” She stole a glance at Con’s well-shaped torso and the firm-muscled forearms of an archer. “To both.”
Con dipped his cloth in the bath, then squeezed it gently to let rivulets of water trickle down over Enid’s neck and shoulders. A sheen of sweat broke on her brow as she imagined him playing the water over her breasts.
“Your upper arm, may I wash there, too?”
“You may.”
The water’s warmth seemed to leach something out of her. Something tight, angry and unyielding. Something she’d never much liked about herself, but had been unable to let go.
True to his word, Con did not touch any part of her body she had not given him leave to touch. But it hardly mattered.
When he swiped the soft damp cloth over the crook of her elbow or the sole of her foot, it felt as intimate and arousing as if he’d fondled her breasts…or elsewhere. How Enid wished she dared let him.
For years she’d settled for whatever life dealt her, then struggled to make the best of it. For the sake of her children. For the sake of Glyneira.
Just once could she not indulge her own desires?
“Will you grant me one boon, cariad?” Con’s smooth, delicious murmur caressed her ear.
“That depends on what it is.”
She hadn’t forgotten all the reasons she must resist Con, tonight. Drowsy, buoyant and roused as she was just then, those reasons had lost their urgency—floating away from her toward a distant horizon.
Of all the things she imagined Con might ask, she did not anticipate what came.
“Tell me about the last night you and I passed together.”
Perhaps Con sensed her confusion, for he added. “The night we made that fine boy of ours. I want to remember, cariad. I want to sort it out from all the times I only dreamed of you and me together. Will you give me back that much, at least?”
She had stolen his seed to get her son, and the drink had stolen his memory of it. She couldn’t bear to yield Bryn up to Con, but she could restore the other to him, as much as it was within her power.
“Very well. I’ll tell you.”
The telling would come at a price to her, Enid sensed as she unlocked that trunk of memories and began to rummage through it for the first time in years.
This night and this wager were not turning out at all as she’d expected. She’d believed her challenge would lie in resisting Con’s overtures. Instead, she’d discovered a far more difficult test—resisting her own desires.
Recalling in detail the long-ago night when she’d given herself to Con might whet the edge of her yearning for him…until it grew sharp enough to slice her in two.
Chapter Sixteen
His distant mating with Enid was not all Con had forgotten. As she restored that memory to him, piece by piece, word by whispered word, he began to forget the reason for his present tryst with her. The years between then and now began to blur…fade…dim.
On his travels to and from the Holy Land, Con had often stared off into the mysterious western horizon beyond which none but the Fair Folk sailed. He’d watched the gray-blue expanse of sea merge into the blue-gray sky until it became one vast baffling vista. Tonight past and present blended together in much the same way, with Cariad Enid Du his only constant star by which to navigate.
Their destination? Paradise.
When she’d first looked around the wash shed and declared it enchanted, Con had felt his heart swell within him until it fairly pained his ribs to contain it. Who’d have thought a little greenery, a few fleeces and an armful of apple blossoms could transform such a humble workaday structure into a bower of striking, sensuous beauty? One to rival the most lavish lady’s bath chamber he’d ever seen in the East?
And did he find it all the more pleasing because it sprang from the peculiar charm of his native land? Con could not deny it.
No matter how exotic or elegant, every other place in which he’d made love to a woman had been missing something—something vital but elusive. He had been missing something, too, all these years without ever realizing it. The memory of his first time with a woman.
“I recall the scent of hay and clover,” Enid murmured. Suddenly Con could smell it, too, in all its lazy, mellow sweetness.
Enid’s eyes slid shut, the better to go back in time and take him along with her. “I remember the sounds of the horses in the barn below—swishing away the flies with their tails, shaking their manes and nickering.”
She gave a quiet chuckle. “It was a wonder I could hear anything over the buzz of your snoring. The loft was dark as pitch, so I crawled toward that sound until I found you.”
Con could almost hear the faint creak of boards and the rustle of straw. A girl’s breath, coming fast because she’d just climbed the ladder. Because she was frightened…and eager.
Abruptly Enid sat up in the tub. Drops of water sprayed off her back, a few falling to hiss on the coals beneath the cauldron. “I must get out of this water before my skin wrinkles like a dried plum.”
“T-to be sure.” Con shook his head to clear the daze from his abrupt jolt back into the present. He felt as though he’d fallen out of his old hayloft onto the hard barn floor below. “It’ll be…easiest if I lift you out. May I?”
“No harm in it, I suppose.” A subtle hitch in her breath betrayed Enid’s sense of the danger.
As he rose and bent toward her, she reached for him, locking her arms around his neck. His left arm slid under her back and the right one beneath the crook of her knees.
She didn’t weigh much, but Con found the angle of the lift awkward. The slight pressure of her breast against his bare chest and her hip against his belly set his head spinning. He lurched back onto the fleece-draped floor with Enid in his arms. The next thing he knew, she sat nestled in his lap, covered with a brychan, her slick, bare skin in tempting contact with his own.
To keep her occupied so she would linger there, he prompted Enid in a whisper, “I was snoring?”
It worked!
