by Karen Ranney
“You have been in my sight all my life,” she said, the words crumbling beneath her sudden, surprising sobs. She began to cry so hard that he gathered her up into his arms and held her tight.
“All my life,” she said, as if it were a confession.
Her tears were those of grief, mourning held too long within. He did not ask for what she cried. Whatever answer, it would too closely parallel his own thoughts.
Instead, he could only hold her while the storm raged within her, survive these minutes with a silent endurance. If he ever thought himself numbed by war or uncaring, that would be when he summoned this memory to mind. Or if his freedom were curtailed and his life forfeit, he would think of this time. Each of Anne’s tears seemed tinged with acid, and each of them bored through his chest to find his heart. The recollection of these moments would prove that he was not jaded after all. Rather that he was proficient at feeling too much.
The flickering of his anger was unexpected. But it grew in that moment to be a wall through which he viewed the world and anything that would come between him and her.
The hollowness of him expanded until he felt only a shell. But it curved and wound itself over her. A hermit crab, perhaps, summoning a home.
He had not lost his senses in wine, but his thoughts were no less drunk. Or fevered.
Valere iubere. Beautiful words. Words that fell in a soft, rolling lilt from his tongue. Valere iubere. To bid farewell. A strong parting, one of optimism, victory, great health. Not a surrender to circum stance or to men who fought for causes he could not espouse.
He should not be here. Remonstrated with himself even as he bent his head to kiss her. Make me remember. She had said that to him once, and he’d not been able to forget. Not one moment of the night they’d shared. They’d laughed and lingered and explored each other. Yet when he touched her naked skin now, it was as if it were the first time. Her fingers tangled with his. Her eyes wide, her lashes spiked with tears, she encouraged him and welcomed him without a word spoken.
Her flesh was warm as he cradled his palms around the curve of her full breasts. Warmed them as she closed her eyes with the feel of his knuckles brushing her skin.
They’d teased each other with words before. Soft words that had draped themselves between desire and propriety. Their speech had tripped along a cliff of need, been tender and evocative.
Not this time. This time he welcomed lust. It would burn away the sorrow they each felt and would not acknowledge. He wanted to bind her to him with passion. To make her weak and wasted from it, from him. To take her tears and taste them and transform them into weeping of another kind.
He needed to spill himself within her. Not honor, then. Not even duty. Only need. Naked and intractable and necessary.
He would make her whimper in the faint light and be as ensorcelled as he felt.
“I want to taste you,” he said, not bending to whisper the words in her ear, not lowering his voice. He stared into her eyes and watched her cheeks deepen in color.
He parted the garment slowly an inch at a time. Then bent his head and nuzzled her engorged nipple. Sucked it into the heat of his mouth. He heard her gasp, felt her hands flutter on his shoulders.
He sucked harder, a gentle insistence, passion’s game. Then used the edge of his teeth to scrape the length of the nipple.
Her breathing grew louder or his hearing more acute. He wanted her to scream in his arms, to grow wet with his play. To beg him to enter her, to sob his name.
The other breast was teased with his lips while he fondled the one he’d deserted with tender fingers. Her nipples were sensitive, easily aroused. He’d learned that during the one night they’d shared.
She closed her eyes. He touched her closed lids with one gentle finger, remonstrance in a touch.
“No,” he said, gently. “I want to see your eyes, Anne.”
She had a habit of blinking slowly when she was moved. A curiously evocative gesture. One that hardened him still further.
In the candlelight her eyes appeared almost black. The centers had expanded, the look in them was beyond passion. Something more dangerous, perhaps, as if a part of her recognized his game for the tenuous control it represented and goaded him to continue.
For a second, a moment, his hand hovered at the apex of her thighs. Then he gently touched her.
She blinked again, that slow, arousing blink even as she tugged at her bottom lip with her teeth. He wanted to tell her that it was his game of seduction, that she could not sway him from this goal, but words were too difficult at the moment.
His fingers found her wet and hot. Nature prepared her for him even as he ached to be inside of her. His thumb brushed over gently swelling flesh. When she gasped, he repeated the gesture.
“Is it nice, Anne?”
She looked shocked at the question. He repeated it, accompanied it with a tender smile and a soft, teasing touch.
She nodded.
“Is it nice?”
She understood finally. “Yes,” she breathed, the sound no more than a sigh.
“Do you want more?”
He inserted his longest finger gently, sweetly, slowly inside her. Her plump breasts had been sucked into arousal, their nipples deeply red and gleaming with his kisses. Her dressing gown hung from her shoulders, framed them, and made the sight even more arousing.
Anne with her eyes black with passion and her cheeks pink and hot.
He kissed her temple, breathed the words against her ear.
“Is it nice, Anne? You must say if you want more.”
He felt her shiver.
“Stephen.”
She should not have said his name. Not in that husky voice. It made him want to thrust against her, spill inside her now instead of teasing her to fulfillment.
Who was being bound in lust?
She was hot and wet and slick and so tight that she gripped his finger as he entered. His thumb stroked her flesh where it swelled.
“Say it,” he demanded.
