The young man’s father stepped out of his wagon and greeted the visitors as though nothing extraordinary was going on. They spoke together, and Matthew heard Rupa chuckle quietly, with delight.
“What is it?” Jenny asked.
“Tobar speak of fine weather.”
“That’s funny?”
“Weather is…” Rupa looked up at the sky and shrugged. “Nobody care.”
Someone presented the bride’s father with a bottle of liquor. He poured some of it into two cups, and then drank with the father of the groom.
“Where are the brides?” Jenny asked Rupa. “And the grooms?”
The question puzzled Rupa. With a creased brow, she replied, as though the answer were obvious, “Brides no come. Fathers make…er, pledge.”
“I don’t understand,” Jenny said. “Don’t the bride and groom make their vows to each other?”
“Papas make vows.”
Matthew pulled Jenny’s back against him and pressed a light kiss on the side of her head. The gesture was not calculated to prove his possession of this woman, for he was certain he’d demonstrated that very well in the tavern. ’Twas for the pure pleasure of holding her close. Of enjoying the sharp curiosity of her mind. Of smelling her warm, womanly scent, of feeling her soft curves against his body, something he intended to do every day for the rest of his life.
When he married her, there would be no proxies to make their pledge. He intended to commit to her, body and soul, and seal his vow with a kiss that left no doubt of his promise to her.
The first three “weddings” went well, though Jenny had never heard of such informal proceedings. There were no vows, no priest, no ritual. The bride and groom were not even present for the pledging. Yet the Gypsies considered them lawfully wed.
Jenny leaned into Matthew’s chest and felt his arms at her waist, for the moment savoring his heat and strength.
Without warning, Tekari Kaulo rode into camp. He paid no attention to the proceedings, but walked directly to his uncle’s caravan and went inside, letting the door slam behind him. He soon burst out again, holding a liquor bottle in one hand. Walking to a nearby table, he picked up a cup and poured himself a drink.
The mood of the crowd shifted slightly, but undeniably. The Gypsies had been quietly excited before, but with Kaulo’s arrival, they’d become subdued, even embarrassed.
Rupa clucked her tongue. “So wrong.”
That much was clear from the disapproving glances Kaulo garnered from both kompanias with his actions. He should probably have stayed out of sight like the other grooms until the marriages were complete.
“Can Beti refuse him now?” Jenny asked Rupa.
The woman shook her head. “Is done.”
Matthew spoke. “Seems the lad is intent upon shaming not only himself, but everyone else tonight.”
Bardo’s wife was the first to recover, and she clapped her hands together to signify the start of the feast. Ignoring Kaulo, the men drank toasts to the health and prosperity of the new couples, and even Matthew took his turn. The Gypsy women put the food on the tables while taking sips of liquor from their own cups.
Inappropriately, Tekari Kaulo kept his eyes on her as the fathers drank to Beti, the pretty, dark-eyed, curly-haired Tsinoria girl who had married him. His gaze unnerved Jenny, but she felt Matthew tighten his arm around her. She shivered at the warmth of his breath on her temple.
“Doona worry, moileen. He knows you belong to me.”
The brides were escorted out of their caravans by their fathers and taken to their new husbands. They took seats beside them and cast timid glances to the men whose families they would join, who would father their children. The girls looked flushed and nervous in their finery, especially Beti. Kaulo turned his back on Jenny and the rest of the crowd, to take Beti’s hand and pull her away from camp.
“No. No. Is very bad,” said Rupa.
Several of the men took exception to Kaulo’s treatment of Beti, and they turned to look nervously at Matthew, as though he might do something. Jenny did not understand the undercurrent.
She saw Matthew’s lips move, but could not hear his words. He’d no sooner spoken than Kaulo turned jerkily back to the bridal tables and sat down with his new wife.
“What did you say, Matthew?”
Ignoring the question, he turned her in his arms and focused his attention solely on her. “Would that you were my bride tonight, Jenny Keating.” He spoke directly into her good ear. “I would have you naked beneath me. I would taste every sweet inch of your—”
“Matthew, you mustn’t say such things,” she admonished, though shivers of heat skittered down her skin.
