Mystic Rider

by Patricia Rice

  Rising from the piano bench, she pressed slender fingers to her expressive lips, and her silver-blue eyes narrowed. Her golden ringlets dangled temptingly, and he almost reached to stroke one. Instead of answering him, she tilted her head as if listening to distant bells.

  Ian clenched his staff harder and wondered if the beautiful mate the gods had chosen for him was a lackwit. Perhaps only feeblemindedness could complement his highly trained abilities.

  “The church no longer owns property,” she finally replied, in a voice that sang sweetly, even though her words made little sense to him.

  Frowning, Ian tried again. Without the usual emotional or mental cues he received from those with whom he conversed, he could not tell if he was speaking her French language correctly. His gift for understanding foreign words was not so well developed as those of his kind who traveled more frequently. “The chalice does not belong to your church. It belongs to — ”

  He could not explain Aelynn. The ring of silence would not allow it. He wished he had more experience in the Outside World so he could circumnavigate these limitations as easily as Kiernan did. But this was his first time, and he must think twice about everything he said.

  “The chalice belongs to me,” he decided to say. The gods would forgive him since the sacred object belonged to all of Aelynn.

  Her eyes widened in shock. He stole a moment to admire the long golden brown lashes that made her eyes appear to fill half her face. He tried to concentrate on her expression, but he was weary and as easily tempted as any man, perhaps more so, given his extended abstinence. His gaze fell to the high curves of her creamy bosom framed in a filmy froth of lace. He desperately wished to touch her to see whether she was real or just a vision.

  “Someone stole your chalice?” she asked with a perplexity that indicated he still wasn’t communicating clearly.

  “Exactly,” he agreed, to keep the confusing conversation to a minimum. “I am willing to pay for its return.”

  * * *

  Chantal drifted back to her seat at the piano, away from her disturbingly intense awareness of her robed visitor. She assumed the maid had allowed him in because he was a man of the cloth. The erotic timbre of the monk’s voice thrilled her to the marrow, which must border on religious perversion.

  Pauline would say she had been too long without a man, but Chantal had never had much interest in that part of her marriage. Jean used to say she lived inside her head, not her body. She wasn’t entirely certain that was true either. She knew desire. She often woke in the night overheated by inappropriate dreams. She recognized the devil’s need rising in her now. She’d simply never known a particular man who inspired it, and certainly not a monk!

  She swallowed hard and tried to quell her reaction.

  “Why do you think I have your chalice?” she asked, simply because her thoughts were too rattled to allow her to know what else to say. She needed to render his stimulating voice into music that she understood. Perhaps then she would be able to think clearly.

  “I saw you with the cup,” the monk replied, not raising his rich voice.

  She wanted to explore his intonation, understand the highly unusual harmonies she heard when he spoke. She relied on her ear for character when she listened to people speak, but with this man, her physical excitement hampered her understanding.

  She turned her back on him and hit a note on the keyboard, attempting to locate the key that resonated with his pitch. He was a baritone. A deep reed instrument would more accurately represent it. “How could you have seen me, if you just arrived?”

  This was probably the most senseless conversation she’d ever engaged in, but they seemed to be talking on different planes. They hadn’t even been introduced.

  She didn’t hear him move, yet he was suddenly standing so close that she could feel his heat. Did she imagine it, or did she sense him resisting a desire to force her to face him?

  “All things are possible if looked upon from the right angle,” he said.

  His voice vibrated chords of desire that she’d thought long lost. Rather than respond to his declaration or oddly compelling attraction, she found the right key, then played a few notes to reproduce the rise and fall of his voice. She often did this when someone puzzled her.

  But what she felt wasn’t precisely puzzlement. Like a tuning fork, the depths and honesty of his desire resonated with her own, and excited her beyond measure. She simply didn’t understand why or how this was happening.

  On some primitive level, they were connecting physically. The notes of his voice whispered sweet secrets in her inner ear. He longed to touch her!

