“And in this, I’m to play the part of the Blessed Virgin?” Ursula’s mouth quirked, but no smile came. Instead, her eyes fell to the hands in her lap, and she said quietly, “I suppose, if that is what you wish of me, I will accept it.”
This was a new and a baffling turn, indeed. “I thought you would welcome it. I thought you would be relieved that I didn’t expect you to…fulfill that part of our arrangement.”
Her head whipped up. “And I thought you wanted to marry me!”
“I did marry you!” It seemed brutally unfair that he should spend his wedding night losing in an argument he was not sure he completely understood.
“Then make it a real marriage!” Her lip trembled, and she clapped a hand over her mouth, as if she regretted speaking. Her eyes widened, and she shrank back, as if in fear.
It was the first time she had raised her voice to him since he’d demanded her obedience in the forest, and now, she looked terrified for it. Did she expect he would strike her? Or shout at her? He moved toward her and she flinched away. When he gently pried her hand from her face, she whispered tearfully, “If he comes for me, I don’t want him to be able to undo this.”
His heart twisted queerly in his chest. “Ursula…I have never…”
The silence was unbearable. He watched as a vague understanding settled over her, and her eyes fell back to her hands. “Because you didn’t want to, or—”
“No, not at all.” There was no end of assurances he could give her there. He had wanted to, there was no doubt of that. “I couldn’t. I thought of what happened to my mother. No full-blooded wolf-woman would dare risk bearing the child of a half-breed, and I would not risk it with a human woman.”
“Not even with a servant?”
He knew the real question she asked. Had he done to another girl what Lucas had done to her? Had he pushed her down and raped her, while she pleaded with him for mercy?
With two fingers beneath her chin, he lifted her face. Her lip trembled; she thought she didn’t want the answer. He looked her in the eye as he spoke. “I don’t understand how a man could do it. How he could look at someone like you and feel the desire to hurt you.”
A tear slid down her cheek. “And what do you feel, when you look at me?”
It was as much of an invitation as he was like to get, and he took it, the way he had been dying to since the morning he’d ridden up to Fallow Manor and seen her feeding the geese. Pushing her hair back from her face, he leaned down and brought their mouths together. Her hands flew up, as if instinct dictated she push him away. Instead, her palms splayed open in the air beside her, and she did not resist him.
Her lips were warm and soft, and though he’d never, in all his years, kissed a woman, it seemed only natural when her mouth parted beneath his. He tasted her bottom lip with his tongue, and she opened wider, letting him in to tangle and slide with her own. Her hands fell to his shoulders, gripping his shirt in her fists as she pulled herself to her knees before him. Beneath her shift, the gentle curve of her belly brushed his arm, and he felt his earlier trepidation return. But Raf had assured him it would be all right, and Henry trusted his friend to know more about the mystery of wives than he did.
She pulled her mouth away, gasping, and the look on her face was nothing short of wonder. Some primal call tugged at him, seeing her breathless and eager. She pulled his face back to hers with a desperate sound, and her arms wound around his neck.
His cock stiffened in his braies, and he wondered if he was a wicked man for feeling such immediate lust for his wife. He smoothed his hands down her sides, over her waist and hips. Though her mouth was heaven—or damnation, he couldn’t tell—he wanted to taste every part of her. His lips skimmed her jaw, her earlobe. She shied away, and he chastised himself for rushing her, until she giggled and whispered, “Your beard tickles.”
His face had gone unshaven for a day or two, and he laughed with her, scraping his cheek against hers as she squealed and tried to evade him. His lips caught her ear again and she sagged against him, her laughter replaced by gasps as his tongue traced the edge of her lobe.
Though he cautioned himself to go slow, it seemed his hands would not listen. With one at her back, supporting her as he sucked a path down her neck, the other found her breast and covered it over the linen of her chemise. Her nipple was hard beneath his fingers, and he brushed it over and over with his palm. It was strange to touch a woman this way, when he’d never imagined he would have the chance. That she wanted him to touch her, that she trusted him after all that had happened before, made him want to be perfect for her, and he was woefully far from perfect.
