His to love.
And love her he did, he realized, letting his fingers pause in their torturous exploration. She’d spoken words of love to him, but though he’d not said as much to her, he knew now that his feelings were true. So why did he feel so unsure of her—of what she might do and whether she would long stay with him? She loved him. That should mean she would stay.
He slid his fingers higher, parting the raven-dark curls that protected her sweetest spot. She was so wet and pink, ready for him, demanding his attention, he thought as he slid his body down between her widespread legs.
“You’re a feast for the senses, my delicious witch.” He dipped his head for a taste, then delved deeper when she gasped and arched in response. “God, but you taste sweet,” he murmured as he rubbed the little nub that he knew would bring her even greater pleasure.
“Cleve … oh, you must … must stop. No.”
One of her hands caught in his hair, and he raised his head from its lovely task. “Hold on to the belt, Wynne. Hold on,” he ordered.
“Why?” she moaned. “Oh, just come into me.”
Cleve fought the desire to do that very thing. He was so hard it hurt. Only by once again plumbing the heated depths of her would he find the relief he sought. But he would give her more first.
“There are pleasures of all sorts, my bewitching girl. Some of possession; some of being possessed. You shall know them all—”He broke off when one of her feet slid up the back of his thigh to rub his buttocks. “Damn,” he swore. Then he pressed a hungry kiss to the soft flesh of her belly. She would have him exploding with desire if he couldn’t get himself under control.
His lips slid down to her secret place once more, aided this time by his hand. He slipped one finger up into her, eliciting another gasp as she twisted in tortured pleasure. His tongue worked swiftly, stroking and rubbing until she was mindless with excitement, while his finger sought her magic place. She was so moist … so ready.
Then she arched against him with a convulsive cry, and he felt her explosion against his lips. She quivered in helpless spasms, squeezing around his finger as she peaked over and over again.
His woman, he thought as he pressed the side of his face to her concave belly. His woman now.
When she was still he lifted his head, then slowly slid himself up the damp and slippery length of her. “There is so much to be had between us,” he whispered, between kisses along her cheek and temple. Beneath him she felt so warm and alive, though she was well and truly spent and drained. Still, he knew there was more to come.
“Let go of the belt.” He stroked his hands up her arms, then twined his fingers in her slackened ones. Her palms fit so easily within his, he marveled. Her body fit so well with his, so perfectly. Then her hands tightened around his, and her eyes opened to meet his gaze.
“Control is a truly wondrous thing,” she admitted in a throaty whisper. “Shall I … shall I try as much on you?”
He smiled indulgently, but to his surprise she brought his hands to the leather belt. “Hold on. Tight,” she ordered. Then she pushed against his chest until he rolled over. In a moment she lay over him, and he became her captive.
“You are my sacrificial virgin,” she stated. “Well, perhaps not a virgin.” She grinned and forced herself upright, straddling his lean hips. “Now, we shall see just how good your control is.” So saying, she began to explore his chest with feather-light touches.
Though he willingly submitted to her gentle explorations, Cleve found himself squirming beneath the heady caresses. When had his ribs become so sensitive a place? How could the hard muscles of his waist leap to fire merely at the rake of her nails?
Then she scooted down to straddle his thighs, revealing the growing length of his manhood. He watched with bated breath as she stared at it, and if anything, he became even more rigid under her perusal. Then she innocently licked her bottom lip, and he groaned out loud.
Wynne smiled at that. “So, you can be teased and tortured as easily as I.” She watched his face as her hands slid over his belly to the springing mass of dark hair at his groin. When she grasped him in her warm hand, however, Cleve’s eyes clenched shut.
“Damn you, Wynne. Do not prolong this—”
“Why? Can’t you bear it?” She slid her hand, slowly, deliberately, up the demanding length of him, paying curious attention to the ridged end. “The skin is amazingly soft and silky here,” she murmured.
Cleve had such a tense grip on the belt that he feared he would never be able to release it. He had ceased breathing even. Only when she leaned low to kiss and then taste him did a rush of air burst from his lungs.