  She didn’t know whether to be flattered or appalled. Mostly, she was basely thrilled. It seemed she hadn’t entirely dried up from disuse as Pauline had predicted.

  “Do you have the chalice or not?” he asked patiently.

  Do you want me or not? is what she heard. He may as well have spoken inside her head, so certain was she that he was a hairsbreadth from circling her waist like a lover. She could almost feel his kiss upon her nape, and the fine hairs there rose in anticipation.

  Rather than act on her imagination, she responded with the piano keys that said I want you very much. It was a game she played, one no one else could participate in. Only musicians could hear music speak, and few musicians listened.

  Behind her, the monk stiffened. In the polished surface of the piano she saw him lift his hand…. She held her breath, but he fisted his fingers and dragged them back to his side. Surely he could not understand her music! She closed her eyes and drank in his enthralling presence.

  He did not smell like an unbathed monk. Despite his insistence that he had just arrived, he radiated the fresh, clean scent of an ocean breeze. She’d grown up near Le Havre. She missed the quiet lap of waves, the cries of gulls. This man reminded her of happier times.

  In response to her unusual joy, her fingers played an arpeggio of notes of their own accord, flying up and down the scale, communicating the passion she hid inside her, the raw emotion she never displayed. One of her curls flew loose and slipped along her jaw.

  Shockingly, the stranger reached out and caught it, sliding the curl between exploratory fingers before tucking it behind her ear. “I have never met anyone as soft as you,” he murmured with a puzzled awe that whispered through her ear to her fingers, producing provocative chords. “I could never have imagined…”

  She gasped as his fingertips grazed her nape. His touch was flame, and she was tinder. She was suddenly aware of the stimulating fragrance of her musky perfume blending with his masculine scent, and her breasts swelled with a need long denied.

  “I have many chalices,” she countered, playing faster to hide her shiver of desire. “Most came from my mother, or as wedding gifts. They are mine.”

  He generated intense heat, though the salon was chilly. He was wider and broader than she was, and she was alone with him. She had no fear for her safety, however. Instead, she was imagining improbable scenes of rising from the bench and turning into his arms…. No one would come unless she called —

  “You are married?” he asked.

  Was it her own disappointment she heard in his inflection? Or his? She used both hands to find the keys but couldn’t tell. Something was happening to the notes. They were blending, harmonizing — His notes were entwining with hers.

  “Widowed,” she answered curtly, becoming a little afraid of her frenzy. She never acted on the turbulence in her heart.

  She jerked her fingers from the piano before they smoldered, and closed the lid. Attempting a less subordinate position, she stood and turned her back on the keyboard to face the man who had her behaving like a foolish adolescent.

  “Such magnificence,” he muttered in a dazed voice. Now that he could see her face, he stroked her chin with a wonder she felt through his touch. “Like a rare gem among the coals…”

  Bracing her hands on the mahogany piano lid behind her, Chantal tilted her head to study this s
tartling stranger. Despite, or perhaps because of, his concealing garb, his…masculinity …was overwhelming. The cowl shadowed his face, but she knew when his gaze dropped to her bosom. Her nipples sharpened to stiff points.

  Impatiently, he shook back the hood. It fell to his wide shoulders, and eyes the sapphire of the deep blue sea met hers. She nearly evaporated with the power of them.

  May the saints be praised, but he was the most striking man she had ever met. Coal black hair rippled from the peak on his forehead, tied back in a thick sheaf. She wanted to stroke it, to see whether the waves were real or some artfully constructed wig.

  Altogether, his features weren’t handsome, and a far cry from pretty. They were — manly. Like the rest of him. Hard ridges for cheekbones, deep-set eyes that burned like coal fires, a sharp nose, and full, sensual lips that parted to reveal white, even teeth as his body slanted closer.

  “I hear the music even when you do not play,” he said in wonder, whispering a kiss along the line of her jaw.

