What a coward she was! What about Simon? She had to help him.
But the door had barely closed before it thundered open again. Her hand flew to her chest, as if trying to still her heart from beating itself to death.
Hands on hips, he filled the doorway. She stared at him for what seemed an eternity, and yet no time at all. He strode into the room, slamming the door behind him with a vengeance.
Simon! she reminded herself.
“What—what have you done?” she demanded, trying to remain still and straight, to keep her voice strong and a pretense of courage about her. “What are you—going to do?” Despite herself, she faltered.
“I should kill you!” he hissed softly, his voice disturbingly quiet. “Wrap my fingers around your neck and strangle you. But then, I would cost myself a wife. At the very least, I should beat you until you scream for mercy.”
“I’m not afraid of you!” she told him, eyes narrowing. But she was afraid; her heart still hammered and she could scarcely draw breath. “You’ll not threaten me, and you will answer me! What have you done to Simon? If you’ve harmed him—”
She broke off because he was striding toward her with such swift menace that she couldn’t move until he was almost upon her. A gasp tore from her throat and she tried to run. She hadn’t a prayer. His fingers curled into her hair and over her arm and he wrenched her back around to face him with such a force that she lost her breath. Both his hands fell tight upon her shoulders as he snapped her straight. Her head fell back, her eyes rose to meet his, and she wanted to cower despite all her most stalwart pretenses. She had never seen him so angry, not even that day in the woods when he had been convinced she had nearly killed him by loosening the girth on his saddle.
She didn’t know whether to scream or weep. His fingers were brutal. “Let go of me!” she cried out, trying with all her strength to wrench free. “Arrogant, domineering, wretched, grasping Englishman!”
“Scotsman,” was his brief reply. He lifted her from her feet and threw her down upon the bed. Her sheer silk nightdress snagged beneath her. Her legs were bared, she was naked from the waist down. Delicate ties had broken at the bodice, exposing her breasts. Winded, she gasped for breath and tried to rise, tried to hold the flimsy fabric together. She made it up to her elbows, but then fell back and met the dark fury of his features. A wild panic seized her. He remained far more than half naked himself, for the fur-trimmed robe had fallen open and she was painfully aware of the many things she had noted about him before; the bronzed strength of his shoulders and arms, the expanse of his chest, the hard, lean contours of his belly. She was painfully aware of what she had not noted before as well: the shaft of his sex rose long and hard against her flesh. She drew her eyes back to his as he leaned over her. She tried swiftly and desperately to shove against him, but he moved so quickly, with such raw fury, that he seemed completely heedless of her. She felt his hand upon the slim length of her legs. He caught her knees, parted them, and eased his weight between them. She tried again to strike out. The fingers of his left hand vised around her wrists, pinning them just above her head. The fingers of his right hand lightly brushed her cheek, his knuckles stroked down her throat, over the bared mount of her breast. She inhaled raggedly, afraid, yet achingly aware of that touch. Desperate to fight it for the alarming sensation it aroused.
His eyes, alight with a shimmering glitter of pure flame, tore into hers.
“Poor, bloody, sweet innocent!” he hissed. “Time! Give you time! Time to welcome your French lover to your room just feet away from my own door!”
“You’re wrong!” she cried. “You don’t understand—”
“I full well understand his hands upon your breast, his lips upon your mouth. I wasn’t the one to plead time because of any innocence!”
“God, I could kill you!” he cried furiously. “Nothing wrong with his lips devouring you?”
“I tell you, you mustn’t hurt him. I swear, you don’t understand—”
“No. You don’t understand!” he told her flatly, and any further words she might have spoken were swept away as she cried out, stunned. His free hand had swept lower, over her belly, onto her mount. Between her thighs, touching, stroking, probing … a violent shiver seized her as she felt the tremendous intimacy of his touch. It seemed that something like fire burned there now. And she knew his intent.