“Don’t, Wynne. There’s no time left—” He broke off with an oath and in an instant released the belt ends, grabbed her hips, and pulled her up to straddle his groin.
“What of your control?” she laughed as she braced her hands upon his shoulders and her hair spilled forward around them both.
“Control bedamned,” he answered. Then he raised her hips above his erect manhood and with one movement joined them again.
Wynne gasped, and he groaned. But she understood her role, and in a moment they were moving in exquisite tandem.
The tangled richness of her hair caressed his shoulders and arms, curtaining them in a silken cocoon. Likewise did she sheath him in silken wonder, and as her rhythm quickened, he found her breasts.
She cried out, words meaning nothing yet conveying clearly the desire she felt. First one firm breast did he fondle, caressing its warm weight, sucking its jutting peak. Then the other he found, until her rocking movements grew frantic. His hands gripped her hips, urging her faster and faster, until she cried out in agonizing completion.
It was perfect. She was perfect, he thought amidst the mindless joy of it all. Then his fingers tightened, and he drove the final few thrusts into her, giving her the last of everything he possessed.
When she collapsed upon him, he held her close, so close, he feared to crush her. But she accepted it, and he breathed in the sweet aroma of clean hair, sweaty skin, and deep, lusty sex. If he could but preserve this moment, keep this feeling, then all would be right with his world. If he could but keep her forever … Perhaps a child of their own …
He smoothed a damp tendril of midnight-dark hair back from her temple. “I love you, Wynne,” he whispered, knowing he could never feel this way about anyone but her. Then they slept.
25
“WHAT IF THERE IS A CHILD?”
Wynne faced Cleve in the castle yard, her chin raised and her resolve firm. But inside, her heart shredded into a thousand bleeding pieces. “I am well able to ensure there will be no child,” she answered in a carefully controlled tone. That was not precisely a lie, she consoled herself as she stared up into his furious face. She was well able to ensure it. She simply had no intentions of doing so.
“Dammit, no!” He grabbed her by both shoulders and lowered his face to the level of hers. “You don’t have to do that. Don’t you see? If you stay, I’ll take care of everything.”
“You’re the one who doesn’t see.” She jerked out of his grasp, then faced him, fighting down that part of herself that needed so badly to stay with him. “You’re the one who doesn’t see,” she repeated quietly. “I don’t need to be taken care of. I’ve taken care of myself since I was a girl. I’ve taken care of five babies. Five children.” She shook her head. “I told you I was returning to my home. You cannot make me stay.”
But you could come with me. Her silent plea begged to be spoken aloud, but she would not let it. It was clear what his choice was. As a wife Edeline brought her lands and a title, all those things a bastard-born child such as he had been could only dream of. But his dream was about to become reality now, and Wynne was a fool to hope he’d ever abandon it for her.
She took a deep breath, holding but tenuously to her shaky resolve. “I have already taken my leave of Lord William. If … if you would just say farewell to the children. To Arthur,�
� she added, unable now to disguise the pain in her voice.
He stared at her disbelievingly. Then his eyes grew cold as ice, and his jaw tightened. He turned his head to stare somewhere beyond her. “I suppose yesterday was your leave-taking of me?”
Wynne couldn’t answer, but he obviously took her silence to be an admission.
“Christ!” he exploded. “You could have had the decency to let me in on your little secret. Instead you led me on—” He broke off, then locked his piercing gaze with her miserable one. “Did my avowal of love come too late?”
Wynne sucked in her breath as the pain in her chest increased tenfold. She’d tried so hard to put those words of his out of her mind, and yet she’d clung to them ever since, wondering if they’d been said at all. Perhaps she’d only imagined them, so desperate had she been to hear such vows from him. Or perhaps, as was more likely, he’d been so consumed with their passion that they’d just slipped out, truthful at the time, but not meant to apply beyond the ecstasy of the moment.