“No, stay close,” he said when she would have moved away.
She was torn by her attraction to him and her common sense. Staying another night with him would be disastrous. She knew what would happen, but she yearned for it in spite of herself.
They joined Rupa’s family at one of the tables.
“Why do the women pretend they doona understand us?” Matthew asked the Gypsy woman, surprising Jenny.
Judging by Rupa’s expression, she was surprised, too. She laughed. “Most know only…to tell gajo fortune. No more.”
Jenny looked to Matthew for an explanation.
“Some of the women came into the village this afternoon and started telling fortunes.” He snorted. “’Twas entirely deceitful.”
Rupa gave a knowing smile. “Gajo not understand.”
“But I do. You can tell naught from looking at the lines inside a hand.”
Rupa laughed at this and raised her cup. “To Matthew Keating. One gajo who understand.”
As the Gypsies finished their feasting and smoked their pipes and cigarettes, some of them gathered near the largest fire and began to clap their hands in a quick, complex rhythm. It became even more complicated when they added the stamping of their feet and the joyous whoops of the men as they created a strange, compelling music. Two fiddles soon added to the mix, creating a sound and rhythm unlike any Jenny had ever heard before.
“Come! We dance!” Rupa pulled her away from Matthew to join with the other women who’d kicked off their shoes and were moving to the music. Rupa knelt and wrapped a string of tiny bells around Jenny’s ankle, but she kept her shoes on.
Her skin felt exquisitely sensitive to the brush of her clothes and the primitive beat of the music. It called to mind the intimate touches and sensual exchanges she’d shared with Matthew. As her body heated, she threw off her shawl and moved her body sinuously. She caught his eye, his gaze hot and filled with the promise of dark pleasures to come.
Dancing for him alone, Jenny raised her arms over her head and heard the clink of the metal bangles Rupa had given her. She moved her hips fluidly, blatantly seducing the man who’d made his desire clear. She wanted to feel his mouth on her breasts, his hands on her body. She raised her skirts above her ankles and thought of his erect manhood, so huge and hot for her. She wanted the pleasure of holding it in her hands again. She wanted to hear his sighs of desire as she stroked him.
And she wanted to feel him inside her.
She put her future and his responsibilities out of her mind and danced mindlessly, throwing her head back as she moved with the music. With her body, she told Matthew that she was his, just as he’d been saying ever since he’d first awakened in the Gypsy caravan.
Jenny’s hair dropped into wild, golden curls ’round her face and shoulders. Her skin seemed to glow as she danced, taunting Matthew with her soft curves and seductive movements. Matthew became aroused, just watching her move to the undulating Gypsy music. No other woman in camp could draw his attention from Jenny.
Nor did he pay any further attention to Kaulo, who had become completely absorbed in his own wife. The words that had pulled Kaulo back to camp had come into his head the same way the repelling words had come to him. Somehow he knew he could not do more—he could not make Kaulo a decent or loving husband. At least he’
d kept the man from humiliating his pretty young wife.
Matthew still did not trust the Gypsy, but he was fairly sure Kaulo understood the consequences of infringing where he was not wanted. For now, he was compelled to stay at his wife’s side and away from Jenny.
Oblivious to the music and laughter and drinking, Matthew approached Jenny. He took her hand and lifted her into his arms. He barely heard the hoots and suggestive male calls as he carried her to their caravan and took her inside.
Chapter 7
They did not escape the sound of the Gypsy music, and Matthew welcomed the primal beating of hands and feet. He felt primitive when he lowered Jenny to the floor and kissed her mouth, sweeping his tongue inside. She responded boldly, wrapping her hands ’round his waist and drawing his body flush against hers.
Groaning, he broke the kiss and pulled her blouse off her shoulders. She wore her thin shift underneath, and he nearly tore it in his haste to free her breasts, to lick and suck her pretty nipples.