She nodded, making her smooth dark hair rustle against his breastbone. Her voice took on a liquid, dreamy quality. “You were.”
One of her arms stayed anchored around his neck, but the other drifted downward, caressing his bare chest as it fell. Con’s blood beat a hot, rushing tattoo in his ears.
“Your body felt all loose and boneless,” said Enid in a drowsy drawl. Then a trill of laughter rippled through her, making the soft rounding of her backside bounce against the straining lap of Con’s breeches. “Most of it, anyway.”
Something told him he should chuckle or trade her a quip, but his throat had squeezed so tight Con could scarcely force breath through it.
Even that grew more difficult when Enid raised her face to his. “I tried to kiss you awake.”
He stared at her lips, full and red-ripe with a promise of untasted sweetness. Why, they might beguile a dead man back to life. Just looking at them made Con’s whole mouth burn with the need to kiss Enid.
But if he kissed her, she would speak no more. And he wanted to hear.
“Did it work?” he managed to croak. “The kiss?”
He raised his gaze, hoping to distract himself from her tantalizing lips, only to tumble headlong into the dark amethyst depths of her eyes. The slight span between her face and his felt alive, somehow—watchful and waiting, as if a colony of invisible winged insects hung there with tiny wings aflutter.
“I…thought it did. You moved. Your arms went ’round me and you kissed me back.”
He did remember! Remembered the clean, sweet taste of her maiden lips and the cascade of her unbound hair through his fingers—a thousand magical harp s
trings that played a rich, wild music of delight within him. Was it any wonder he’d dismissed it as a wishful dream when he’d woken the next morning, cold and alone?
Con had reason to wonder if he was dreaming again when Enid whispered, “Kiss me, now.”
He swallowed hard to clear his throat. “Do you mean it, cariad?”
With a subtle nod of her head, she closed the brief gap between her lips and his.
“Now.” As she spoke, Con could feel her lips forming the words and the warm whisper of her breath against his chin. “While you know what you’re about and so do I.”
Con needed no further urging.
With tender restraint, he caught her ripe lower lip between his, then played his tongue across it.
He could half imagine, half recall the raw, fumbling tempest of that long-ago kiss and all that had followed. Though he desired Enid even more now than he had then, Con wanted to offer her something better this time. Perhaps to prove he was no longer the crude plowboy who had once lusted after her. Even then there had been more to it than that. But he’d been too young and too drunk to demonstrate his true feelings in the way he made love to her.
Tonight would be different. Tonight, by her leave, he would make it right for them both.
The sensations Enid experienced that night were different than the ones she recalled in such vivid detail. The scent of sheep and apple blossoms instead of horses and clover. The flickering glow of a tallow candle instead of the darkness of a windowless loft. The soft caress of fleece instead of the rustle of straw.
Con was her only constant, but even he seemed different—his body larger, more weathered, scarred in places. His touch and his kiss were no longer those of a lusty, green lad, greedy for his first maiden. Instead, they were deliberate…lingering. As lazy and luxurious as the warm bath he’d treated her to.
Though her mind could scarcely function while her senses were under Con’s delicious siege, somehow Enid knew it was not the years alone that had wrought this change in his approach. The day they’d gone fishing with the coracles, not long after he’d arrived at Glyneira, Con had chased her, caught her and kissed her in the wild way of the boy she remembered.
She had steeled herself against something similar tonight. But the seasoned warrior had changed tactics.
Part of her tried to resist. But when she struggled to recall why, her memory swarmed with potent images of that other night in the hayloft. The only time she had ever given herself to a man without reserve.
The very temperance of Con’s kiss made her more demanding. Enid pressed her lips harder against his as she caressed the firm flesh of his chest to rouse him.
It worked.
His breath rasped in her ears, fast and harsh. A keening sound rose from deep in his throat—a wordless plea in answer to the one that strained beneath every inch of her own skin. When Con broke from their kiss with obvious reluctance to ask her a question, she knew what it would be…and how she would answer.
“Did I hurt you that night, cariad?”
Caught off guard by words so unlike the ones she’d expected, Enid scrambled to frame a reply.
Before she could couch an answer, Con spoke again in a tone that ached with regret. “A daft question, that. Of course I hurt you—your first time and me too drunk to realize I didn’t know what I was doing.”
He ran his hand over her hair in the way someone might comfort an injured or frightened child. “I’m sorry, cariad. Sorry for all of it. You deserved better from me…and from life.”
He’d hurt her far less with his rough lust than he had by marching away the next morning. The reproach burned on Enid’s tongue, but she refused to give it voice. What had happened that night had been her choice and the consequences hers to bear.
Blaming Con for all the troubles in her life had been a desperate ploy to oust him from her heart, Enid realized. It had been a matter of survival, otherwise the longing for him would have gnawed her to pieces. That did not give her the right to condemn him for the bitter consequences of her actions.
“I’m sorry, too, Con.” She cradled his face in her hands and kissed him again.
It was not a kiss of desire, though that still burned hot within her. It was a deep, tender kiss that acknowledged all he had once meant to her. Celebrated the bright colors and joyful music with which he’d filled her girlhood. Honored the precious gift he’d given her in their son.
