Bound By Blood

by Kimberly Hoyt

  “We did it,” she whispered as they walked. “Do you feel as good as you look?” Laurel’s steps were small and quick beside him.

  He turned his gaze down over her, dark with the promise of passion. He would have her, said that look. His wolfish grin echoed the sentiment.

  “You will see for yourself in five minutes, lady.”

  His stalking gait made no attempt to be unhurried. Heads bowed as he passed in chain and leather, echoes of Your Grace, my lady. My lord, my lady, falling in their wake.

  Once again in his element, no matter what was to come, he still commanded the respect and the awe that his power and position brought. Intoxicated with it, empowered by a surge of adrenaline, he needed this reminder that he was still a man. Still desirable to her.

  When they reached his apartments, his man threw open the door, and to those servants lingering in the antechamber, he said, “leave us,” in a tone not to be mistaken. He began to unbuckle his sword belt even as the door closed behind them and he turned to regard her with possession in his eyes. The gown was the same turquoise that accentuated her pale hair and tanned skin.

  “If you wish not to have your dress spoiled, sweethot, I suggest you remove it with haste.”

  Looking at her, he had no doubt about her desire for him. It was in the way she stood with a subtle come-hither arch in her spine, the sultry mast of her lashes. “I would if I could, my lord,” she said, turning to show him the fastenings that marched up her back.

  His sword and belt hit the floor with a clatter, and beyond its removal he had no patience to peel through the clothing he wore. Still clad in leather and chain, gloves on his hands and dark boots to his thighs, he approached her in two stalking steps, his eyes glowing at the sensual picture she presented. She was so small. So easily moved when he snaked a strong hand to her hip and brought her hard and quick up against his tall, solid body, making her gasp and shiver.

  He was rough and lusty as he reached around and used his leather clad hands to lift her breasts from the corset and bodice of her dress, cupping them from behind. She pressed them wantonly into his touch, and he plucked and rolled her nipples until she moaned for him. His hips pressed in, hard and fast against her, and he made no apologies for his overbearing passion. “Laurel.” Her name was a growl of desire on his tongue.

  “Lover,” she whispered in return.

  It was all he gave her time to say before he turned her and pushed her back on the edge of his big bed. Through the slit in his breeches he released his engorged flesh, watching as she laid back and opened her knees for him, the layers of gossamer dress like silk on her skin.

  His gloved hands spent no chivalry on the fragile material, pushing it roughly up to bare her flesh to his hungry gaze. His intensity was as sharp as a razor’s edge in those moments. Lust and need almost tangible on the air. This was the type of passion that bards composed songs about, that poets turned into sonnets, that playwrights tried to capture on stage. It was the love that people only dreamed of, a feeling intense enough to carry through time and space.

  His obsession with her was dark, dangerous, powerful, a thing that flung her above King, God, and country in his heart. It was what men died for; and he would.

  But not just yet.

  Not until he’d branded the memory of his passion on her body so deep, so hot that she would never forget what it felt like to lay beneath him, to be taken by him.

  Their hands were eager and urgent on each other. She held and stroked him as, one knee on the bed between her thighs, he rolled the most exquisitely sensitive part of her between leather encased fingers. Her hips rocked against the sensation, and her eyes were lidded with passion that inflamed him.

  When he tired of the layers that numbed his sense of touch, he brought his hand to his mouth and ripped the glove free with his teeth, tossing it aside. He wanted to feel her soft and wet beneath his fingertips, but he took a second to gaze down over her. She looked ethereal on the bed, a vision in blue with the dress hiked around her silky thighs. Her angelic golden hair tumbled across the coverlet, and her exposed nipples were pink and hard for him.

  “I hope you are ready, sweethot,” he said, and his words were ragged edged and rough.

  “For the rest of my life,“ she whispered. The tenderness in her eyes was poignant, tugging at his heart and making his flesh buck against her caressing fingers.

