by Sue Wilson
In a burst of insight, he knew she did. She covered it well, as she did most things, but the clues were there, if only in the vehemence of her protests. The racing heart he had felt against him did not belong to a woman who feared him, but one who feared her own desire. And when she had lifted her lips, offering him a naïve kiss, had it been in concession to him or surrender to what she wanted? She had been so adept at deceiving him; could she possibly have deceived herself as well?
He would never know. She would never allow honesty between them. It was far too dangerous.
Nottingham bolted from the chair to unsteady feet. He knew he was drunk, for only drunkenness would have permitted him the rationalization for such fantasy. One kiss, he told himself. He would have that. And if she used the occasion only to disembowel him with his own dagger-well, at least it would put an end to this miserable wanting.
He threw open the door to his chamber and brushed past his sentry, waving aside an offer to summon a guard to accompany him, and did not slow his pace until he arrived at her door.
This was the way he should have dealt with her from the beginning, by breaking her biggest lie of all-that she did not want him as much as he wanted her.
The guard straightened to a ramrod posture and stifled a yawn.
"Step aside." Nottingham grabbed the ring of keys at the soldier's waist and opened the door himself. "I'll not be disturbed," he said, shoving the keys back into the soldier's hand. He snatched the flambeau from its wall bracket and held it in front of him as he entered the room.
Undulating streaks of orange and yellow wove through the blackness, illuminating herbs hanging overhead, the straight rows of flasks and bowls and vials in her cupboard. His fist tightened around the torch and he held it aloft, searching for, finding the door to her sleeping chamber. He pushed it inward and froze, breath clotting in his lungs.
She had not wakened at his intrusion, though she stirred restlessly in the bed, and he stood motionless lest a movement, a single breath, rouse her further. Sienna hair, fiery in the torchlight, spread across the pillows like a stream of molten copper. Shadows of black and bronze danced across her face, smudging crescents of dark lashes along her cheeks, gleaming off full, slightly parted lips. Her arms and legs were bare, dusky gold, tangled in knotted bedclothes that left her breasts uncovered save for the wavering cloak of darkness that fell, then was dispelled by the flame.
In that instant, he did not regret coming, did not care if she knew him for who he was and called him fool for desiring her. He carved the sight of her into his mind, and vowed to know she desired him as well.
~*~
"Thea."
Light pierced her dreams, and she flung one arm over her face. Sleep scattered, and with it the dull, insensate relief of oblivion.
He was there.
She lurched upright in bed, pressing back into the pillows as if she could escape the flare of light that invaded her room. Darkness mercifully obscured him; he was merely a tall, featureless form lit by the flames. She fought against the twisted sheets that bound her legs and clutched desperately, futilely, for something with which to cover herself. His very stillness, the thorough penetration of his stare, made her heart beat like a caged rabbit's.
He set the torch into the wall and took a step toward her. The light spilled over him, bronzing his raven hair and casting in gilt the haggard lines a sleepless night had drawn in his face.
"Thea, forgive me."
The spiced scent of his chambers clung to his clothes, mingling with smoke and the unmistakable lingering of wine indulged in far too liberally. She looked up at him, wondering why the belated apology should come at this hour.
The memory of his accusations emboldened her. "Get out!" She gestured toward the door, knowing he would not leave. She scrambled to her knees, but twisted furs and the high wooden back of the bed made flight impossible.
His gaze left her face just long enough to skim down the length of her naked body. "I have not come to do battle with you."
The blood rushed to Thea's face, then spread down her body in a warm wash of sensation. Modesty was useless with this man. Worse. It would only amuse him. She shook the wild profusion of curls back from her face.
"Haven't you?" she asked, acid lacing her words. "One would think you'd had your fill tonight. Or did you battle with the kitchen girls and find your appetite unsated?"
"I hoped we would be done with this charade, Thea." He approached her. The ornate tunic was gone. Only a silk undertunic of jet, untied, hung haphazardly from his shoulders. The bare expanse of his chest caught the light. "As for kitchen girls, none of them tempts me. I have called a truce."
