Moving against each other in an oiled ecstasy of delicious friction, they were as sybaritic as any denizen of the ancient Roman Empire. Time drifted past them, unnoticed. Rayne was tireless in his invention, leaving no part of her untouched. There was no modesty; they held nothing back. If they retreated, it was for the pleasure of being pursued. If they faltered, it was because flesh and bone could stand only so much.
And then it could stand no more. Rayne, holding her close, opened her thighs and let her feel the firm, hot probe of his maleness. She moved against it, accepting, needing the penetration, feeling desolate and empty without it. Prepared by care and kisses and warm oil, she took him into her tightness, stretching to receive him—took too, the soul-jolting wonder of the joining.
Completion.
It was perfect, inescapable. It was hers and nothing could ever take it away. She closed her hands over the rigid muscles of his shoulders and pressed her forehead to his chest with her eyes squeezed shut. She wanted the moment to last forever.
Then he moved in slow, experimental searching for greater depth. She caught her breath with the abrupt escalation of rapture. Greatly daring, she eased upon him. He made a soft sound of half-strangled awe. Probing farther, removing carefully, he caught and established a rhythm with the rich and steady tempo of beating hearts.
Soaring, caught in a state of grace, they rode the magic. The warm water surged and splashed, washing around them while its heated perfume rose to invade their senses. Rising, falling, sloshing, plunging, they clung together while euphoria shook their minds and expanded the inner walls of their hearts.
Holding her tight to his upper body, Rayne meshed his legs with hers and rolled her over so she was above him. She thought for an instant that he was sinking under the water while, astride him, she rode him down. But in a moment, the Roman bath was gone. The water became silver-blue fur, the deep, soft pelts of far-North fox. It shimmered with the orange-gold of firelight that was reflected from a roaring blaze on the hearth of the great Gothic fireplace that towered above them as they lay before it. Over the fireplace mantel was an enormous set of crossed deer antlers. Fiery mulled drinks sat steaming in tankards beside them. Outside, a blizzard assaulted the stone walls with snow and ice.
Resplendent in her nakedness, heated by internal fires, Mara was lit by the leaping flames as she hovered above Rayne. His eyes glowed with something that burned even brighter than the fire. Pressing his hard, strong fingers into her hips to support her, he began once more to move within her.
This was loving with a barbaric edge, a fragile balance between soul-shifting abandon and fierce desperation. Mara felt the rhythmic internal pulsing of its splendor. Her skin glowed with it. Her breath came in hard gasps, and her heart pounded in her ears. Still they contended.
He was elemental, a force unto himself. She had thought she had felt his strength before, but she had been mistaken. It was bountiful, unceasing, and yet dedicated to this one stupendous service. He was taking from her as he willed, yes, but he gave ten-fold in return. Prodigal of his power, he loved with his entire being, as if to stop would be a defeat, or a disaster.
Sweet, sweet disaster, erupting inside with the hot, liquid fury of a volcano. It roared through her, a piercing consummation so strong she cried out and was still, stunned into immobility.
He caught her, tumbling her to her back into the deep, soft pile of the furs. With her hair wrapped around him like a silken shawl, he pressed deep in a final, shuddering paroxysm. It flowed through them, vital and violent, the molten, red-hot rapture of human existence. Limitless, uncontainable, it had no beginning and no end.
It was magic of the highest order. But it was not without cost. They had used the sorcery, and now the price must be paid.
Their skins cooled. They could breathe again. The leaping fire died to glowing coals. The barbaric scene darkened, slowly fading, became once more only a large low bed in a sleeping chamber of the woodland cottage. Beyond the windows, the sunlight was slanting as the earth turned toward the west. They had loved the day away, and now it was nearly done.
Out of the long silence, Mara sighed, reaching to place her palm over Rayne’s heart while she lay against his side. Her voice low and as even as she could make it, she said, “I have need of a small boon. Can you possibly grant it?
“Only ask.”
The response was deep-toned and immediate, but she felt the jolt of his heartbeat. He knew what was coming—how could he not?
She moistened lips that were suddenly dry. It was a moment before she could force words through her throat. “I once thought I could bend in submission to my foe, that it was my duty to abandon all hope of love and to marry for reasons of state. I find I have no taste for that martyrdom, after all.”
“Few would ever consider it,” he said.
She went on, heartened. “I will take that course if I must, but only as a last resort. There is, perhaps, another way.”
“Yes, Princess?” he said when she halted.
“A great wizard once suggested that I choose a champion, someone strong and true to fight in ritual combat for my sake, defending me to the confusion of my enemy.” She swallowed hard and closed her eyes before she went on. “You are the man I choose. If I ask it most politely, will you extend me this honor?”
Wind rose in the space of a heartbeat, whirling into the room. The cottage and the deep forest were whipped away with the dark expansion of time and distance. They whirled into nothingness.
In thunderous transformation, Mara and Rayne returned to the castle battlements. They stood once again where they had been in the beginning, with the light of the setting sun in their faces. Beyond its walls, the baron advanced, confident upon his charger, displaying the might of his men behind him in order to awe the castle into surrender. The men of the garrison, tired and fearful, eyed each other, while women stood in whispering groups with hungry children clinging to their skirts.