  His hand smeared roughly against her thigh, spreading her open for him as he slid up over her, chain and leather abrasive on her bared breasts. She gave him a final stroke before her hands rose to anchor to his chain covered shoulders. He took her mouth, positioning his hips so he could tease her with shallow strokes as his tongue plunged deep, and he groaned when hers danced so delicately in return.

  He drew his hips back, poised against her slick flesh, a second away from ramming himself ho--

  Three hard knocks sounded on the door.

  The growl that erupted from his chest sounded battle-worthy. It was a warning that layered over her more feminine groan. He lowered his dark head and sucked hard and fast on one delicate nipple. When he brought his head up she nipped along his hard jaw, making a shudder coarse through him.

  Again, knuckles rapped against the door.

  His fist hit the bed and his growl resonated like thunder.

  “My lord.” The voice outside the door sounded anxious. “A message from Her Majesty, Queen Anne.”

  Sebastian’s teeth snapped together so hard in his frustration it was a miracle they didn’t shatter. Laurel moaned something that sounded like no.

  He backed down her body, pausing to lash his tongue between her spread thighs and give her a possessive suck before he rose. Securing his breeches, he turned and stalked to the door, the thunderous expression he wore enough to make sane men scatter. Slamming the bolt back with a resounding metal groan, he almost tore the door from the hinges as he opened it.

  The hapless maid on the other side looked up at him with wide, frightened eyes. He snatched the letter from her, his temper dark. “Does she await my reply?” Did he have to read it now?

  She swallowed, stammering as she spoke. “S … she said to deliver it … immediately … and that it was of the utmost importance.”

  Sebastian glanced back at Laurel where she lay. She’d arranged her dress over her nakedness and tucked her knees demurely to the side. Still she tempted him more than any other woman he had known, God help him.

  He grunted at the maid, barely noticing her wide-eyed fright. “Wait,” he commanded, slamming the door. Turning, he watched Laurel as his fingers broke the seal on the paper. She was like a siren from fables of old, and all he could think of was to be buried deep inside her. Instead, all he had for his trouble was frustration and the scrawl of the Queen’s words across the page.

  The south solar immediately. A.

  Sebastian was sorely tempted to ignore the summons. With a tug of guilt, he realized that he had spared no thought toward Anne in days. Or Elizabeth. It was with her in mind, and the fear that something was amiss with her, that he decided to meet with the Queen.

  Crushing the note in his fist, he lunged forward to throw it like he was pitching a spear. He shoved his hand through his dark hair, and pivoted around to come striding back toward the bed where Laurel lay. Demure, but so wantonly wet for him he knew.

  Taking up her hand, he kissed her delicate knuckles and then slid her palm down over the rough chain mail he wore, bringing it to cup him where he strained against his breeches. The kiss he pressed on her lips was quick and deep.

  “Wait for me, I will not be long detained,” he rasped, her breathless exhale arousing his senses.

  “I will,” she promised, though he could see by the play of emotion in her eyes that she was not pleased by the development.

  Smooth and dangerous he turned toward the door, collecting his sword belt en route and buckling it around his lean hips. With one more possessive, hot-eyed glance back at her, he stepped out, the door closing
on her indignant huff of breath.

  Sebastian was obliged to try to rein in his passion as he walked the torch-lit corridors toward the solar. Outside, a storm had darkened the sky, and thunder boomed beyond the palace walls. It was a good match for his present mood.

  He wanted this time with Laurel, because he knew his own was running short. His and Anne’s, he realized, given what he had learned about history when he’d been in the modern era.

  She would soon be dead.

  His wife, the only woman he had loved before Laurel.

  And yet even as he acknowledged that, he also had to admit to himself that the love he had once held for Anne paled in comparison to that which he felt for Laurel. His love for Anne had been the love of a boy. He was a man now, and what he wanted awaited him in his chamber, blue-eyed and bold.