“Nice,” she said, her head falling back, her eyes closing. An artless siren. A sound escaped her. A moan of delight or need? Either heated his blood.
“Do you want me inside you, Anne?”
He’d shocked her again. Her eyes flew open, met his. But instead of looking away or lowering her eyes, she smiled. A long, slow smile that fanned the flame inside him.
“With all my heart,” she murmured.
“Then you must do as I say,” he said. His look was heated, her smile one of complicity.
“Ride you, Stephen?” she asked softly.
She learned quickly. But then, she was a woman of candor and daring.
He took her hand and led her to her bed. She lay on it before him, acquiescent, but not sweetly so. There was a look in her eyes that made him wonder if she would match his audacity.
“Will you do anything I ask?”
“Anything.” It was a murmur, sweetly fashioned by curving lips.
“You must ready me for you.”
She smiled, as if she knew what a fallacy that remark was. He’d been hard since he’d begun to think of her.
But she raised up on her knees and unlaced his shirt, aided him in removing it.
Her tongue reached out and touched his nipple. “Papilla,” she said softly.
She unlaced his breeches, thrust both hands within, and widened them until he heard the stitches pop.
Both her hands gripped him. One slid to the base, held him there, as the other gripped him as if he were a stalk of wheat and slowly slid to the head.
“Penis,” she whispered.
She bent down and placed a kiss on the head. Anointed him with the daring touch of her tongue. “Basiatio,” she murmured against his flesh.
He was on fire.
“I was wrong to teach you Latin,” he said, as she pulled him to her.
He half tumbled onto the bed beside her. Their mutual smiles made their kiss one of delight, the sheer exuberance of their lust for
each other changed their laughter and transformed it into whispering words and smiles dusted against skin.
“Spread your legs for me,” he said, and she did. Without hesitation or question.
Slowly he inserted a finger within her. She was wet and hot. Her fingers splayed across his chest, combed through the hair there. He chose that moment to withdraw his finger. She closed her eyes, breathed one long gust of a sigh when he began to stroke her softly.
The sight of his tanned hand buried between her white thighs was impossibly sensual. So much so that he didn’t chastise her when she closed her eyes again.
He bent forward, sucked at her nipple. Gently, slowly, elongating it as he drew back then let it escape from his mouth. His mouth was so hot that it felt he might burn her. He repeated the gesture over and over, all the while slowly slipping his finger inside her, teasing her with his fingers.
She began to tremble. A shimmering tension that radiated from the core of her, one that he felt and recognized. He slowed his movements, not willing to end it yet. He wanted to keep her on a precipice of arousal. So that she would sob for it, cry for it. Scream for him.
“Is it nice, Anne?”
The sound she made was neither assent nor denial, but almost a moan.
His smile had long since disappeared. He was concentrating on her, the flush of her breasts, the gasping breaths she made. It helped to keep his mind from the almost pain he felt at the moment.
“Do you want me in here?” He accompanied the question with a long slow slide of his finger inside her. Her thighs clamped against his hand, trapping it.
“You must say, Anne.”
“Yes,” she said, opening her eyes. Her fingers trailed up the length of him and down again. In the soft, lambent glow of her eyes he saw a challenge and a surrender. Both equally wished for and as earnestly felt by him.
“I want to be right there,” he said, demonstrating exactly where in one protracted stroke of finger. She trembled even as her legs widened.
The expression on her face was the same as that night they’d loved. Interest, curiosity, and something learning to be lust. In the faint light it was more than that. It was a woman’s look. A fascination with the beast that showed itself so eagerly, bobbing in the air for a chance to bury itself in the soft heat of her.
He reached down and stroked himself. His finger was wet with her, and he anointed the head with it. Once more he inserted his finger. Once more pulled it out and bathed himself with her wetness.
“I want to be in you,” he said, his own voice a rasp of sound. “But not yet. This will have to do.”
He pulled himself back and squeezed himself with both hands. It was exquisite torture. “You are this tight,” he said, closing his eyes as he spoke. He rocked his hips forward in an instinctive thrust. His body wanted release even as his mind declared he wait.
He opened his eyes.
“Do you want to touch me?” he asked, a smile curving his lips.
“Yes.” A soft and breathy response. Something like greed in her eyes.
“Not now,” he said softly.
“Please.”
“If you are good,” he promised.
“Come inside me,” she whispered. “Now.”
How quickly she’d learned the power of words. Of looking at him with hunger in her gaze. He wanted her to touch him, wanted to be inside her.
Instead he smiled.
“Do you want my finger in you again?”
“No. I want you.”
He leaned over her, braced on his right arm. His fingers speared into her hair, kept her anchored there. He leaned down and kissed her. Soft, darting kisses that left both of them hungering for more.
“You’ll have me, then,” he said, the pain of needing to be inside her almost too much.
He arranged her at the end of the bed, stood between her thighs.
She lay before him like a pagan offering. A woman glowing in the light of the candles. She was, simply, perfect. A surge of possessiveness nearly knocked him to his knees. His. She was his. Only and always.
He watched her as he entered her slowly. So slowly that his mind screamed at him to hurry, that his blood pooled in his loins and the world stilled and nothing mattered but the feel of her around him.
