by Jill Barnett
He carried her up and away, through an archway and out onto the parapet, where the noise from the celebration below was muted by the castle walls and sounded as if it were far, far away.
A slight breeze caught the ribbons in Sofia’s hair and ruffled it. A few curls fell into her eyes. She took a hand from around his neck and brushed the hair back. The ermine on her sleeve tickled her nose and she rubbed it, then her hand fell to his shoulder. She grinned at him. “You are stealing the bride away from the celebration.”
“Aye,” he said in a quiet voice, then he lowered her onto her feet.
They faced each other. He stared at her, his look intense and serious. No fun there. No twinkle of mischief like there was in his father’s eyes, eyes that were so much alike it amazed her. She wondered how they could be so different. One so gay and one so intense.
Sofia did not know why he was looking at her so. There was something in his eyes, something that almost looked like pain. For just a fleeting moment she asked herself if she could be the cause of it. She cocked her head. “What is wrong?”
His mouth thinned a little and he took a deep breath, then faced away from her. He rested one arm on a crenel, leaned casually against it and stared off into the distance. He picked up a small stone and turned it over in his hand, then tossed it into the air and caught it a few times. “You looked as if you needed rescuing.”
“Did I?” She laughed, then moved to his side, standing there and looking off toward the west where the sun was setting in a purple and scarlet sky. “Your father is quite interesting. He makes me laugh.”
He said nothing.
“There’s a bit of a tease to his look.”
“’Tis a look you would do well to hide from.” His tone was sudden, bitter, and sharp.
“Hide from your father?” She laughed. “What a goose you are! That is silly.”
Tobin said nothing.
Sofia’s laughter faded in the awkwardness of the moment. She looked up at her husband and frowned. He was serious.
He had not moved. He just stared out with an expression that seemed so very far away, as if he were not even there with her, or his mind or memory were not there. His eyes were narrowed with bitterness and anger.
Wherever he was, it was not a pretty place.
She remembered with sudden clarity what Eleanor had said the night before.
His heart is true, unlike his father.
She reached out and touched Tobin’s arm. “Why did I need rescuing?”
He was silent.
“I was only with your father. He is kind and amusing,” she prodded.
“Amusing? I would call my father many things, but not one of them would be amusing.”
“Why do you dislike him so? Only because he was paying attention to me? I’m certain—”
“Why?” He turned so swiftly, pinning her with angry and cold blue eyes. “What? You think I am jealous because he has the power to charm every woman he meets?”
“I don’t know what to think. You tell me why I should not be kind to him when he is being so kind to me. I am his daughter by marriage.”
“Perhaps you would be better to ask that of his wife. Or just ask one of my eighteen younger brothers.”
“Eighteen?”
He nodded. “All have different mothers, except the two sets of twins.”
“Twins?” she repeated in a dull tone.
“Aye, and that doesn’t include my sisters.”
Her mouth dropped.
“There’s Elizabeth, who is six years older than I. We do have the same mother, Father’s first wife. Next is Jocelyn. Her mother was the castle laundress. There is Catherine, Ada, Maude, Janet, Alice and Isobel.”
She was appalled. “My God—”
“I do not know what he called the last three girls. I have not been home for a while.”
She stood there, not believing what he was saying, or worse yet, what he was implying. But when she looked at his profile, at the tight jaw and the pain in his face she knew he spoke the truth. His father’s dalliances were an embarrassment to him. “I did not know.”
“I know that. But now that you are my wife you should be aware if it, for your own well being.”
“I am not a servant to dally with. Surely he was only welcoming me to the family. I am the King’s cousin, as well as your bride.”
“A fact he seems to have easily forgotten. I have thought that perhaps that is exactly why he is so attentive.”
She inhaled sharply.
He looked at her as if she were too naive for words. “Just because you are married to his first son does not mean you are not fair game. Do not fool yourself, sweet. My father charms with a purpose in mind, and it is not to welcome you into the family.”
She reached out to him then, placed her hand on his chest, where his heart beat strong and true. She wanted to soothe his hurt, to take away what he was telling her as if it had never happened.
He pulled his gaze away from whatever he was staring at and glanced down at her hand on his chest. He looked as if that was the last thing he expected to see.
He seemed to relax. His mouth and jaw were not tight and hard looking, the strain in his neck was gone. He covered her hand with his own, then turned and studied her face as if he were searching for something there, something he needed.
She whispered his name.
A moment later his mouth closed over hers and she was wrapped tightly in his strong arms.
Chapter 29
Sofia opened the door to her chamber and peered inside. There was no one there, so she pulled Tobin inside. “Do you think they will miss us?”
“I do not care if they do. ’Tis our wedding, not theirs. Let them drink and eat until they burst. Then maybe they will all go away.” He closed the door and slid the lock, then in one swift motion he spun around, slid his arms under her bottom and lifted her right up off the floor. “All I want is you.”
She hung onto his shoulders and looked down at his upturned face. “Where are we going, husband?”