  Slipping into the solar, Sebastian was hit with the realization that this would, in all likelihood, be the last time he saw Anne. It softened him somewhat, and he was further tempered when he saw the glint of tears on her cheeks. Standing near the window in a green velvet cloak with the hood pushed back, her fragile features were pale and anxious, illuminated by the flash of lightning. She had left her dark hair unbound, and it tumbled down her back in a way that once would have aroused him.

  “My lady,” he greeted her, flourishing a small bow. For all the courtliness of his manners, he looked formidable as he straightened.

  “Oh Thorn,” she cried, the cloak fluttering at her heels as she rushed toward him. Her arms flung around his neck with a need she had not displayed in many years, and for a moment the sensation sent him reeling.

  “Have you heard that Mark was arrested? Last night, but they will not say why. And this morning, this morning, they came for George. My brother is in the tower.”

  Sebastian wrapped one arm around her back, unable to deny her some small comfort in this hour of her need. His desire was not engaged, not in that moment, not with Anne. His desire lived and breathed with the woman waiting in his bed. But he could spare his childhood love his sympathy and his grief.

  “On what charges?” he asked, though given everything he had learned in the modern era, he already knew. Mark, George, Anne, himself, and so many others would lose their lives to the King’s capricious passions. For a wild moment he wanted to warn her, to tell her to run. But he knew it was too late for that. She would never be allowed to leave the palace.

  They were both trapped.

  Holding her against his battle-hardened body, he gazed down at her. She looked stricken and lost, hitching against him with silent sobs.

  “I know not, I know not, Thorn. You have great influence with the men of the court. Someone knows something. Will you not inquire for me? Please. I must know the charges or even the rumors.”

  Sebastian was burdened by the truth that he carried, the knowledge he could not share with her. His eyes brimmed with sympathy, though they had lost the passion he once possessed for her.

  “I will inquire, Anne,” he rumbled. “Do not worry. All will … all will be as it should be.” The words almost stuck in his throat as he tried to reassure her. He remembered the girl she had once been, vibrant, carefree, seductive … until Henry. His gut churned to consider her pretty neck on the block, this woman he had once loved.

  “Do you think?”

  “Yes.” He nearly choked on the lie. “Now take your mind from these dark tidings. Send for your daughter and spend the afternoon with her.” Her daughter, and his daughter too. But unlike Anne, he would have the opportunity to know her.

  He knew she thought he suggested it as a distraction. Really, he wanted her to have a final moment with her daughter … before.

  “I do not know that he will let me see her, but yes. Henry refuses to meet with me.”

  Sebastian swept his leather encased thumb against her cheek, swiping away the tears that had collected.

  “Will you find me when you --” Anne was interrupted by four discreet knocks on the solar door. She sucked in a breath. “I must go. Find me,” she whispered to him, leaning up on her toes to kiss his mouth.

  He found he could not deny her this last remnant of the passion they had once shared. Cupping her head, he kissed her mouth, warm and regretful.

  “I loved you truly, Anne.” He murmured the words as she slipped toward the door, hoping she might find some solace in them in the troubled days to come. For a moment he stood there and gave in to his grief for her, staring at the spot where she disappeared.

  He had loved her once with the vigor of youth. It was the love of his maturity that eventually propelled him into motion. With a sense of urgency, he departed the solar and backtracked through the corridors toward his apartments, toward Laurel. Needing her. Wanting her with every fiber of his being. He prayed God would grant him this one moment to have with her, half expecting to be apprehended as he made for the door to his rooms.

  It was not that he feared his arrest, or even his torture. It was leaving her that truly struck at his heart. He knew it was only the next step in their dance through time, but he burned to have her, to feel her once more time while he was alive, a man. To love her before he became like the cold and pale ones. He wanted her while his blood ran hot and desire burned wild.

  His men inclined their heads -- my lord -- as he passed, his arm thumping the door open only to slam it shut again behind him. His eyes shot to where Laurel lay on his bed. The echo the bolt made as he slammed it home was lost in the crash of thunder as dark and promising as the grin he gave her. Her own smile bloomed slow, like a hothouse flower, dimpling her cheek.