“Wait!” she gasped, straining to free herself, but his grip upon her wrists was merciless, the bulk of his body far too hard and heavy to budge. His face was suddenly very close to hers, his eyes all but scorching her. His taunting whisper was almost a caress against her lips. “Wait?” he inquired. “For that French bastard to come before me again?”
“No—” she protested with a strangled scream, for he had meant then to wait for nothing. The fullness of his sex thrust into her like a knife. The pain seemed to sear through her body. She shuddered with it and surged against him, insane to free herself from the invasion, but she managed only to wrap herself more fully around him. To bring him more completely inside her, to a point where he would split her in twain. It didn’t occur to her that he had driven very hard and then gone dead still—until she realized that her hands were free. They lay upon his shoulders as her nails curled into his flesh.
His fingers wove into the hair at her nape. His eyes blazed into hers. “Sweet Jesu!” he exclaimed softly. It seemed that surprise had caused his anger to ease, just when she was longing to strangle him.
“Adrien!” she gasped, barely keeping the word from being a sob, longing to plead with him but not allowing herself the luxury of begging any small mercy.
“I cannot go back,” he said flatly.
She opened her lips to speak; they were caught by his. His kiss all but consumed her. His tongue swept, hard and passionately, deep into her mouth, her throat. Molten steel rushed throughout her limbs, radiating from between her thighs. She could hear or feel the pulse of his heart, or hers, and it was as if drums pounded in her head. She could not twist away, only feel, and the intimate sensations were both brutal and oddly delicious, mesmerizing, so engulfing that he was moving again before she realized it. Searing sensation remained; the agony faded. His lips parted from hers, touched them again. His hand stroked her cheek, her breast. A whisper of tantalizing flame licked over her, inside her, a hint of something mercurial and as excruciatingly sweet as the pain had been intense. She could not fight him; she could only cling to him, ride out the wildness of the storm, and feel strange whispers of promised pleasure within the red mist that had been pain. She became increasingly aware of him, the corded muscles of his body straining, the fluid movement of him, hard, graceful, reckless, relentless … swift … plunging into her again and again until she was all but numbed. She gripped his shoulders as if she held on for life, and burrowed her face into his neck. The whole of his body gave a massive shudder; he held taut and still above her, then moved once again, a groan tearing from his lips as a tidal wave of liquid fire washed from his body into hers.
She felt a trembling deep inside her. She wanted with all her heart to throw him off, free herself of the invasion, and yet she wanted to touch the satin sheen of his rippling flesh, to feel his kiss again. She wanted to run away as far as she could get. But she realized she would never escape the longing to feel him again, touch him, have him demand so much from her …
He had gone still, but he had not withdrawn. She closed her eyes, silent for once, and fought the tears that sprang beneath her lids.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
She wanted to do anything but.
But knowing him, she was afraid he would pry open her eyelids to have his way. She opened her eyes defiantly and found him staring down intently at her once again.
“You’re killing me!” she charged him in a furious, accusing whisper.
To her amazement, he suddenly smiled. “You won’t die,” he told her. “But I might well have killed you had I stepped into this room a minute later!”
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“You are still mistaken, you bastard Englis—Scotsman!” she seethed, willing herself not to cry. “You must realize that Simon and I weren’t lovers—”
“But what might have been?” he demanded harshly. “It is difficult to feel guilt about taking your wife’s innocence too recklessly when she is pleading for another man. Thank God, milady, you did not become lovers. At least now I don’t feel quite so tempted to strangle you.”
“Or beat me?”
“It’s quite legal by French law for a man to beat his wife,” he reminded her. “That is a matter I may well muse on for a while …”
She gritted her teeth, trying to shove against him. He caught her hands. His words had been spoken lightly enough, but his eyes narrowed in warning. “As I said, Countess, had I come in but a few moments later—”
“You would have found me alone!” she interrupted. “I’d not have allowed things to go further under the circumstances.”
“Under the circumstances that I arrived here today?”