He inserted himself an inch inside her. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
Her arms lay outstretched, her hands clasped the sheet between fists. Her eyes opened, her gaze met his.
“Yes,” she whispered. A sound as loud as a shout.
He moved an inch. His palms stroked her thighs. She lifted her hips in an effort to get him to move, closed her eyes.
Another inch.
“Don’t be greedy, Anne.”
She bit her bottom lip. He wanted to lick it.
His hand pressed against her abdomen, his thumb pressed into the furrow protected by the delta of hair. She turned her head, her eyes clenched shut. But the hands that gripped the sheet did so with increased ferocity.
Another inch.
“Am I hurting you?” A tender question. One that belied his sudden wish to impale her on himself.
She tossed her head from side to side.
His thumb circled and rotated along the swollen folds. She drew up her feet, anchored them behind his thighs. Pulled him to her. Tenacious in lust.
“Is it nice, Anne?”
The only sound she made was a soft hum.
He moved slowly, his hips thrusting an inch at a time until they were pressed together, groin to groin. One more thrust buried him.
“Do you like that?”
She opened her eyes. She looked dazed. Passion could do that. So could longing. It grew until it was almost pain. Until nothing else was as important.
He bent and bit one nipple gently. Her hands fisted on his shoulders, beat at his back.
“Do you want more, Anne?”
Her answer was not a sob. Not even a cry. She reached up and dragged his head down for a kiss. She seduced him with lips and tongue. Her hips arched up and thrust against his. The effort not to spill his seed had him drawing back.
“Please, Stephen.” An aching plea. “Beloved.” A whisper that struck his heart.
He thrust once and felt the earth shatter.
Only then did he hear her scream.
Chapter 22
Hours later she roused. She had not drifted to sleep so much as had been catapulted there. Wakefulness came with the same suddenness.
Stephen was not at her side. Instead, there was only emptiness. A quick survey of the room located him. He stood at the window, looking out at the view.
He stood before her in unselfconscious nakedness, the only covering the bandage that bound his left arm from elbow to wrist. His legs were corded with muscle, his arms roped with it. His chest plated and hard and dusted with hair.
He stood there, his face set into stern and unapproachable lines. Did he know, for all his severity, that he was more than handsome? She had seen him in all manner of poses from boyhood to now, and she’d never ceased to marvel how princely he looked. It was as if nature, knowing his rank among nobles, had endowed him with extra height and breadth. Given his eyes a more intense hue, dusted midnight with a hint of royal blue. His nose was proud, as a Roman’s might be. A conqueror’s, at the very least. And his lips were full, but not too much so. Perfect, she thought, as she studied him.
“I’ve never realized how truly handsome you are,” she said.
He looked startled. He did not receive enough compliments, she thought, if they made him so uncomfortable. She could think of a hundred things to say. A considerate host. A man of great talent in languages. A magnificent lover. She felt her cheeks warm.
It was his fault. He was not the least disturbed by his nakedness, while it seemed to strip sense from her.
His smile was not untinged by tenderness but blurred by some other emotion. Bemusement, wonder, confusion? She didn’t know.
She wondered how he could not see t
he words in her thoughts. She loved him. Not an eloquent statement. But simple. Complete. She did not want to surrender this man. She wanted to live with him. She didn’t want to be a martyr to war, she wanted to learn about love and all its permutations. She wanted to be irritated at him, find reasons to dislike him, argue with him, ache to throw something at him at the same time she wanted to worship his body and admire his mind. Salute his spirit and feel awe for his courage. She wanted life with Stephen.
But those thoughts, as many others, went unvoiced.
The candles were still lit. He’d not slept as she had, then. He turned back to the window. She had evidently startled him with her compliment. He, in turn, shocked her with his next words.
“Sebastian was a leper,” he said, his words ad dressed not to her but to the night-darkened window.
She raised up on one elbow, draped the sheet around her.
“You’ve finished the codex.”
He nodded.
“Can you read it straight through again? From the beginning?”
“Now?”
“We have no more time, Stephen.” It was a gentle reminder that even the seconds were precious.
He pulled on his breeches. In moments he was gone from the room, leaving Anne to stare up at the ceiling.
He was a complex man, one she’d come to understand. Not the whole of him, but glimmers of who he was. Even if he loved her, he would never ask her to stay. Not as long as he was going to war. A man of noble purpose.
In that, he had greater resolve than she. She wanted to beg in an un-Sinclair way. She wanted to extol her own virtues and plead with him to offer her a glimpse of a possible future. As leman or friend, lover or wife.
She’d received her wish and learned of the parts of his life she’d not known and heard him tell her what he felt. It would have to be enough, perhaps, to last the rest of her life.
He returned, closed the door behind him.
She raised herself on her elbows and surveyed him. She could almost see him adorned in armor, his hand outstretched, the sword he carried gleaming new in the morning sun. A man not unlike Se bastian. A man of honor and valor, just as his man was. Gentle, for all that he had killed.
“I’ll read what you don’t know first,” he said, moving to sit next to her on the bed. He opened the brittle parchment pages and began to translate.