  The storm was furious beyond the palace, and the wind flung one casement wide to usher in the scent of rain. It paled in comparison to the storm in his eyes.

  Sebastian stripped free his sword belt, and tore the remaining leather glove from his hand. His boots thudded on the stones as he approached and she opened her hand to him in invitation.

  “Sweethot,” he rasped, one knee denting the bed as he leaned down to kiss her mouth, lingering and heated. He trailed down to her breasts, peppering kisses and whiskered abrasions, his tongue wending around the pale perfection of her nipples. Her hand threaded into his dark hair, and she arched her back, opening her thighs as their passion ignited as though he had never left. Nothing about her escaped his notice; the scent and softness of her skin, the way she arched her body, inviting him, the tug and scrape of her nails in his hair. These were memories he wanted to carry with him into darkness. So that in his despair he would have them to remind him.

  Quick now, he once again pushed her dress to her thighs, using his other hand to release his swollen flesh from the prison of his breeches. Chain and leather pressed cold and hard against her parted thighs, and he flicked the taut bud of nerves at her center with a deft fingertip until she was writhing and moaning. Impetuous. Passionate.

  Broad and masculine, limned in the flicker-flash of lightning, his hand wrapped around the veined shaft as he positioned himself against her. His gaze never left her eyes as he pressed inside with exquisite slowness. “Feel me,” he groaned. Feel him strong and vital and alive.

  “I do. Always,” she promised, the end of the word strung out into a moan as he thrust deep and hard inside her. Absorbing the shock with a gasp, she ground against him, tempting and luring. She was tight, slick, her hands urgent and demanding on his back. He gazed down over her, wanting to remember every second, every sound, each movement. Her pleasure. Her pain.

  Rough and possessive, he kneaded her breast. He meant not to punish her, but to stamp the ache of his passion bone deep on this woman. To grind himself deeper than flesh and bone, an imprint on her soul that would haunt her long after his world went dark and his blood ran cold.

  “Say you will remember me,” he growled. “Say you will remember me like this.” With the last word, he thrust to the hilt, throbbing with vitality and life inside her.

  She cried out, “Sebastian,” writhing her hips and arching her spine beneath him.
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  “I will always remember you like this,” she promised with powerful poignancy. “There is nothing about you that I will ever for-- get.” Her word was broken by another quick, powerful buck of his hips.

  Later, in the darkness ahead, he would relive these moments. When the torturer’s knives cut his skin, he would escape to this here and now, to this memory they created. He would hear her words, his name, relive their passion in snatches and snippets when the pain began to pull him under. But he was far from broken yet. Strong and virile still as he leaned up and over her, all the better to grind deep and thrust with greater speed. He was savage in those moments, his chain and leather barbaric against the tenderness of her skin, the froth of her pretty dress. Stripped of human civility, he drove into her again and again, until his skin glistened with sweat and his breath gusted against her like desert winds.

  As the storm continued to rage over his shoulder, their passion burned hotter, harder, raging until they came undone in each other’s arms. And even as they lost themselves in the pleasure, Sebastian didn’t miss the solitary tear that slid from the corner of her eye.

  “I love you, I love you,” she whispered fervent and breathless near his ear. “For the rest of my life.”

  Long moments later, Sebastian rolled to his back and urged her to straddle his hips. He still wanted to touch her despite that the intense urgency of their lust had been spent. Caressing her breasts and bared shoulders, he reveled in the open adoration she wore for him.

  “Mark has been arrested. And Anne’s brother George,” he said as he smoothed back the hair from her neck, touching her with tenderness and great affection. “They will come for me soon.” Noting the drying track of a tear at her temple, he thumbed it gently. “You must promise not to fear for me. I am strong,” he told her, projecting an impervious, confident mood.

  “How soon? Tomorrow?” she asked, pausing before she continued. “I’ll try not to be afraid.”