The Holding - Book 1 in The Medieval Knights Series

by Claudia Dain

  She grew bolder, touching his back with long strokes, watching the play of muscle ripple the ivory of his skin. Moving to his front, Cathryn laid a soft hand against his cheek, her fingertips resting near the long curl of his lashes. The blaze and glitter of his eyes almost seared her.

  But she did not pull away her hand.

  With one hand on his cheek, she slid the other down the tapering line of chest and waist to hip and paused with her hand upon his naked hip. Amazingly, his skin was almost hairless at that spot, and she stroked it lingeringly, allowing her fingers to graze behind to the hard mound of his buttock.

  The faintest growl rumbled in William's throat and she jerked back, startled. She had almost forgotten he was a living man so enraptured was she with the perfection of his form. Looking back into his steely eyes, she remembered with a start that he was a man very much alive.

  Her backward flight was so abrupt and so unplanned that she stumbled and landed on the bed, flat on her back.

  William grinned as only a man can grin when a naked woman appears in his bed, and said lazily, "You had but to ask, Cathryn. Of course I will recline with you. Tonight I am in attendance upon you and will follow your inclination."

  With those words, her nervousness at her position was replaced with the urge to laugh. Truly, the man would be capable of urging a chuckle from her on her deathbed.

  The urge to laugh was soon swallowed by another urge even less familiar to her. His kiss, so delicate, plucked away all thoughts save one: she liked his mouth on hers. With the tip of his tongue, he explored her mouth, stopping now and again to nibble on her lower lip. It was a kiss most sensual. Her flesh seemed afire and she writhed, her movements sensuous in the extreme, though she did not know it.

  William did not touch her unless she initiated it by moving her body against his; so it was that her breast nudged his hand, seeking a caress with wordless eloquence, and when he touched her there, his fingers plucking gently at her nipple, she arched beneath his hand.

  "I almost expect to hear you purr, Cat, you are so warm," he said softly.

  Cathryn reacted like a cat doused with ice water. "Do not call me Cat!" she cried out hoarsely.

  It had happened each time before, and at just such a moment. He had thought that it was their physical bonding that caused her to go stiff in his arms. Mayhap it was more than that.

  He did not move. He was as still as she. The sound of the fire and of her labored breathing were the only noises, yet William believed that Lambert lurked within their chamber with them.

  Taking Cathryn in his arms, he lay down facing her, nestling her against him and stroking her back.

  "What is it, Cathryn?" he questioned softly, trying to split the heavy silence that had fallen like a sword between them.

  But Cathryn, a master at regaining her composure, would not answer. She pushed against his chest with the palms of her hands in a polite struggle to be released.

  "'Tis a name I do not care for," she said simply, hoping the matter would end there.

  William understood. He understood that she had retreated from him, closing all roads between them. He understood that he would need to cause a fire to blaze in her again before she would melt against him. But this time it would not be the fire of passion. This time he would fire her anger.

  Picking up a thick strand of her hair, he flicked it casually against her nipples.

  "That is strange," he said conversationally. "Cat is a name that suits you well. The way you arch and rub against me, the sleek grace of your form. Yea," he said against her erect nipples, causing them to tighten even more, "you are a most sensual cat."

  He cast her hair aside, sweeping it behind her shoulders so that her breasts were revealed to him without defensive covering. He covered one small mound with the flat of his hand, rubbing the sensitive peak with the callused heel of his hand.

  "Cat," he whispered just above her ear, "you are soft. Wrap yourself around me, Cat. Purr your pleasure, Cat, and I will stroke you."

  "Do not call me Cat!" she shouted, pushing his hand from her frantically, fighting to escape his touch, shaking violently.

  "Why, Cathryn?" he questioned again, his voice as hard as gravel beneath bare feet.

  Her arms continued to flail against him, but he was not moved. She could no longer escape the pain that lay like a wolf waiting to destroy her in the black depths of her soul.