Still, she’d clung to that “I love you,” hoping against hope. Not wanting to know the terrible truth and most certainly not wishing to discuss it with him. But here he was, in the watery morning light, dredging it up to be examined.
She swallowed, then cleared her throat. “That has nothing to do with anything. Rhys and Madoc are settled. I am reasonably content that their life here will be … good. It will be good for them. And Lord William has agreed to be most generous in allowing visits.”
“I do love you, Wynne. Don’t leave me.”
The simplicity of his words and the stark intensity in his eyes cut through all the logical babble she had surrounded herself with. Like a knife they were, a razor-edged dagger, slicing into her heart and striking a mortal blow.
Unable to bear the pain, unable to respond at all, Wynne flinched as if from a physical blow, then turned and forced herself to walk away. One foot, then the other. Don’t look back. Don’t look forward. Just keep moving until you can’t go any farther. All the way to Wales and her familiar woodlands. To the Giant’s Trail and Crow’s Moor. But she knew in her heart that was not far enough to break the pull he had on her heart. Not nearly so.
Arthur stood against the supporting column of the stable shed. He’d long ago lost interest in his brother’s mock battle and had watched Wynne’s conversation with Cleve instead. It hadn’t lasted long. Nor had it ended well, if Cleve’s furious expression and her stiff posture as she left were any indication. Though Arthur was too far away to have heard what was said, he feared he knew. They were still going to leave today. And Cleve was going to marry the Lady Edeline.
“Damn,” he swore.
Isolde looked up at his unusual vehemence. She and Bronwen were playing with a pair of half-grown kittens from the stable, but at his frown she abandoned that sport.
She followed his gaze to the retreating Wynne, and her face clouded as well.
“They’re not going to get married, are they?”
Arthur rounded on her, his fists knotted. “They are too!”
Had it been either of the twins who’d shouted so belligerently at her, she would have shouted back even louder. But this was gentle Arthur, and she knew he was just upset.
“We can’t make them get married,” she said patiently.
“Only they can do that,” Bronwen added.
“Grown-ups are stupid!” he shouted back.
Even Rhys and Madoc drew up at Arthur’s uncharacteristic behavior. “What’s the matter—”
“—with you?”
“Oh, shut up!” Arthur yelled. “Just everybody leave me alone.”
“Don’t you tell me to shut up.” Rhys stuck out his chin challengingly.
“Me neither.” Madoc advanced on the smaller Arthur. “I’ll knock your block off if you say that again.”
Isolde threw her hands up in the air. “Boys must be the stupidest things in the whole wide world! Fighting doesn’t do any good.” She planted her fists on her hips and glared at the twins. “Don’t you even care why Arthur’s so sad?”
“I’m not sad!” Arthur yelled. “I’m … I’m mad.”
“You are not,” Isolde answered with equal vigor. “You’re sad because Cleve’s gonna marry Lady Edeline instead of Wynne. Why don’t you just admit it?”
There was a brief silence. Then Arthur slumped back against the column and slowly slid down to a sitting position on the straw-littered ground. “They should get married to each other,” he muttered, all the anger gone from his voice. “They should.”
As one, the other four children gathered around him, dropping to their knees or sitting cross-legged. “Why doesn’t he just marry her, then? I don’t understand,” Bronwen whispered.
Madoc scratched his head. “It all has to do with castles and land, I think.”
Arthur nodded disconsolately. “Wynne explained it last night.”
“She did?” Rhys asked.
Arthur sighed. “Not about her and Cleve exactly. But it’s the same thing as what she said about you and Madoc.”
“I’m not gettin’ married,” Madoc interjected.
“You’ll change your mind when you grow up,” Bronwen stated confidently.
“No, I won’t.”
“Oh, just be quiet,” Isolde scolded. She took Arthur’s hand. “What did Wynne say?”
He stared at the ground. “She said Lord William had promised her that Rhys and Madoc would never have to marry anybody they didn’t want to marry.” He looked over at his brothers. “Remember? She said you could marry just ’cause you loved somebody. Your father can’t make you get married to some girl just to get her castle or something.”