If she objected to his ability, she did not protest as he closed his mouth over her breast through the linen. Her head dropped back, her copper curls brushing his arm. He wanted to feel those curls on his skin, wanted to feel her skin, as well. He pulled back, steadying her on the bed. He took off his tunic then reached down to remove his boots. Her fingertips trailed across his back, and he closed his eyes, reminding himself that he had waited his entire life, another few minutes wouldn’t be the death of him, no matter how desperate he felt. When he discarded his braies and hose, she looked away, her cheeks flushing red, but when he climbed onto the bed again, she reached for him.
The hem of her chemise was trapped beneath her knees, and she had to lift one, then the other, when he raised the fabric. He tugged it over her head and her arms, and though she helped to guide him, she still gasped when he kneeled there, bare before her. She was like nothing he had ever seen, with skin like cream poured over her slender limbs and ripe, round breasts. For a moment, he was content to simply look at her. She could not meet his eyes, and a breath left her with a nervous shudder. “Do you find me…”
For a creature so perfect to find herself lacking seemed more ridiculous than anything he’d ever heard before. In answer, he kissed her, his hand buried in her curls to hold the base of her skull. She sagged against him, bringing her desire-flushed skin against his own with a stab of passion he felt to his very toes. He lifted his head, running a thumb over her swollen bottom lip. “You are beautiful, Ursula. No man could be more pleased with his bride.”
He kissed the soft curve of one breast, teased the nipple into an impossibly tight peak before taking it into his mouth. She clung to his shoulders, trembled and swayed, and he lowered her to the bed, settling down beside her to kiss her and stroke over the fascinating roundness of her stomach. His lips roved over her breast, and she whimpered and shifted her hips as his hand strayed closer to the curls between her thighs.
When his fingers first brushed her there, she opened her legs in invitation. His fingertips skimmed hot, moist flesh, and he nearly came undone as she moaned and lifted her hips higher. If that was the maddened babbling Raf had told Henry of, he would not have minded hearing it again. Emboldened by her response, he slipped a finger into the warm cleft, using her panting cries as a map to find a place that made her shudder and shake and cry out so loudly he was certain Raf and Aurelia heard it down the hall. Even so, he could not bring himself to stop. She was so warm and slick, and she clutched at him, nearly sobbing, until she shouted again, her thighs trembling around his hand.
“Please,” she whispered, tugging at his shoulders, and he was not inclined to argue with her. She spread her legs, and he lay between them, raising himself on his arms so as not to crush her. The tip of his cock brushed her; he pushed forward carefully, prodding for entrance. It was damned embarrassing, to be so inexperienced with his own bride, and he wondered if he should stop now, if a chaste marriage had been the right path all along, when she wriggled beneath him and he slipped inside, her tight, slick walls surrounding the head of his cock. She moaned her relief and lifted her legs to fit around his hips, and he shuddered as she pushed him deeper with the motion.
She was an exquisite torture in his arms. Wetter than water, hotter than fire, almost too much to bear as her body grasped and milked him. When he lifted his hips to withdraw
, he moved only a fraction before some indefinable urge drove him deep once more. The feeling of her skin against his, her legs wound around him, felt fascinatingly familiar, despite their newness. It was as though she had been made to fit to him, and what had only moments before seemed strange and awkward now felt as natural as breathing.
“I can’t…” he whispered against her forehead, begging forgiveness as his brow broke into a freezing sweat with the exertion of denying a body too long denied.
She shook her head and murmured, “It’s all right,” her body rising against him in a sinuous torture. She met his final, desperate thrust, looking into his eyes with loving curiosity to watch him come apart at the seams. His limbs seized and his cock pulsed deep inside her, hot bursts mingling with her own slick juices, until he was certain all of his strength had flowed into her, and he would never leave the bed again. His vision swam, and he leaned down, meaning to kiss her, but ended up collapsing against her shoulder, his legs trembling like dead leaves in a winter wind.