  She gasped and bent backward into the piano. Her breasts strained at her thin bodice, and he noticed. Heaven help her, but his gaze dipped deliberately to her cleavage, and her nether parts moistened.

  “Widowed.” He repeated her earlier word with interest, capturing one of her carefully constructed curls and wrapping it around his finger. “The music you make” — he hesitated, as if looking for words — “it speaks to me.”

  She gasped. He could hear her notes? Her words? He knew what she’d played? Impossible.

  “As your voice speaks to me,” she tried to say lightly. She meant to skirt around him, but somehow she got lost in his eyes and forgot.

  “We do not have” — he hesitated again — “music…where I come from. I like this manner of speech.” His voice rumbled deeply, an erotic massage of her overly sensitized nerve endings.

  “You’re a man of the cloth,” she protested, but she knew it was already too late. She heard the hunger in his voice, felt it in her bones, and somehow her logical mind slipped away, leaving her prone to the desires she’d denied for too long. Gravity drew them together.

  “I am a man, yes,” he agreed, although puzzlement creased his brow. He rested his hands against the piano on either side of her, entrapping her and pressing closer. “But my clothes are meaningless. If your music speaks truly, material things are no impediment to what we crave.”

  Amazingly, she still did not fear his encroachment, so lost was she in the wonder of his voice. Before she had the presence of mind to make the leap from man of the cloth to clothes, he pressed her back against the piano with his length and drove one hand into her chignon, sending pins flying across the Aubusson carpet.

  The weight of him heated her breasts and lower parts. Releasing the safety of the piano, she rested her hands on the robe over his chest, pushing at him in a futile effort to deny the physical sensation of this man and her craving for what he offered. Chantal knew she should push harder, but curiosity and the compelling view of his sensual lips held her captive.

  Instead of shoving him away, her hands drifted upward, and scandalously, she marveled aloud, “You have the broadest shoulders. I love broad shoulders on a man.”

  He cupped her head with a strong hand, forcing her to look at him while his thumb traced an exploratory path across her cheek, paralyzing her with his gentleness. “Not the broadest,” he murmured honestly, “but I know more than most men.”

  Before she could respond to this confusing statement — know more about what? — his other arm captured her waist, crushing her fragile skirt and bringing her even closer. She could no longer free herself if she wanted. His robe concealed no soft priest but iron-solid muscle.

  Despite the temptation of his caress, she opened her mouth to protest. She meant to protest, really. But his lips finally reached hers, and his tongue took possession of her breath, and all rational thought ceased.

  Effortlessly, he lifted her limp form, crushing her in his embrace. Her skirts and petticoats protected her from feeling much below her waist, but she grasped his shoulders for balance and absorbed their magnificent strength while drinking in his kisses. She drowned beneath his hungry command, letting the nectar of his breath fill her starving soul.

  A little voice far in the back of her head tried reasoning with her, but she slammed the door on reason. She wanted. He wanted. It seemed so simple.

  He lifted her onto the lid covering the piano keys, propping her against the back while he made short work of the fastenings beneath the bow at her gown’s gauzy neckline. No man had touched her in such a fashion in so long….

  He caught her gasp with his mouth as his marauding fingers slipped beneath the muslin and played a sinful tune on her aroused nipple. Desire shot straight to her loins. She moaned her pleasure and arched into his palm so he could touch more of her.

  “What matter of wonder you are,” he murmured in foreign accents that warmed her inner ear, “to both soothe and arouse. My pardon, but I cannot resist — ”

  He cupped her buttocks, lifting her from the piano lid to press her shoulders against the wall so they could feel more of each other. She needed no more encouragement to wrap her legs around his waist and return his fervent kisses, drowning in the avid possession of his tongue. She no longer thought at all, but responded to the prowess of pure male animal.