“Sibh ar mèinn,” he whispered, though he knew she did not understand. She would soon realize she belonged with him, even without the words.
She let her head drop back, and Matthew touched his tongue to the pulse point at the base of her sweet neck. He gathered her hair in one hand and pressed a kiss to the sensitive skin below her ear while she dropped her hands to his buttocks. Arousal shuddered through him.
“Ach, lass, I need you.”
Kissing her deeply, he released the catch that held her skirt at her waist and let it drop to the floor, leaving her in naught but a pair of white drawers. At the same time, Jenny unfastened his sherte and pushed it off him.
Matthew took one of her hands and placed it on the front of his trews. She pressed her fingers against him, stroking him, caressing his hard length, torturing him with her touch.
He cupped her breasts, filling his hands with the plump globes as the tips hardened with his attention.
Intent upon slowing their momentum, he turned her ’round and pulled her back to his chest while he pressed his hard cock against the hollow between her buttocks and fondled her breasts from behind.
He pressed soft kisses to her cheek, then touched his lips to her ear and neck. Lowering one hand to her drawers, he released the tie that held them. When she was fully naked, he slid his fingers through the pale curls that shielded her womanly center.
He lifted one of her legs and eased her foot down to a nearby crate, her ankle bells jingling as she moved. “Open for me, moileen,” he whispered.
She made a low sound when he touched the sensitive apex of flesh and slid a finger inside her. Shuddering against him, she tipped her head back onto his shoulder. He heard her breath catch with the pleasure he gave her.
“Aye, my sweet. Come for me.”
’Twas enormously arousing to feel the tightening of her sheath ’round his finger, and his cock surged with need. But ’twas not enough. When her breathing slowed, Merrick turned her again. She fumbled with the fastenings of his trews, her touch driving him wild, even through the cloth. Impatient now, he pushed her hands away and made short work of divesting himself of the rest of his clothes. Jenny drew him down for her kiss as she took his cock in her hand. He jerked at her touch, beyond anxious to be inside her.
“I never knew a man was so…”
He did not wait to hear the rest, but laid her on the bed, opening her to his gaze, to his touch.
Slowly, he skimmed his fingers from the tiny bells at her ankle, all the way to her knee, then bent to press a kiss to the tender skin there. He inched his way up her body, using his mouth and hands to please her, to tease her before taking her to the brink of fulfillment once again.
He could not imagine anything more beautiful than Jenny. He heard her breath catch when he touched his tongue to the moist bud so responsive to his touch. Using his fingers, he opened her, licking and sucking the hard little center of her pleasure.
“Oh!” She raised herself up to her elbows and bit her lip, watching him. Her frank gaze delighted him. He pleasured her while she watched, and she went quickly to the edge of climax. But Matthew wanted to be inside her when it happened this time. He wanted to experience sòlas with Jenny, wanted her to understand that they were céile mates.
With her whimper of need in his ears, he pressed a kiss to her stomach and moved up. He positioned himself at the threshold of her body as he licked each of her nipples in turn. She bent her knees on either side of him, and he slid inside.
“Ach, slowly, moileen.”
But Jenny did not want it slow. She was frantic with need, impatient with the desire to feel him inside her, to make him part of her. He rose up over her, bracing his weight on his muscular arms, but she thrust her hips forward, pulling him into her. Fully embedded, he held his body still. Lowering his head, he touched his forehead to hers.
His breathing sounded harsh and labored, his voice a deep, rasping sound. “Are you all right, bonny Jenny?”
The burning discomfort quickly diminished. “I-is there more?”
“Aye, lass. There’s more.”
He moved, pulling partway out, and Jenny adjusted, moving so that the slide of his body against hers produced an exquisite tension in her nether regions. Her nipples tingled, and he was not even touching them.
“Oh my,” she whispered when he slid back in, then out again. She wrapped her legs around his hips and watched his face take on a heated glow that had nothing to do with the fire in the stove.