He grimaced when he withdrew his softening cock and lay beside her, the sensation of leaving her body a stinging slap after a loving kiss. That, he would have liked to have been warned about. He laughed to himself at the thought.
Beside him, Ursula turned her head, a smile forming uncertainly on her lovely mouth. “Why do you laugh?”
“Happiness,” he answered, and it wasn’t a lie, for he felt as though his worries had been for naught. His wife was not cold, and she did not fear him. In a few months, he would have a child, and a home. He felt years between this night and his lifetime at Blackens Gate, when it had been only days.
“I think,” Ursula ventured quietly, “I think I shall be happy, as well.”
“I suppose I should give you your wedding present, then?” he asked, pressing a kiss to her forehead. She lifted up, confusion wrinkling her brow. Rather than explain, he rose from the bed, feeling odd and altogether too naked as he crossed the room. He had hidden his gift to her well, upside down behind a chest with a tapestry thrown over it. He’d lied to her and said it was another trunk of his belongings from Blackens Gate, and he was pleased to see she had not disturbed it.
When he pulled the cradle free, Ursula let out a soft gasp. It was beautiful work, and Henry was grateful to Raf for finding a man with a talent for carving. He set it on the ground, where it rocked smoothly, the polished wood gleaming in the firelight.
“It is…” she began, holding the sheet to her chest as she sat up.
Her words appeared to fail her, so he supplied, “It is where our children will sleep. And our grandchildren, if God is good.”
She covered her face, and he knew her tears were not born of sadness. Still, he went to her, sliding into the bed beside her to kiss her and hold her to his side. Miles away from Blackens Gate, it seemed as though they had both outrun their nightmares. It was not the great romance sung by a traveling bard, but he would have it, for as long as she would have him.
Chapter Thirteen
It was difficult to sleep beside someone when she wasn’t used to it.
Ursula opened her eyes to the dim room. With only the light from the smoldering fire, it took her a moment for her sight to adjust. Beside her, Henry lay on his stomach, one arm thrown over his head. The other dangled off the side of the bed that had seemed so large just the night before. The low firelight made every furrow of muscle appear deeper, every smooth expanse of skin like velvet.
She would have been content, a few months before, to die and escape Blackens Gate. She’d thought perishing in the forest would have been preferable to surviving, to remembering the horrors she’d lived through. Now, lying comfortable and warm beside the only person who had ever made her feel safe, she was more grateful than ever that her desperate prayers had not been answered.
It seemed impossible that she had hoped for deliverance, only to have it come in the shape of a new life, a husband with work, a home and a child soon to follow. It seemed destined for someone else, not for her.
Reaching out in the darkness, she dared to let her fingertips brush his skin. She had seen him as a wolf; she wondered now where he kept it. Did the beast lurk just beneath his skin? He moved slightly, and she pulled her hand back, startled at the smooth stretch of the muscles beneath her palm.
“Are you cold?” he murmured sleepily, raising his head. He squinted through the darkness with one eye, and even on a face as handsome as his, the effect was comical.
Stifling her laughter behind her hand, she shook her head. “I am sorry to have woken you.”
“I do not sleep soundly.” He rolled onto his back, careful not to strike her with his arm as he lowered it. “When you make your bed in a den of wolves, you learn not to leave yourself open to attack with such petty things as sleep.”
She had felt the same, in the cell below the castle, but she did not say so now. Only, “I have never slept so well as I have since you brought me here.”
Henry took the statement as she had hoped he would, without question or reminder of past darkness. “I have always felt at home here. Raf and Aurelia are the truest friends a man could hope for.”
Unbidden, emotion welled in her throat. “Do you think, perhaps…”
She could not bring herself to say the words in her heart, for fear of exposing such a fragile longing to disappointment.
Henry turned his head, his inquisitive gaze gleaming in the darkness. “Ursula?” he prompted, and she could not explain to him why no answer would come.