  Sobs, so long held back, rushed up and now choked her. Wrapping her arms around her torso, trying to keep herself from being torn asunder by the force of those racking sobs, Cathryn rocked herself with the wordless misery of a child.

  "Cathryn," he murmured.

  "He called me Cat," she said in a sob, the words wet upon her tongue.

  She turned away from him and continued her mindless rocking. William reached out his warm hand and rubbed her back, his hand tracing the bumps of her spine.

  "He called me Cat," she repeated, her cries almost making her words unrecognizable. "He called me Cat and laughed when he said it. He called me Cat every time... every time."

  And when her husband touched her and called her Cat, she saw Lambert, felt Lambert's hands upon her. This he understood. He watched her rocking and felt her sobbing cries as if they were his own. She was so thin, and she had borne so much in Greneforde's name.

  He longed to heal her.

  He longed to kill Lambert.

  "He called me Cat and nothing else," she continued, the words bubbling up from her as from a spring, "in the hearing of his people. And mine."

  No man addressed a lady with such casual disregard. To do so was to strip her of her rank and to heap humiliation upon her. This Lambert had done.

  "And when I walked in the yard, I would hear the sounds of his men meowing, the high-pitched calls echoing against the walls."

  Yes, he could imagine it. The men, following the sordid example of their master, and Cathryn alone against them all. And he knew how she had responded to their base cruelty: with her head held high and with her dignity unconquered. Such was her courage and her pride that, in the depths of profound defeat—the defeat of her lands, her home, her people, and her body—she had sought and achieved a victory. She had let no one witness the evidence of her shame and loss. Until now.

  Turning her in his arms, he rocked with her, cradling her as easily as he would a heartsick child, for so she was. She did not turn to him, yet she did not fight him. Eventually her tears stopped. Her rocking did not, and he rocked with her, holding her against his warmth and his strength, willing her to avail herself of both.

  Finally she lay still.

  "I ask you again," he said with gentle force, holding her against his chest. "Are you clean, lady?"

  Cathryn squirmed until she could see his face. With eyes as lifeless and hopeless as those of a corpse, she answered him.

  "Nay. I will never be clean."

  "You are wrong, Cathryn."

  Again he had pricked her anger, though this time it was unintentional.

  "Of all matters on earth which man may know," she spit out, "in this one I am expert. I am not clean! His seed stains me inside and out. I am as soiled linen, fit only for the fire."

  "Again you are wrong," William argued, his voice low and vibrating. "Did not our Christ's sacrifice wash us whiter than snow? Is there any sin that man can devise that can outpace our Lord? Have you forgotten that you are redeemed, having been washed in Christ's sacrificial blood?"

  His eyes were shards that she would have avoided if she could, but he held her firm and forced her to face him and his words.

  "Do you not know," he continued more calmly, "that Lambert's relationship with you is as water to blood? I joined my life, my blood, to yours, Cathryn, the moment we were wed. All that has passed before cannot wash away or dilute the blood bond we share."

  His words were sweet, and she longed to believe him, but she could not. The stain of her sin was great, greater than even the force of William le Brouillard.

&nbs
p; William read her rejection of his words in the darkness of her eyes.

  "You are my wife, Cathryn, bound to me throughout this life. You share my blood, which I would shed gladly in defense of you," he stated. "What went before has no part in this; indeed, it is so weak as to be candle flame to bonfire. You are my wife," he repeated with heat. "You have never been so joined. Trust me," he implored. "I would show you the fire so that you will know what a dim candle has lit your world."

  His words tore at her, beckoning her from the safe if lonely place she had constructed for herself.

  "I would love you, Cathryn," he whispered against her hair, and then his hands moved upon her. They moved as she had yearned for them to move before, but now she was not in control and William would not be stopped.

  Both hands in play, he caressed her bosom until both peaks throbbed against his palms. He played upon her nipples till she scarcely could remember a time when he had not had her under his hands.