“To the bed, wife.” He tossed her onto the coverlet and followed her down, pressing his upper body against hers and pinning her to the bed with his weight. He grinned down at her. “This is where you belong, woman.”
She laughed. “I belong in bed?”
“Nay, sweet.” His lips tasted hers, then he spoke against her mouth, “Under me.”
He kissed her, sipping at her lips with his, using teasing, gentle and moist touches.
“I love it when you kiss me. I love the feel of your mouth on mine.”
“I love kissing you. Now I can kiss you all day and all night. All of our lives, sweetheart.” He buried his tongue deeply into her mouth.
She gave a quiet moan in response. She opened her eyes.
A lock of his black hair had fallen over his brow. She brushed his hair back and looked up into his face, at the shadowed angles where his beard was already growing in rough and dark, at his straight nose and the small cleft in his chin. She looked at the black lashes on his eyes, the way they framed them so darkly and made his eyes look bluer. The color was true and deep. And she decided then and there, from that moment onward, her favorite color in the world was the blue of her husband’s eyes.
She drew her finger over his mouth and lips.
He kissed her fingertip.
“Kiss me, Tobin,” she spoke on a sigh. “Kiss me all over.”
He reached out and twined a silver ribbon and a lock of her hair around his index finger, used it to pull her face up toward his. “I’ll kiss you, sweet. Believe me, I shall never stop kissing you. All night long my mouth will be there for you, tasting you and loving you. That is all I want” He gave her a soft kiss on the lips, then on her nose and each of her eyes.
His lips brushed over her brows and onto her forehead. His mouth drifted over her cheeks and moved to her ear. “I shall kiss you inside your ear . . . like this.”
His tongue dipped inside and he kissed her ear the
same way his thrusting tongue played in her mouth. He sucked in a deep breath that sent chills down her neck, over her shoulders and arms, and seemed to center in her breasts, where she wanted to feel his pulling mouth.
“I shall kiss your neck,” he whispered to her. “But first we must remove these pearls.”
She reached up with her hand, but he grasped it and pressed a kiss to her palm.
“I shall do it.” He unclasped the pearls and slowly began to unwind them, pressing kisses on each part of her neck that was revealed. By the time he held the strand of pearls up before her, her eyes were dreamy and her body lax; she felt as if her bones had melted.
She took the strand of pearls and set them on a small table beside the bed. She turned back to him. She loved the way he looked at her, as if she were the only woman in the world. He was looking at her like that now. “Where were we?”
“I was telling you where I want to kiss you.”
“Where else?”
He leaned forward and his arm slid under her back and pulled her close to him. “On your chin.” He gave her a soft kiss there.
“And your lips and tongue and teeth.”
His mouth came to hers. His arms tightened under her. He rolled over with her so she was sprawled atop him. He pressed his hands all over her back, stroking her from shoulder to bottom.
He moved to the ties on the back of her gown, played with them, then pulled them loose, one at a time. He grasped the shoulders of her gown in his fists and jerked it down, pulling her linen shift down with it.
She heard a ripping sound. She smiled, for she did not care a whit. He could rip her clothes off her forever and a day as long as they were both naked and touching each other.
His hand pressed her breast up and his mouth closed over the tip of it. He teased it with his tongue and sucked it into his mouth again and again. Hard, so she felt the pull in the very core of her.
He kissed her breasts for so long. She loved it and she couldn’t stop moving; it was as if every suck of his mouth made her hips shift up.
Finally he moved downward, pulling her dress with him, his tongue and lips kissing her ribs, her belly, her waist. He traced her hip bones with his mouth. He suckled her belly low and hard, and made a small trail of red marks there.
“I want to kiss you everywhere, sweet. Taste you. Love you. Hold you.”
She loved it when he talked to her. There was little silence to their loving and she liked that. She buried her hands in his thick dark hair.
His head moved lower, to her thighs. He nudged her legs apart. He pulled off her clothes, tossed them off the bed, then sat up, spread her legs apart and just looked at her.
His eyes studied her from her feet, up her legs and to the center of her. He raised his hand to his mouth and licked his finger, then touched her, the center of her, and rubbed slowly, oh so very slowly, watching her the entire time.
It felt so good, she moaned and raised her legs so her feet were flat on the bed.
He kept on touching her, then slipped his finger inside of her, pressing it in, drawing it out, then sliding over the most sensitive part of her.
Her knees began to quiver and shake.
He pulled his finger out and lifted her foot to his shoulder, then he kissed a path down the inside of her leg and stopped before he got to where his hand had been. He took her other foot and did the same thing, kissed all the way to the hollow in her thigh. Then he slid his hands under her buttocks and pulled her toward him, and up to his open mouth.
He blew on her and slowly pressed his lips to her. She was ready to beg for his tongue. She wanted him to do more and more.
He gave her what she wanted. He gave it to her for so long that she was crying out again and again. Still he did not stop. She pulsed against him.