When it did, the words came out on a tremulous, halting whisper. “One day, might you feel the same toward me?”
“Will I feel the same?” he rolled onto his side and brushed a curl over her shoulder. “No. You are my wife. I hope to feel a much deeper appreciation for you.”
The hollow place beneath her ribs eased some, and she reached instinctively to cover it. He caught her hand, stroking the back of it with his thumb. There was a change in the air, she stopped breathing when she felt it, and only drew another breath the moment before his mouth covered hers.
Waiting for him that night, she had been wracked with such fear. Fear that he would hurt her, even when she knew he would not. That he would reject her, or be cruel to her, or worse, that he would be so cold that her wedding night would leave her feeling as empty and destroyed as she had after what had happened to her at Blackens Gate. Though she’d known he would not harm her, she had not been able to calm herself.
Then, he had appeared in the doorway, looking every bit as frightened and unsure as herself, and that apprehension had melted away. It was then that she knew, with her heart as well as her mind, that he was a man thrown into the same circumstances as she, and he knew no more than she how the end would turn out. He’d taken her with the utmost gentleness, bringing her such pleasure that she’d been mindless, and those moments had been an escape.
Now, with his hand tentatively kneading the sheet over her hip, and his lips carefully brushing hers, she knew what was to come, and she embraced it, arching her body toward him, cupping his stubbled jaw in her palm. He did not deepen the kiss, but pulled back, regret furrowing his brow. “I would not ask it of you a second time.”
“You weren’t going to ask it of me the first time,” she said with a shy laugh, hoping he would not disappoint her now, girding herself against it in case he did. While his expression still wavered between desire and decency, she took his hand and guided it lower, to place between her thighs that was still hot and damp from earlier. Slowly, he parted her with his fingers, and took a deep breath as he did so.
“Please,” she whispered, shifting her hips toward him. If she could have told him then how much those moments of carefree pleasure had soothed her, she would have. Maybe some other day, years from now, when words did not have the power to open her wounds anew.
He kissed her, his hand leaving her cunny to cup her breast. Already he was hard against her thighs, and she tucked her hands between their bodies to touch him. When her finger
s strayed over the straining flesh, he groaned against her mouth, and she grasped him in earnest, sliding her fingers down the length of him. She marveled at the velvety texture of him, and the unyielding rigidity. The memory of him inside of her, brief though it had been, sent prickles of hot and cold over her back. She pushed up to take a breath and he rolled beneath her, so that she sat astride his thighs, her hand still stroking the thick column of his cock.
She rocked against the tensed muscle of his thigh, but it did not ease the ache within her. A wicked thought took her then, seeing the way he struggled, almost out of breath, beneath her hands. Letting go of his cock, she inched forward on her knees, until the curls between her legs brushed over him, and his hips canted up, straining toward her to ease his own torment. She did not guide him into her, but lowered herself over him, the petals of her body parting over the length of him. She rubbed herself over the whole wide shaft, wriggling her hips, never letting him inside, as every ridge teased the sensitive knot nestled in her cleft. Her cunny flooded with warmth and wet, and the thick, slippery sounds they made as they moved together brought a hot flush of shame to her cheeks. Then, the hot, tightening pleasure gripped her, and she no longer cared. Rocking her hips faster against him, grinding down harder, her soul left her body with a strike of lightning, and she howled as sure as any wolf ever could.
Beneath her, he stilled, his body curling up to support her as she trembled. His mouth found her breast and he sucked her nipple into his mouth, his cock leaping between them. He lifted her slightly, and then he was inside, sheathed in her so deeply she could not catch her breath. He held her there, tried a few, clumsy strokes, then lifted her again, rolling her to her back to enter her with a long, slow thrust. He guided her legs around his waist, pulling her flush against him, all of his long, hard cock buried deep inside her, and she thought she would die from the pleasure of it. He pulled out just as slowly as he’d come in, every inch burned into her memory with a brand of searing desire.
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