  With kisses deep he smothered anything she would have said to stop him, and, after so little a span of time, she could think of no words to halt his progress. His tongue plunged into her mouth, and he was welcomed. His seduction was both so rapid and so heated that she did not have time to be reluctant. He carried her away on a tide of his own making, and she found no thought in her head to dislike it. In truth, her mind was wiped clean of all thought.

  And so William had designed.

  She rubbed her hips against his as she arched into his hands, seeking, wanting, needing... and more. She had never known such searching.

  This, William had known.

  "Close your eyes, Cathryn," he ordered softly. "Do not think or reason now. Now is a time for feeling."

  She obeyed him, and in the darkness the sensations became so intense that she thought she saw color explode and swirl in her mind's eye.

  He flicked his thumbs against her swollen nipples as he flicked her questing tongue, and she groaned into his mouth.

  The sound, coming so unexpectedly from her, shocked her into stillness. In truth, she was embarrassed.

  "Do not stop yourself," he reprimanded in a whisper, his mouth against her throat. "You must relinquish control over your body."

  Cathryn covered his hands with her own, wanting him to stop his erotic torment.

  "And give it to whom?"

  "To me, of course." He grinned wolfishly before kissing his way to an eager nipple.

  With a giggle at his comical expression, she fell back upon the mattress. But the giggle turned quickly to a moan as he feasted upon her, his mouth moving from one small breast to the other until she was twisting and moaning with an abandon that she had not thought possible.

  A vision of Lambert hovering over her sprang to her mind, and her eyes flashed open.

  She absorbed the sight of William's black hair nestled against her breast. It calmed her.

  "Speak to me," she commanded. She needed to hear the sound of his voice, a voice unlike any other she had known. A voice not Lambert's.

  And he obeyed her.

  "I will speak to you for the rest of my days of things great and small. You are my wife. Our blood, our bodies, our flesh, are one," he began, his words warm against her bosom. "You are beautiful, wife. Your skin is finer than any of the silks I labored to win... and so much more pleasurable to clean."

  She giggled again, and the movement planted a nipple firmly in his mouth. He suckled at her breast in a way unlike any babe and then moved up to lick the rim of her ear.

  "What else would you have me speak of?" he murmured, sending chills down her back.

  "Anything," she murmured back, becoming lost in the sensation of his touch again. "Speak of anything; I would but hear your voice."

  "And you shall," he promised, "as well as feel the touch of my hand upon your silken flesh."

  His hand moved with husbandly authority down over the small swell of her breast to the dip of waist and abdomen and to the protrusion of her hip.

  "You are well curved, wife, in the way a husband wants his wife to be curved."

  With a fingertip, he explored the folds of her heat as his other hand rolled a nipple almost casually. Cathryn's legs began to tremble when he inserted his thigh between her knees.

  "Do you tremble for me? Or because of me?" he asked softly before covering her mouth with his own in a kiss both deep and quick. Still, his fingers explored the most secret and vulnerable part of her, and the heat in her breast seemed close to a burning fire. His triple attack left her without any thought but the most fluttering kind, and the trembling worsened.

  As he had intended.

  "And your eyes," he continued, leaving her mouth and kissing his way down past her breasts, "are as dark and unfathomable as the wells of Nicaea, surrounded as they are by the golden sands of the desert, sultry in its heat. Such are you, wife."

  And she was hot. He could feel her heat as if he stood on the desert sands at midday, and he burned with her. For her.

  Cathryn writhed beneath his hand, moaning intermittently. William stretched her legs wider, positioning his bent knees between her thighs. With one hand he rubbed and teased the nub of desire that now rose against the soft folds of her womanhood. With the other he twisted and rubbed her reddened nipple, and with his mouth he feasted on her breast, nipping and licking in turn.

  He would leave no part of his wife unattended. She thrashed beneath his hands, moaning continuously now, and clutching at his dark hair.

  William abandoned her breasts. Cathryn opened her eyes slowly. William, without stopping his nether hand, turned her so that she lay upon her stomach.

  This was new to her, and a frisson of fear shot through her. Brushing her hair aside, with his fingers ever in play, William kissed the full globes of her derriere.