Crowned with a simple gold fillet, dressed in fine linen in rich colors, and with a sumptuous cape of fine red cashmere wool around her, Mara gripped the stone in front of her. Her eyes were dark, and her hair shifted around her stiff shoulders in the spring wind. There was a bloom on her high cheekbones, however, and mystery in her eyes.
Rayne did not wear the brown robe and cowl of the wizard, but stood tall behind her in a knight’s tunic and cloak, and with the molded steel of a breastplate armoring his broad chest.
Beyond these minor changes in dress, the moment was the same as when they had left it such a short time—and yet such an eternity—before. Rayne’s voice was deep and not quite steady as he spoke exactly as he had then.
“Will you surrender?”
Mara considered carefully. It was not easy in her distraction. Somewhere deep within was a disturbing sense of loss, as if something important had been forgotten or she had failed to recall a wonderful dream on awakening.
It didn’t matter. The question her wizard had asked of her required a reply. There was only one that she could see.
“Impossible,” Mara said. “Impossible here, impossible now.”
It was the answer to many things, the final result of everything that had passed between them in the isolated woodland, or at least everything that she could recall with any clarity. Slowly, she turned her head to look at him.
He met her gaze for a single instant. In the depths of his eyes was a desolation of corresponding loss allied to steel-hard resolve. Seeing it, she felt the sudden ache of tears.
His cloak billowed around him as he stepped to her side, coming close, so much closer than he had ever dared in the past. His breastplate caught the fading daylight and glowed with a blue sheen. Then he was kneeling before her, the wind ruffling his dark hair as he inclined his head.
“Command me, my princess,” he said.
Chapter Five
The baron swaggered into the audience hall, his every strutting step showing confidence in his victory. Faced with Mara’s challenge to s
ettle the outcome of the siege by right of arms, he laughed aloud and slapped his knee at the jest. That was before Rayne stepped forward to present himself as her champion.
The insignia of deer and longbows, quartered, that was etched into the breastplate Rayne wore caught the light of torches and wax tapers. The baron blanched. A big man, well-fleshed, he seemed to shrink while he glared at Rayne’s features and tall form.
“Who are you?” Ewloe demanded. “What is your rank and title that you dare seek to contest with me?”
Rayne smiled, a movement of the lips that did not affect the chill of his eyes. “I am my father’s son.”
“A nameless bastard, then.”
There was craftiness as well as scorn in the baron’s charge. Mara held her breath, for it was the older man’s right to refuse to meet a man he considered his inferior.
“My father and my mother took each other in handfast marriage,” Rayne said evenly.
“Without witnesses, I’ll vow!” The baron jutted his chin forward as he made the charge.
“Witnessed by God on high. Who else is required? What wedding at the church door can be more sanctified?” Rayne touched his fingers to the insignia he wore. “Oh, yes, and there was one other present, an old man with some renown as a wizard. He left behind a document, properly sealed, testifying to my right to wear the Ewloe arms.”
A handfast marriage—private vows exchanged by a man and a woman in token of their intentions—was more than adequate, Mara realized with some amazement. Such a union was as legally binding as the two people involved wished it to be. The priests might rant about proper blessings, but no such intervention was required; not even a witness was necessary so long as the marriage was undisputed. This meant that Rayne was the true Baron Ewloe, or would have been if his father had not renounced his title.
Something like a snarl appeared on the older man’s face. “It takes more than a name and arms to be a champion. By what right do you stand for the sister of Prince Stephen?”
“By her faith and trust,” came the answer in ringing tones, “also by my sworn oath to protect her. Will you meet me?”
The baron swore as he set his fists on his hips. “I have no dispute with you.”
“The old wizard, my father-of-the-heart, thought otherwise,” Rayne returned with cold precision. “He swore it was you who worked upon the man who sired me, telling him he had sinned against God by taking a bride of Christ for his own. It was you who convinced my father that he must set out on a crusade of repentance. Moreover, no man heard him renounce his lands and title before he departed except you, the man who now holds them.”
“So you think to take them from me by force with your challenge?” Rage mottled the baron’s features.
“The man who found me in a cave kept me safe from you for that purpose, aye, even trained me for it,” Rayne said. “But no. I fight for the freedom of a lady; that is all. The title you gained by stealth will belong to the princess if you are killed in our match.”
Mara realized what Rayne said was true. The baron’s lands and his every privilege would be forfeit if he was defeated. Rayne, though he would meet the man, was only fighting in her name. She was the one who had been attacked; therefore the spoils of the battle would belong to her.
“Then you are twice a fool,” his uncle growled “for you will die for nothing. I will grind you into the dust and make mud of your blood. I will carve your carcass into quarters and feed it to my hounds. And then I will deal with the woman who would turn my kin loose against me.”
Turning on a booted heel, the baron strode from the hall. The great door clanged shut behind him like a clap of doom.