Con wrenched his lips from hers. His breath came in ragged gusts. “Just once…let me love you…as you deserve.”
How could she deny him? How could she deny herself?
Con had stirred up the glowing embers of her memories into a raging fire beneath the simmering cauldron of her old passion and set it boiling again. Scarcely aware of what she was doing, Enid groped for his hand and raised it to her breast.
Accepting her consent, he played the tips of his fingers over the sensitive flesh. A firm, kneading caress on the rounded fullness. The barest graze over the straining peak. When he finally withdrew his touch, Enid writhed and whimpered with need.
“Hush now, cariad.” Con lifted her from his lap, spreading her supine on the carpet of fleeces. “I won’t abandon you unsatisfied.”
How could he possibly satisfy the dark, urgent hunger he provoked in her? Enid asked herself as Con hovered over her, his mouth so close to her nipple that the vapor of his breath seared it.
“May I?”
Not certain what he meant, but past caring, Enid heard herself gasp, “Do!”
Slick and hot, his tongue swiped over the rigid nub, stoking a blaze of sharp urgent pleasure in her bosom and her loins.
“Mmm, you like that, don’t you, my angel?” Con’s voice sounded warm with satisfaction and husky with his own desire.
Then he closed his lips over her nipple and suckled. Enid found she could not reply with anything more than a gurgle of delight.
In time she did find her voice again, inviting Con to touch her and kiss her in places she’d had no intention of allowing him. As the shadowy hours of the night stretched taut with longing, Con stripped away the layers of restraint in which she’d swaddled herself over the years. Until she was once again the passionate rebellious girl who’d dared to give her heart where she had no business giving it.
When she could not stand the exquisite torment of his touch a moment longer, she arched toward him, crooning, “Cariad, cariad, come to me. Make us one.”
“You are ripe for it, aren’t you?” Con’s fond blue gaze seemed to penetrate her heart and soul, as he prepared to enter her. His voice held a tight, fervent edge, as if he was holding back a powerful force with his waning strength. “I’ve never wanted to delay the end of it like I do now.”
Enid knew what he meant…or thought she did. Long ago she’d braved the pain of losing her maidenhead gladly for the wonder of that joining between them. Now, she would even forsake the fevered bliss of Con’s love play to experience it again.
But when he eased himself into the slick, sultry fissure between her thighs, a mewling cry broke from her lips.
Con froze. “Have I hurt you, cariad?”
A sigh shuddered out of her. “If this is hurt, then go ahead and kill me with it, I beg you.”
“Who knows but we may both die before we’re through.” Con gave a warm, breathless chuckle on his way to claim her lips.
It proved no idle threat…or boast. With Con poised over her, filling her, coaxing her to scale the peaks of ecstasy, Enid marvelled that her body could survive such intense sensation. Then a palsy of pure pleasure shuddered through her again and again as her spirit soared to the friendly stars, all a-sparkle with the familiar laughter in Con’s eyes.
A while later, Con woke abruptly to a sense of chill and emptiness where warmth and softness should be. He groped for Enid, but his hands met only a barren expanse of fleece.
Could he have dreamed last night, the way he’d dreamed their first encounter?
Con shook his head to clear it.
Their first encounter had not been a dream, after all, but a true mating that had produced a child. Besides, he was no longer a yearning boy prone to carnal fancies of the night. And yet…
He could not deny that his stolen tryst with Enid had taken him beyond anything he’d previously experienced with a woman.
Prying his eyes open, Con peered around the dim wash-house. The candle flame guttered in a puddle of tallow, making it just possible for him to discern the figure of Enid pulling on her kirtle.
Con yawned and stretched his languid limbs. “Where are you off to at this time of night, cariad?”
She started at the sound of his voice, but did not turn to face him. “Back to my own bed, where else? So my children won’t be alarmed when they wake and there won’t be any more gossip about us than can be helped.”
“You worry too much.” Con chuckled. “Always did.”
“I’ve had plenty of cause to worry.” She lobbed the words back over her shoulder at him. “Still do.”
He didn’t want their magical night together to end on a sour note. “The children won’t wake for hours yet, nor anyone else after the mead they put away at supper. Linger with me awhile, won’t you? There are things we need to talk of, you and I, and who knows when we’ll get a moment alone once Glyneira’s stirring? I’d much rather do it with you soft and naked in my arms.”
That made Enid spin about to look at him, her dark unbound hair billowing ’round her like a lustrous cloak of black silk. Even in the faint, fitful light of a dying candle, one glance at her face made Con wish she’d turn away again.
“You’ve won your game, Con. What more is there to say?”
So that was the trouble! In truth, he’d forgotten their wager in his single-minded quest to bring Enid pleasure. Who had touched whom, with or without express invitation, he could no longer recall.
He held out his hand to her, offering his most inviting smile along with it. “I thought we both won, cariad. Are you sorry for what we did together?”
Ignoring his outstretched hand, Enid leaned back against the door. “You gave me something rare and wonderful, Con. I wish I could blame you or pretend I didn’t know what I was doing, but that would be a lie. I’m not sorry on my own account, and I’m not sorry at this moment.”