  Cathryn cried out softly and lifted her hips in the direction of her husband's mouth, thereby opening herself to him more fully. His drenched finger took advantage and inserted itself into her full length. Her drawn-out moan of pleasure and desire made him tremble.

  With force, William flipped his wife onto her back, spreading her legs to their utmost width and holding her by her ankles. Cathryn, desperate for a handhold on the physical world that was falling away from her, reached up to hold the headboard with both hands and hung on tenaciously.

  He watched her, her legs spread and quaking beneath his grip, her nipples red in the firelight, her yellow hair a tangled mat beneath her weight.

  "You torment me, wife," he said hoarsely.

  "Why... why," she choked out through parched lips, "why do you wait?"

  Gray eyes of smoke and sword impaled her.

  "I wait for thee," he answered in a rough whisper.

  And, holding her wide to receive him, he bent to take her with his mouth.

  Cathryn lost control quickly at that. She did not know exactly what he did—she did not want to know—but the power of it knocked the breath from her lungs.

  She had never been more afraid.

  "Nay! Stop! William, please!" she cried, trying to pull his black head from between her legs.

  His hands released her ankles and she thought for a moment that he had heeded her, but it was not so. With his broad shoulders he kept her legs apart, and with his arms he pushed her back and held her down, her strength no match for his.

  "Follow where I lead you," he commanded. "Release the reins of this horse you are riding and fly!"

  His mouth closed on her again and she sobbed out his name, thrashing and jerking beneath his grip.

  Her cry did not end, but became a long and unending wail that had nothing of fear in it, only passion—uncontrollable, consuming passion.

  She clutched his hair, hanging on to him, unable to bear another moment of his delicious torture and eager for the next touch of his tongue against her, wanting it to end and wanting it to go on so that she thought she would tear herself in two with her conflicting desires.

  Something, some weight, was building inside of her, crushing h
er, and again she sought the reassuring feel of wood beneath her hands.

  Her wail increased in pitch. Her legs grew hard and stiff. Something was coming—something like being thrown off a cliff with no bottom, a cliff that faced the stars and was grounded in starlight.

  And William would not relent. He increased the tempo of his tongue and brought his hands to her breasts, where, with rapid rhythm, he squeezed and pinched.

  With a scream, Cathryn was hurled off the cliff, where she fell... and fell... and fell... with a scream never-ending. A throbbing pounded at the juncture of her legs with a force stronger and more demanding than the beating of her heart. She was certain that she faced her death—death from exquisite pleasure.

  William rose up and plunged into her, and her scream, which was lowering, rose again, but this time she did not fall alone. This time she fell with her arms around the strong back of her husband.

  When their frenzied thrusting stilled, William lay atop her, his weight a reassuring thing. Cathryn clung to his shoulders to keep him there.

  With eyes wide and unblinking, she could only whisper breathlessly, "Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, oh, God..." with each panting breath.

  William smiled into the sweetness of her hair and said softly, "You have a way of trammeling my vanity, wife. What you should be saying is, 'Oh, William, oh, William, oh, William.'..."

  Hugging him closer still, Cathryn laughed as loudly and as long as she had just screamed her pleasure.

  * * *

  The echo of her cry drifted in the air of the great hall below as lightly and as lingeringly as the scent of costly perfume. Kendall looked up from the chessboard to say to his opponent, "Cathryn's part of the song is quite stirring. William is an apt instructor, is he not?"

  Rowland reached casually across the board to cuff him.

  Chapter 14

  The dawning saw Kendall and Rowland ready to depart for the king. It would be no easy matter to find him, for he traveled constantly with his court, making his presence known in all the lands of his domain. It was a wise policy, and one Stephen could have put to better use. In the case of Henry, Rowland was not dismayed that their journey would by necessity be a circuitous one, for that was the main objective. He would cast wide for sign of Lambert, though Kendall would have no knowledge of it, thinking they searched exclusively for King Henry.