“So?” Rhys said. “Wynne doesn’t have a castle or anything, and—”
“—neither does Cleve.”
Arthur sent the other two boys a quelling stare. “That’s the problem, don’t you see? Cleve wants a castle, and Lady Edeline has one. Plus, your father wants to give Cleve a reward for finding you two.”
They were quiet again until Bronwen spoke. “I don’t think Lady Edeline wants to marry Cleve. She likes Druce best. I saw her crying on his shoulder in the garden just a little while ago.”
“Lord William is wrong to make her marry Cleve. It’s all his fault,” Isolde said.
“But he’s lord here,” Madoc defended his new father. “He gets to make all the rules.”
“Well, that’s a stupid rule. And anyway why can’t he make a different rule? He could make Cleve marry Wynne and Lady Edeline marry Druce.”
“But he doesn’t want to change the rules,” Arthur explained.
“I bet he’d do it if Madoc and Rhys asked him to.”
Everyone turned to look at Bronwen.
“Well, I mean, he gives them everything they want.”
Rhys shrugged. “We could ask him, I guess.”
“I bet Lord William wishes he had married your mother,” Bronwen added with a wise nod.
Silence descended once more as they each thought of the unknown women who’d given them life. Then Rhys spoke. “He asked me if I remembered her.”
“Me too,” Madoc quietly added. “I don’t, though. But I wish I did.”
“He said she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Beautiful on the inside and on the outside.”
“I wonder who my mother was,” Bronwen murmured, a sad note in her voice.
“Wynne is our mother,” Arthur stated. Though the other children had grown quiet with their own somber thoughts, he had brightened considerably. “She’s a good mother, and Cleve would be a good father to us.” He fixed his hazel-green stare on Madoc and Rhys. “Just because we might have to leave today to go home doesn’t mean we have to give up. You two will still be here.”
Suddenly he laughed and clapped his hands. “I know! Rhys and Madoc can be the spies.”
“What do you mean?” Madoc asked.
“Like a war or something?”
“Sort of,” Arthur replied. “But
you know, war is not just the fighting and stuff. It’s strategy too. That’s what Cleve said. He said strategy was very important. And he told me I was very good at understanding strategy.”
They left when the sun was at its zenith. Though Lord William had encouraged her to delay till morn, Wynne would not hear of it. Barris’s logical arguments fell on deaf ears with her as well. As for Druce, he was so angry, she feared he might not even accompany them back to Wales.
But Wynne could not deal with their troubled reactions. Her own emotions were in too much turmoil for her to think beyond one minute to the next. Gather her belongings. Have the cook pack sufficient supplies. Don’t forget the tent.
Her head ached and her stomach clenched in nauseated waves, yet she forced herself to hurry, and to hurry everyone else as well. Finally there was nothing left but to don her traveling mantle and to say her good-byes.
She found the five children in the garden gathered around Lord William. When six sets of eyes turned on her, she felt a renewed spasm of pain. She’d dwelt so much on her own sorrow—she was losing both the man she loved and two of her beloved children this day. But the children were parting from one another as well. Bronwen’s face already showed a pink nose and puffy eyes from crying. Like Isolde, she sat on Lord William’s knee, while the boys sat at his feet.
Wynne fought down a lump in her throat, promising to have a good cry sometime later when no one would be around to hear. Only just let it not be now.
“I … I would speak with the children a moment,” she said in a strained voice.
Lord William stared at her from beneath his lowering gray brows, as if he saw her now for the very first time. He patted the girls, and after they slid from his lap he stood up and shook out his richly embroidered tunic. Then he cleared his throat. “If I did not adequately say so before, well, let me say now that you are to be commended. These children—all of them—are fine and strong. And intelligent also. You have been a good mother to them, and I thank you for it. From the bottom of my heart I thank you.”
Rexanne Becnel Page 31