  He growled against her mouth. His whiskers scraped her cheek, but the fresh scent of his skin filled her with longing. Her petticoats fell back until the heat of his sex pulsed where she needed to be filled. He carried no sword on his hip as gentlemen did. He’d left his staff leaning against the furniture. But he was not weaponless. Beneath his robe he was equipped as all men were. His robe dropped to the floor with a couple of shrugs, and supple leather breeches chafed her thighs.

  He adjusted her higher, releasing her breast to tug her skirts free and find her needy flesh. Chantal cried out when his thumb parted her sex and caressed her there.

  He nipped her lips, then lowered his head to suckle her breast at the same time that he expertly stroked the pulsing bud between her legs.

  Chantal exploded in spasms of pure pleasure. Weeping, clinging, she was barely able to hold on while she surrendered to an ecstasy she’d seldom experienced. Had Jean been too young to know that they could enjoy this even when the consumption had weakened him? Why had she not known that the pleasure of simply touching could be so grand?

  “You belong to me,” the monk rumbled gruffly, holding her tight so she did not fall.

  She did not know if she heard aright, for her assailant took that moment to shove aside the flap of his breeches. Before she had fully recovered her whirling senses, he thrust the head of his thick erection between the folds of flesh moistened by her pleasure.

  Frightened, Chantal stiffened and tried to pull away, but it was far, far too late to protest. The stranger spread the strong trunks of his legs, stretching her wider and opening her completely before bringing her down on himself so swiftly and surely that she shattered.

  She may even have blacked out, so overwhelming was the impalement of her long unused body.

  The pressure completely filled her emptiness. In moments, she was weeping with pleasure, tears flowing down her cheeks as she clung to his hair while he thrust higher, deeper. She feared he had surely penetrated to her very soul. As she came apart in his arms a second time, he muffled a cry of triumph and flooded her with the thick, hot essence that had the potential to tie her to him for all time.

  Clasping her tightly in his arms, her powerful lover moaned his rapture against her mouth, then fell still against her while they gathered their breaths. Gently, he tasted her tears. He seemed to hesitate, waiting, as if she should say or do something in the aftermath of such glorious insanity.

  But she was too spent. She leaned her head against his broad shoulder and allowed him to carry her to the chaise longue.

  “No child came of this,” he informed her courteously, almost with disappointment. “But t
here will be other opportunities. It is good to verify that we share equal enjoyment of this act.”

  His inflection was foreign. She didn’t even know his name. She only knew she trusted him because of the character revealed in his voice.

  Embarrassed, she couldn’t open her eyes while he towered over her. Searching for reality, she absorbed the pain where he’d entered her, felt the whisker burns on her cheek, and knew her mouth was swollen. Still, she wanted him again, ached for a repetition of the act, perhaps in her perfumed bed. She wanted him naked. She throbbed with desire as she never had before.

  He brushed aside her skirts — they hadn’t even undressed! — and sat near her hip. She couldn’t possibly keep her eyes closed any longer. Fearing that she had imagined him, she opened her lids to gaze into strange dark eyes that reflected the dying light from the windows. She could have sworn she saw straight to his soul, so transparent were his pupils.

  He’d fastened his breeches but not yet donned his robe, so she could see more of the square shape of his shoulders, the powerful strength of his chest beneath a finely woven linen shirt, the narrowness of his hips. He didn’t need the pretty beauty of court nobles. He was beautiful in his strength as a man.

  “Who are you?” she finally had enough sense to ask. Remembering the monk’s robe, she continued, “Surely you are no celibate.”

  He seemed to consider for a moment before answering in a clumsy French accent, “Ian d’Olympe. Again, I apologize for my discourtesy, but not for what we have done. You have granted me a gift greater than I deserve, and I thank you. But I still must have the chalice.”

  “I will have the servants bring every chalice in the house, and you may choose among them,” she suggested generously. She probably ought to be calling for help instead of offering access to her entire household, but she was still acting on the honesty she heard in his voice. She did not detect a single untrue note in him.

  “I wish only the silver one with the gem-encrusted stem. It is awkward and ugly, and by itself, it is of no use to anyone.”