“Under the circumstances that I did not, nor did I ever intend to, betray the betrothal,” she said. “Which I’m quite sure you have done on many an occasion!”
He smiled again. “I am a decade older than you, milady. And I fear I was not destined to live as a monk.”
“Perhaps I was not destined to live as a nun!”
His smile faded and she was deeply sorry she had spoken.
“You should thank God then, Danielle, that you have chosen to do so until now!” he warned.
She felt her cheeks go pale, and once again, she longed with all her heart to throw him from her. It was intolerable that she had to remain caught beneath him after an act of such intimacy. He was so heedless of his nakedness beneath the robe, of his sprawl atop her. She felt the heat where his body touched her, felt the coolness of the air where it did not. A massive wealth of tears rose behind her eyes once again and she fought them furiously. She could not help but think of all the chivalrous, romantic tales she had read. Simon had loved her. Other men had been enamored of her. But she was married to Adrien, and her wedding night had become an explosion of fury, a familiar stranger sprawled atop her. His was a warrior’s body, a knight’s form, sharpened and honed to perfection like the blade he carried, magnificent in some ways … imprisoning in others!
She swallowed hard, blinking back the tears. “You promised me time. You … you had no right!”
He rolled to her side at last, then rose, his robe still about him yet open as he walked to the fire, hunched down, and sparked the flame with an iron poker. Danielle tried to fold the remnants of her nightdress about her, inching back on the pillows as he stood again, staring into the flames. “I had every right,” he told her flatly.
“But you had promised—”
“Time. But time ran out this evening when I discovered that your lover—all right, your very close male friend-nearly-lover!—was guilty of treachery in more ways than one. And I warned you, Danielle. I warned you long ago that I would give no quarter if you did not keep your word of honor.”
“But—”
“Danielle, you little fool! Didn’t it occur to you that it was strange your friend was so determined to have a hunt on the same day that raiders rode down upon you?”
She gasped, sitting up to stare at him, forgetting her dishevelment. “You’re wrong! Simon wouldn’t have tricked me so—”
“Simon did trick you so.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Because I sent Daylin and your own Ragnor back to find the raider I battled in the woods. He was half dead and in agony. In exchange for Doctor Coutin’s care and the chance to live, he was more than willing to tell us what we wished to know.”
“If you tortured a confession out of the fellow—”
“Madame, I tell you in truth—I have never tortured a soul upon this earth.”
She bit into her lower lip. “Other than me!”
His brow rose, his lip curved into a slight smile.
“What did you do with Simon?” she asked him.
He was still for so long that her deepest fear rose to her breast. Terrified that he had summarily executed the Frenchman, she found herself leaping from the bed. Scarcely aware of the soreness that still wracked her body, she catapulted for him. Her fingers wound into fists and she slammed them against his chest. “Damn you, Adrien—”
He caught her wrists, and her eyes widened as he dragged her hard against him. She had attacked with an insane aggression. Now she was on the defensive, painfully aware of him again. The thick, crisp auburn hair upon his chest teased her breasts. The tautness of his belly and hips ground against her. The hardness grew palpably against her even as she stood crushed against him, her cheeks flaming, her eyes as wide and glistening as those of a doe caught in firelight.
“Adrien—” she began, moistening her lips.
His eyes impaled her. “Simon is alive,” he told her angrily.
“But you plan on slaying him—”
“An execution might be in order.”
“Because he was my friend—”
“Because he meant to kidnap you from Aville, enjoy the very delights you have discovered tonight, rape you if you didn’t come willingly into his arms, and bring you and Aville over to the domain of Jean of France. Ah, not so horrid a thought! Is that what you are thinking, milady?”
“Adrien, stop it! You judge without proof—”
“Proof! Do you think me a fool?”
“Perhaps he loved me, wanted me! You mustn’t judge Simon so harshly—”
“Damn you!” he roared with such anger that she fell silent. His voice shook as he warned, “Milady, common sense should warn you that for his sake as well as your own, you should keep Simon out of this bedroom for the rest of the night.”