"A likely tale."
"But true."
"Then your wench from the buttery-"
Dark brows winged elegantly into the fringe of hair that fell across his forehead. "Ah, Agatha."
"You remembered her name."
"A once-worthy opponent, but little challenge now."
"Spare me the lurid details. Your conquests abed are of no interest to me."
She did not know where it came from, this angry passion to rebut him at every turn. It did not matter. It did not stop him.
"Curious, Thea," he said, voice low and unaffected. "I had thought you'd emptied yourself of these feeble verbal attacks of which you are so fond, but it appears there is still some ammunition in your arsenal...and you feel slighted enough to use it. Do you consider yourself a more suiting adversary?"
"You said you'd not come for battle, Sheriff."
"And I have not." He took another step toward her, and another, until his shadow fell across her, enveloping them both in darkness. "Save you make it so."
She warded him off, both arms stiffened in front of her, but his hands slid over hers and up the bare length of her forearms as if her intent had been invitation and not resistance. And though she expected nothing less, she gasped at his touch, which was warm and firm and free of hesitation. He smoothed his hands over the curve of her shoulders, along the sides of her neck, her jaw, his fingers spreading wide, delving into her hair to cradle the back of her head. Gently, he touched his lips to her forehead, temple.
"You yourself have proclaimed me your enemy, my lord." Intended to be firm, Thea's words came out in a series of broken breaths.
"But are you, Thea? In truth?"
It was impossible to believe no battle raged between them. "What do you believe?"
"I believe you have managed to keep me at bay with a surprising agility of repartee, and there have been times when I feared you could do naught with your tongue save flay the desire out of me. But an enemy would have slain me twice over. And you have not."
The truth stung her soundly, but she could put no lie to his words. She had saved him, returned him to the very wholeness that sought her undoing. Even now, she did not run or turn or tear herself away. His fingers trailed down the bare curve of her back, and they were like rills of fire, striping her with sensation.
"Send me away, if you will," he whispered. "I will go."
He pressed her against him, muffling her small, wordless cry against his chest. Her lips met myrrh-scented skin, and she had a fleeting impression of exotic fragrance and the bitter tang it left clinging to her mouth. The black shimmer of his silk-clad arms enfolded her.
This was the embrace she had feared and fought against, not just the night before, but from the moment he'd staggered into her cottage-the forced remembrance of what it felt like to be held within the circle of a man's arms. Beyond that, nothing was as she remembered it.
There was nothing of her husband's sweet-shy tentativeness or his awkwardly asked-for touches, nothing of their similar heights that put his lips so comfortably close to hers. There was no smell of the earth or wood shavings, no touch of callused hands, and the fabric beneath her palms was not the familiar texture of Brand's worn shirt. There was nothing here-nothing she remembered, or knew, or dared to learn.
Nottingham's head bent close to hers
, and even the words he whispered in her ear were foreign. Surely they were curses; the man did not seem one for endearments. His breath fell softly against her as his lips touched hers, withdrew, and touched her again.
"Send me away, Thea," he murmured. "If I am wrong to believe that we have been too busy struggling against each other, as enemies, to know-to admit-"
Though his words admitted much, his body confessed more-the taut restraint of muscled thighs, the sweep of his fingers down her spine, flaring over her hips, gently urging her closer. She wanted to say that they were enemies, that they could never be anything else, but she felt the hard swollen length of him against her, not with force but with the undeniable certainty of his desire. Enmity was not what she felt.
His lips pressed below her ear, against her jaw where her pulse raced, making words unnecessary and stopping him unthinkable. He tasted the hollow of her throat with his tongue, and she cried out, a faint whimper of pleasure that bled quickly into an anguished sob. She had hidden the truth so well, until now, from him, from herself. To want what he offered, to have him know her need as purely as she knew his, to hand him victory without so much as a struggle-
She thought of Brand, of John, of the rescue she did not want but knew she must have, but his mouth covered hers, stealing the breath from her.