The preparations began. Rayne was a whirlwind of activity, appearing to be everywhere at once. He organized the details of the coming fight, designating the moment when the gate would be opened, also which weapons should be polished and which charger groomed for his use. He scrounged extra food from heaven knew where for the children and the injured. Lending his strength as well as his supervision, he shored up the castle’s defenses against possible surprise attack. In the midnight hours, tirelessly diligent, he traveled the walls to check that the sentries were alert, at the same time putting hope and heart into the defenders.
Sometime in the hours before dawn, Rayne visited the castle chapel. Prayer and fasting were prescribed before a contest of importance, and he must, of course, comply.
Mara, lying sleepless in her bed, thought of him kneeling alone. She imagined him before the altar with his dark head bowed, preparing his soul for whatever the outcome of the meeting might be. She pictured him there while her heart beat with slow, painful throbs inside her chest.
Still, something else troubled her mind. There was an important detail that had been overlooked, something forgotten or left undone. It hovered at the edge of her consciousness, but she could not quite grasp it.
It was in the quiet hour just before first light that it came to her. She sat up in bed with a cry, and then pressed her closed fists to her mouth while she stared into the darkness.
Rayne was admitted into her presence less than an hour later. She was dressed and ready, standing in an antechamber where thick candles glowed in tall floor candelabra of wrought iron and a small fire burned on the hearth. She had been gazing into the flames and thinking about the coffee that had been served to her by a man she thought to be a woodland outlaw. All softness was wiped from her face as she turned to receive her champion.
Without a greeting, without a flicker of acknowledgment for his smile or his easy bow, she said, “Where is your weapon you called a rifle? Why did you not bring it you when we returned from that time and place where we were together?”
Rayne’s face took on a stern cast. He came slowly forward to stand before her. “I could not use such a weapon for this meeting. It was best left behind.”
“Why could you not? Surely the mechanism would work as well in one time as in another?”
“The advantage given to me by its superior destructive force would be too great. To use it to defeat the baron would be as unfair as stooping to sorcery. If I prevail by dishonorable means, then I do not prevail at all.”
She stared at him for long moments while her face flushed with fear and wrath. With his words, he had openly admitted to being both Rayne Winslow and the wizard. She had been the first to make a slip, of course, by showing she knew he could have provided himself with the rifle if he wished it.
Her voice thin, she said, “You made me think this rifle would be your chosen weapon.”
“You assumed it. I never said so.” All warmth was gone from his voice.
“You intended I should so assume,” she returned instantly. “You wanted me to believe there would be no danger of failure.”
Rayne made an abortive movement, as though he would turn from her presence, but then stood absolutely still. A candle flame fluttered on its wick with a popping sound. The gleam of it flickered across the planes of his face, turning it to metallic bronze. His eyes seemed tormented and yet angry, though either expression could well be no more than a trick of the light.
“So,” he said finally. “It was never me you required for your protection, but rather the magic of the rifle.”
“That isn’t true!” She clenched her hands within the folds of her mantel so that her nails cut into her palms. “If you had wanted to be fair, you could have brought two rifles. That would at least have made of it a clean meeting instead of hacking butchery with lance and sword.”
“Death is no easier for being clean.”
She whirled away from him. “That isn’t the point. The point is—”
“Yes?” he asked in harsh demand as she stopped.
She was terrified for him. Still, to say so in plain words would be to let him know how much she cared. How could she do that when she had no idea what, if anything, he felt for her?
She could command him. He was her wizard, her adviser, her right arm; he had pledged his loyalty and wou
ld risk his life to keep her safe. But none of these things were proof of the kind of love that she required. She yearned for that proof with painful longing.
When she did not answer, he went on. “You lack faith, after all, in my ability to defend you.”
“It isn’t that,” she said, turning quickly. “It’s only that you are far too important for your life to be put at risk unnecessarily.”
“Important in what capacity? If you must wed the baron, your days of authority will be over; do not be deceived on this point. You will no longer need a wizard. Will you give me a position as your chamberlain then, knight of the royal sleeping chamber? Will I have the honor of seeing that your bed sheets are clean and sweet, your fire kept burning, and that you have warm water in the morning so you and your lord may wash away the stains of the night? Oh, yes, and perhaps I can take his place while he is away, soothing your bruises and warming your cold feet—among other things.”
She felt heat flare across her cheekbones, but would not look away. “Suppose I said yes, at least to the…the other things you mention? Suppose I said that we might become lovers, meeting in secret?”
“No.”
The word was like a hammer strike against her heart. She absorbed it, allowed no sign of the agony it caused to appear on her features. With some difficulty, she said, “There would be no…obligation to assume that duty, if you did not desire it.”
“I refuse not from lack of desire, but from a surfeit of it,” he said, his gaze steady upon hers. “Stolen kisses and snatched moments while listening for footsteps is not my idea of loving; I require more. It would be only a matter of time before something said or done made the affair plain. You would be beaten, locked away, even killed. I would be gutted and thrown to the dogs—if I were lucky. Of the two courses open to me, this one you propose carries the greater risk.”
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