“But you must tell me—”
“You must let it suffice to know that I have not skewered him through with my sword. Sweet Jesu, don’t press this further or I might be tempted to run out and do just that!”
She kept quiet, afraid he might carry out his threat. They were married, and he had caught Simon with his hands on her in their bedroom. Any man would say that he had a right to his fury.
He did not release her. She knew that she dared not mention Simon’s name again. She stared up at Adrien finding it difficult to breathe, wishing to be left alone to gather back some shreds of dignity. She inched her chin up and told him, “You have bested Si—your adversary, and you have had your vengeance upon me. Please, I beg you, if you would just please go now … ?” she whispered.
“Vengeance?” he inquired, and seemed amused once again. “Any bride spends a night such as this!”
“Nay, sir! You know that you owe me an apology—”
“Never, milady, will I apologize for making love to my own wife!” he told her, eyes narrowed, a spark of warning to his voice.
Her lashes lowered. “You didn’t—make love. You were furious.”
“For that, Danielle, I am sorry. But it is done now, and perhaps it is well that this all came to so explosive a point, for I was not pleased with your arrangement.”
“I was not pleased with your demands, nor the king’s!”
“Ah, but I am delighted that the king’s pleasure and mine coincide so completely!” he assured her. He suddenly swept her up and into his arms and she gasped, palms pressing against his chest once again as he carried her back to the bed. He laid her down upon it and tiny flames leaped through her as she felt the golden heat of his eyes once again, and knew his intent.
“Adrien, please—” she protested on a broken whisper. “This is—agony.”
“Nay, milady, it will not be so again. Don’t seek to dissuade me—I will not be dissuaded. But this time, Danielle, I will make love, I will strive to be gentle, tender but passionate … perfect,” he promised very softly. A deft movement with his hands split what remained of her silk gown, and she felt a whisper of cool air sweep over her body. She twisted he
r head to the side, wishing she could curl away from the man who now lay by her side, propped up on an elbow. “Lie still!” he whispered.
“I—cannot.”
“Ah, Danielle!” he said, his voice still soft, and oddly whimsical. “You—who do not surrender! Do you beg mercy of me now?”
Aye! the word shrieked within her mind. But he was only teasing her, taunting. He would not let her go tonight. She knew that full well.
Her head snapped back. Her eyes met his. “Never. Damn you!” she cried.
He smiled. His hand cupped her cheek, his lips found hers once again. She wouldn’t allow the kiss, she determined. She would refuse to succumb to his demand.
But his kiss didn’t demand. His lips just feathered over hers, the tip of his tongue teased as lightly as a butterfly’s wing. She gasped for a breath while her heart beat in fury. Only then did his mouth cover hers, sensually, the stroke of his tongue filling her mouth slowly.
His hand moved … over her breast, cupping and cradling the weight of it. He massaged her nipple with his palm. Amazingly, she felt that touch like a streak of lightning all the way inside her, and down … down to a deep warmth that now began to spread with a strange, exotic sense of urgency between her thighs. She tried to stir again, to turn from him. His lips broke from hers. His weight shifted down her body. His mouth closed over her breast, his tongue stroking the nipple. She swallowed back a cry, her fingers falling into his hair, tugging upon it. He could not be budged, and the sweeping sensations began to swirl, hot and honeyed throughout her. Dear God, but she would fight them—she would not fall prey to this knight who had ridden back into her life only to seize upon everything …
Even upon her heart.
“Nay!” she cried out, but he would not be stopped. His body eased further down upon hers. She tried to escape him by inching upward, yet only managed to serve his purpose once again, for now his gold and auburn head lay at the juncture of her thighs, parted by his weight and body, and she was powerless to stop him when his most intimate kiss came even there—slow, lazy, relentless. Excruciating. Touching, tasting, exploring …
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