It was no gentle kiss, but something bold and urgent and compelling, like the man himself, and he would not end it, even when the air left her and darkness swirled around her. God, she would die like this, without a thought for entreaty, for all the good that would do. Without breaking from her, he gathered her in his arms and settled her back against the disarray of pillows and bedclothes.
Dizziness pulled at Thea's senses. Her body felt laden with sensation as he lowered himself over her, the laces of his tunic brushing her breasts. She could not move, could not even make some useless struggle to save herself, so surely was she drowning in him.
When at last he lifted his lips from hers, she threw her head back and gasped for air, arching into the scant space between them. He drew his lips down her neck to her shoulders, then returned to her mouth. God in heaven, she had not been kissed like that before. Brand demanded nothing-nothing-
She did not even know-could not even think-
She felt his tongue part her lips, burning away all thought of Brand, making heat curl through her breasts and belly and thighs. He tasted of wine and cloves and heat, playing against her tongue one minute, thrusting with slow, insistent rhythm the next. Her lips relaxed against his; the scrape of his beard against her cheek softened. She did not know, could not imagine, why she needed to condemn herself so, but without reason, she pressed her lips against his in return and braved twining her tongue with his.
He moaned softly, then pulled his mouth from hers, as if he could not bear the sound of his own surrender.
"Please-" She could hardly believe she had begged, but she wanted the feel and taste of him again, and it was too late to call back the plea. Her breath came in small shallow bursts; words did not come at all.
Nottingham rubbed her lower lip with his thumb, caressing the flesh swollen from the weight of his kisses, as if marking the effect he had on her. His own breathing quickened, matching hers, his gaze dark, without pretense. Thea saw in him everything she should despise, and everything she craved. For a moment she resisted him, and herself, closing her eyes against the tortured, haunted look that stared back at her.
"You must-please-please go. I can't bear-can't bear to have you here." She shivered and her words came out with the same jagged edges as her breath. For a moment she thought he would, for he did not kiss her again and she felt his weight lifting from her body. Then she circled her arms about him and drew him back to her.
She shuddered as with fever, her breasts aching, her body open to him mercilessly. A painful emptiness lodged deep within her, an emptiness that would be the death of her if he did not fill it. His heat melted into her as the weight of his leg captured her, sinking her into the well of the feather mattress, pressing between her thighs.
His fingertips strayed up the inside of her thigh, passed through the tangle of curls between her legs, trailed across the flat expanse of her stomach, and spread across the fullness of her breast, stinging her with remembered need. She moved beneath him, restless, and the cry that caught in her throat sounded more like a moan, even to her own ears.
"Kiss me, Thea. Again."
His lips grazed hers, then were gone.
"Kiss me."
He teased her lower lip with his tongue.
"Thea, Thea-"
She reached to put her hand between them, but he met her, palm to palm, and his fingers laced through hers as he staked her hand to the pillow overhead. His mouth covered hers then, demanding something more than refusal, urging something more than acceptance.
She felt the tumultuous return of every feeling she had not called desire, of heat rushing over her, into her. She pressed her lips against his in response, and when his tongue traced the outline of her lower lip, she drew him into her mouth, inviting him to fill her. She matched the sinuous movements of his tongue with her own, tightening her fingers over his until they ached.
His chest labored above hers, as if he could draw in air no easier than she, and she felt him grow harder and begin with his hips the slow undulations that matched the thrusting of his tongue. A heady sense of conquest flooded through her as she realized she could affect him so.
He rolled them both over, carried her atop him, and still her lips stayed melded with his, reveling in the taste and touch and texture of him. When he withdrew, she followed him to his mouth. She felt him shudder as she entered him, heard his muffled groan of pleasure, and added her own involuntary gasp as his tongue welcomed hers.