He drank it all in, then finally he stopped when she was almost crying from the joy of it, when she was certain she could take that same touch no more. He lowered her hips to the bed and jerked off his tunic and undergarments, pulled off his hose, his loin cloth.
He was as naked as she was.
He took her hand and pulled her up, so she was sitting before him and he was kneeling before her, his legs splayed slightly. He looked into her eyes and grasped her hand, then put it over him, showed her how he wanted to be touched.
“Touch me . . . Feel me . . . ”
She picked up the rhythm.
He moved his hand to her breast and lifted one and bent toward it until it was in his mouth. She kept moving her hand over him, feeling him grow.
He kissed her ears again and slid his fingers inside of her, telling her how she felt and what he wanted to do to her and that he wanted to do it all night long.
He told her things they would do that she did not know men and women did. But she did not care, for she loved his touch and the things he did to her, loved the way he made her blood soar, and the way he could make the center of her throb around his fingers, his tongue, or around nothing at all.
She felt so hot and warm and wet it was as if she were melting. She gave a ragged cry when she pulsed around his fingers.
He leaned over her and brushed his mouth against hers and made her cry out again, but he told her it would be all right.
She gripped his shoulders and felt him shift, and he pressed his hips down and in between her legs. Like before, he inched inside of her in small amounts, moving slowly, just the tip of him, in and out, over and over.
She twisted on the bed. She wanted him deeper still.
“Please,” she said. “Please.”
He cupped her face in his hands. “Look at me, Sofia.”
She did.
“I swear to you I am going to go all the way inside of you. Now. Where it’s hot and deep and wet. I want to be there. Do you want me there?”
“Aye,” she said. “Aye. Come into me.”
“I will hurt you. You know that?”
She nodded.
He paused and looked at her.
“Dammit, Tobin, just do it!”
He gave a small and quiet laugh, then lifted her up. “Look at me. Let me see your eyes when I join with you, my wife.”
She fixed her gaze on his.
He shifted his hips back and then sank inside.
Something ripped. ’Twas like he was tearing her apart. She groaned, made a soft and whimpering sound that she wished she could take back.
“Look at me.”
She opened her eyes.
“Look at me . . . ” His breathing increased.
She tried to catch her own breath.
They breathed together, panting as if they had been running a race. But they were completely still.
He was inside her.
She was surrounding him.
The pain was waning, drifting off to a place that did not matter when they were one like this. There was nothing but him inside of her, filling her in ways that had nothing to do with size, but everything to do with the senses.
She could taste him on her tongue.
She could smell him in the air around them.
She could feel him on every part of her—on her skin, on the fine hairs of her legs, on her belly and deep inside her breasts. She was no longer Sofia, a separate being. The being was the two of them.
She ran her hands over the muscles on his back. They were taut and bulged in a way that reminded her that he was male and so different from her.
But why then did this feel so right, when they were so different? She could feel the curly hairs on his thighs, feel them rubbing just a bit against her soft, bare skin.
She shifted her knees up, put her feet inside his thighs, and ran her feet down along his, rubbing over the backs of his knees and down his calves, before she moved up again.
He pressed down harder against her and rested his weight on his elbows.
“I’m going to love you, now. Feel it, sweetheart, and tell me if I’m hurting you.”
She nodded and waited to feel the pain again. But she did n
ot. All she felt was him filling her and moving ever so slowly, pulling back and almost completely out of her. She pressed her palms to his tailbone and pushed down, eager for him to come back inside, where it felt as if he touched her soul and where the only pain was not having him there.
How very strange this all was to her. He was part of her now, moving in her, kissing her and his hands were all over her, shifting, so each time he moved it was different and she felt something more.
He whispered her name again and again, said it in quiet moans and in whispered moments, with a rhythm almost like a monk’s chant, there in her ears and on her neck and face, against her lips, all those places, he said her name, as if it was as important to his life as each breath he took.
But part of her was worried she was making too much of this, of him touching her, of what they were doing. She loved him but he did not love her. He was doing what he was supposed to do in the marriage bed, nothing more.
But it did not feel routine or mundane. It felt wonderful. She turned her head slightly. Night had come and she could see through the glass of the windows.
In the distance she saw the moon come from behind a dark cloud. She wondered why it looked the same when everything inside of her had changed so. Why were the stars still there, as they always were? Why did the moon look no bigger? Why did the whole wide world move along as it always had, when her world would never be the same again?
He began to move more quickly and she lost herself to the motion of the moment, the thrust that seem to sweep her away as if she were riding on those stars outside, higher and higher.
She heard his name, and realized it was her voice that had called it out. “Don’t stop,” she whispered against his mouth. “Please, Tobin. Don’t stop.”
“I won’t . . . I won’t . . . ” he said to her. A breath of words as he moved more surely and quickened the motions of his hips, then clasped her knee in one hand and shoved it up near her shoulder. He rode upward and thrust harder and faster, until something happened and she caught her breath, sure she would die from within at any moment.