She matched his rhythm and became mindless with the cadence of his movements. His body touched hers in all the right places, leading every one of her sensitive nerves toward the same culmination that had shuddered through her only a few minutes earlier.
She flew from her body, hand in hand with Matthew, as the shimmering aura of his body seemed to melt into hers. They remained separate, yet the shattering physical pleasure magnified and swirled through them again and again.
Jenny could not see where they were. There were no sounds or smells. She and Matthew were deeply joined in a world of pure sensation, and no other awareness was necessary. Such intensity should have been fatal, yet they survived.
It seemed to take a long time to drift back to their bodies. Matthew withdrew from her, but lay beside her, drawing her into his arms. He touched her face, gently smoothing her hair back from her forehead. He kissed her lightly.
“Have you any doubt now that you are mine?”
She felt confounded by what had just happened. Joining physically with him had somehow caused her—some part of her—to leave her body. “Where did we go, Matthew? Does this…connection—?”
“’Twas sòlas,” he said, but his expression was one of puzzlement.
Jenny wondered if he was remembering sharing such solace with someone else. Wiping away a tear that slid down the side of her face, she knew she could not ask him.
While Jenny slept, Matthew made a sweeping motion with one hand and cleared the floor of the broken mirror. It did not surprise him that the mirror had fallen and smashed into a thousand pieces while he and Jenny had made love. But he wondered why the other pictures on the walls had not suffered the same fate with the energy they’d loosed in the caravan. It had been incredible.
Matthew had known how to please Jenny, leading him to believe he was no virgin. Even without a memory to guide him, he was certain his bràth—his essence—had never left his body to join with another’s in sòlas. Only Jenny made him complete.
He added wood to the stove, and when he returned to bed, Jenny turned to him and situated herself into the hollows of his body, sighing with contentment. Matthew wrapped his arms ’round her and slept until morning. He awoke feeling better than he had since he’d been shot.
Leaving Jenny sleeping, he arose from their bed and pulled on his clothes. Outside, he saw that only one or two others were stirring. No doubt they would sleep late after the night’s revels, so Matthew headed out to the pasture where the horses had spent the night grazing f
reely.
They were fine animals, and Matthew was drawn to a snowy white gelding the Gypsies had acquired the day before at the gajo village. He had a sudden flash of memory—of mounting just such a horse, wearing naught but a pair of light-colored, loose trews. And he’d been barefoot. He struggled to recall more, but the vision left him as abruptly as it had come.
He closed his eyes and tried to empty his mind of every other thought, but the vision would not return. Nor was there any sense of where he’d been or who he was. Only that it was time to leave.
He intended to purchase this horse as well as another one from Bardo for the ride to Carlisle. Mayhap the white gelding’s very proximity would shake loose a few more of his memories. No matter what was in his past, Matthew intended to go along with Jenny’s quest to find her locket.
He touched the bracer on his arm, and though he could not understand the deep-seated sentiment he felt, he realized he would feel as lost without it as Jenny seemed to feel without her pendant. He was convinced she needed to try to recover it from the thief who’d stolen it, just as he knew that Jenny belonged with him.
He wanted her to decline the teacher position that awaited her, and stay with him. If those flashes of memory continued, he would soon be able to assure her that there was no other woman in his life. In the meantime, he believed the gold in his satchel was sufficient to support them indefinitely.
And he had talents no one else seemed to share, talents that might very well arouse suspicion if he used them. The Gypsies struggled in ways that seemed entirely unnecessary, yet they did not seem to have the wherewithal to make their tasks any easier. Kaulo had tried to strike him in the tavern the night before, but Matthew had easily prevented every blow. And the women pretended to read fortunes by looking at hands. ’Twas absurd. And he took it as a warning to keep his differences to himself.
After choosing the horses he wanted, he returned to camp, where a few more adults were up and about. He saw Rupa and her husband, who beckoned him to their wagon. They offered him a cup of dark, sweet coffee, which he drank while watching the children in a game of kicking a ball toward opposite goals.
Temptation of the Warrior Page 11