God, what unknown ecstasy, this power to tempt him, to make him cry out while they traded kisses and positions on the bed.
The torch burned low. He raised his hips, seeking to soothe himself against her, and his hands tangled in her hair, clutching her as if he could not get enough of her. When he finally broke from her, breathless, her name was on his lips. Gray eyes peered up at her through the darkness, blackening to unfathomable depths, as if he'd slipped past the point where conquest was a game and could not find his way back to safe ground. The man who stared back at her was not the omnipotent Sheriff of Nottingham, but a man, wanting her, begging for her mercy with his body if not his words.
"You are a witch!" he whispered hoarsely.
"No-"
"What have you done to me that I should want you so? Some love philter, some spell, some enchantment?"
Too late, Thea realized that for him this midnight visit was no longer the cool, calculated seduction of times past, but something different, something raw and elemental she had not seen before, but knew nonetheless. It was written in the softened line of his lips, full and expectant, and in his eyes where longing was unmasked and eloquent. The simple honesty of his admission affected her more than any touch. She felt drenched in his need, felt it spill through her in relentless waves, coupling with her own, giving rise to a yearning for him that was beyond measure or reckoning.
His eyes missed nothing of the subtle change. They fixed on her flushed face, freezing her in mid-motion as she pushed herself off his heaving chest and shook her mane of hair behind her shoulders. Thea felt him soak in the sight of her, suddenly aware of everything his kisses had blotted from her mind: that her breasts rose and fell rapidly with her own quickened breathing; that she straddled him shamelessly, his tunic parted, bunched around his hips; that only the thin linen of his braies kept him from plunging between her open thighs. His need for her had only made her bold, wanton, unable to stop.
"I cannot desire you." The words tumbled out in a quivering, hurried rush, spoken only because pride would allow her no others. "I cannot-"
She gasped as her back met the bed and the air fled her lungs. His large hands folded over her shoulders, pinning her fast to the mattress. Wi
th one knee, he opened her legs. He lowered himself against her, the captured length of his erection tight against his braies as he fit himself into the hot dampness between her thighs.
"A woman's body has its own truth, Thea. Would you deny it?"
Her only reply was a rasp of breathing, a whimper as he pressed himself against her, making promises with his body. Thea told herself that denial should be the first thing on her lips, not the last thing on her mind, that she must stop him, now, or she could not, ever.
He bent his head to her shoulder and caressed the soft curve there with his mouth, sending streaks of cold and heat through her. His hand settled against the swell of her breast, riding the ragged rise and fall of her chest. Fingertips sought and found the hardened nipple.
"This is desire," he whispered, and lazily circled the dusky pink tip with his tongue.
She tried to twist away from him, but the sensation left her mindless. She arched her back, lifting herself to him, and cried out as he covered her breast with his mouth.
Desire? God, no! It was not! Not desire-not any desire she remembered, ever.
He would not let her go, suckling gently until her breast throbbed and the nipple knotted hard against his tongue. Even when he released her, his mouth lingered against her skin, his tongue darting over the swollen peak, drawing it between his lips, licking the heat from her as if he were loathe to let her go.
"This is desire, too," he said, though she did not know whether he spoke for her or for himself. Then he stroked between her legs, and Thea's breath rushed out of her. "This, Thea. This."
How could she deny him? She was slippery to his touch, wanting him. His fingers drew whorls in the thatch of sable hair, and her eyes pleaded silently for him to spare her, or take her, or kill her and be done with it. God in heaven, he must stop! If he looked at her, only looked, and did not put his lips on her again, she could resist him, she could fight him, she could-
"And this."
Without warning, his paired fingers slid through her damp cleft and rubbed upward, and sensation ignited in her like sparks off flint. She cried out, hating herself for giving him that, hating him for the surety of his touch, but he only repeated the motion, again and again, until fire flooded through her. His tongue threaded through her lips, warming, stroking, filling her mouth, making mockery of the aching, empty part of her below.
