The Protector

by Madeline Hunter

  “She will appreciate your sparing her dignity,” Ascanio said.

  “Sparing our dignity. Enough is enough.”

  He opened the door.

  She was not there. The bed curtains had been drawn, but he knew she did not lie within them.

  He glimpsed an instant of profound relief flash on Ascanio's face. Well, whatever she was up to, she had spared one man a moment of hell.

  He lit a rush and bent the flame to the candles flanking the bed. Then he tied back the curtains while Ascanio sprinkled the holy water and said his blessing.

  Ascanio turned raised eyebrows to him. Morvan gestured to the gallery door, which stood ajar.

  “I imagine she is afraid,” Ascanio said.

  “Aye. Though about what I have yet to learn.”

  Ascanio shrugged. “It is normal. She is still a child in these things.”

  Morvan looked at the bed and thought a moment. “Not entirely.”

  Ascanio laughed. “Since all has turned out well, I will not upbraid you for that.” He headed to the door.

  “If you were not a priest, it might have been you,” Morvan found himself saying.

  “But I am a priest, and so it is you.”

  Morvan listened to Ascanio's footsteps grow dim.

  Then he turned to the gallery door.

  CHAPTER 19

  ANNA HEARD THE LOW MUMBLE of voices in the chamber, and then silence. She crossed her arms more tightly over her body to contain the unsettled emotions that churned inside her.

  She had made a terrible mistake in turning to Morvan. It would have been easier if it had been a stranger for whom she felt nothing.

  She felt Morvan's presence as she always did, and tonight it quickly filled the small gallery, sending an unwelcome, expectant thrill through her. She turned her gaze from the sea to the doorway, where he leaned against the threshold watching her. The dim light leaking from the chamber found the sparkle of eyes that glinted like the stars dotting the sky above.

  “Will I need my sword?” he asked.

  She turned back to the sea. “They are gone?”

  “It was only Ascanio, blessing the bed. You should have known that I would not let the others in.”

  He stayed at the doorway, but she felt him all around her, as if something dangerous that he normally restrained had been let loose. It had been like this that first night in the shelter. It was why she had wanted to leave.

  She couldn't leave now.

  “I find that I am not ready for this,” she said.

  “Perhaps you never would be. It is time nonetheless.” Inevitable. Now. She felt horribly vulnerable in the confined dimensions of the gallery, but even the infinity of the sky and sea wouldn't be space enough to hide.

  “You will come inside now, Anna.” His voice was soft, but she recognized the edge in it.

  She glanced back at the doorway, and he was gone. She steeled herself and moved.

  She stepped into the chamber and closed the door behind her. Morvan stood by the fire, watching its flames. Waiting for her. He had relit the candles by the bed and retied the curtains. She frowned at that. Surely he must know that the dark could only help.

  “I have decided that you were wrong, Morvan. We don't have to do this. We will fake the evidence and I will swear an oath to you never to reveal the truth.”

  He turned to face her. His lids lowered, but they could not hide the flashing sparks.

  The silence became crushing. She kept her back straight and her gaze level, but could feel her determination retreating before the force emanating from him.

  “You do not know me well, if you think that I will agree to that,” he said. “The ceremony and ritual have unsettled you, that is all. Come to the fire. Warm yourself and drink some wine.”

  He filled a goblet and carried it back to the hearth. She dared not move.

  “Stop acting like some terrified and untouched child bride, Anna. Come here now.”

  The rebuke and command had their effect. She strode over to him, took the goblet, and then claimed the only chair. She drank a good swallow of the wine.

  “I thought that you do not force women.”

  “Perhaps that is only because I have never had to. You, for example, have been willing enough every time that I touched you. You will be again.”

  She stared at this bold statement of his power over her. Stared with annoyance even as her traitorous body tingled. That invisible presence of his was something he used at his whim, and now it surged out and surrounded her.

  “Do not think to pursue this, Anna. I warned you down below not to try. This night ends only one way. This is not Reading, and I do not give you a choice. You are mine and I will take you.”

  Her heart began pounding in a confused, panicky beat. He came toward her.

  Her awareness of his closeness grew anxious and fretful. She stared hard at the goblet. “Then put out the candles, Morvan, and let us get this over with quickly.”

  She sensed his hand reach toward her even before his fingers touched her curls.

  “I am not inclined to do anything very quickly—I might hurt you more than I had to. And I prefer the candles lit. I would see you and have you see me. I would have you remember the man who claims you.”

  His slow strokes through her hair made her scalp and neck tingle. So that was how it was to be. He would continue the lie he began that first night in this room. He would pretend desire and she was supposed to pretend she believed it. She could not go through with that. She did not want her own passion for him used in that way. She did not care if he had to hurt her.

  What her mind wanted was very different from what her body needed, however. His fingers traced along her neck and around the edge of her robe, slowly pushing the fabric down her shoulders. Shivering tremors shook her, and the knot in her belly began untying to make room for a different, more compelling fullness.

  He pushed her hair aside. Bending low, he kissed the exposed nape. She closed her eyes to the exquisite chills. Mixed with the pleasure, however, was confusion and a profound sense of danger.

  She bolted from the chair and sought the relative sanctuary of the hearth.

  A protracted silence filled the chamber. She didn't turn to look at him.

  “There is nowhere to go, Anna. Come back to me now. There is nothing to fear with me.”

  There is everything to fear.

  The force of her reaction stunned her. “Fear” was the word he had given this, not her, and she was very, very sure it was not fear. That would make no sense.

  She faced him. She would be blunt and at least be spared the mockery of a seduction.

  “I am not afraid. I just find that I don't much like being some man's duty in such things. I know that you lied about Reading and why you left. I have always known that I am not the kind of woman that men want in that way. Not even you in the end.”

  A series of reactions quickly passed on his face. Surprise. Amusement. Long thoughtfulness.

  “So that is where you found the rocks to repair your breached walls,” he said. “I cannot speak for other men, but I have wanted you since that first day. I have been mad with the want of you. But it does not matter if you believe me. You will find the proof of it soon enough.”

  But the proof burned in his eyes even as he spoke, for he permitted the firm control to drop. She quickly turned away from the onslaught of male desire that surged across the space to her.

  Strong hands came to rest on her waist. He was behind her. She felt the heat of him all along her back, and heard her heart beating too loudly and too hard.

  He nuzzled her ear. “You have been deceiving yourself, Anna, and that isn't like you. Perhaps at first you thought thus about that night, but you knew that I spoke the truth when I explained that I stopped because of my promise. Your heart knew. Yet it was easier to go to your abbey believing otherwise, I think.”

  He kissed her hair and bent his head so his lips could reach her neck. She fought the mountin
g fullness in her belly and the hollow ache between her legs, and recoiled from the shocking recognition of the truth in his words.

  “That night surprised you in other ways, I think,” he said. “Your fear tonight is not the usual one, is it? You are not afraid of a virgin's pain or a man's taking. It is a woman's giving that terrifies you.”

  The fire's flames suddenly grew and danced around her, as if magically reflected a hundred times in mirrors of polished metal. But the only mirror present was his devastating knowledge of her. Even as she sought the argument to refute him, his last words echoed through her, down to the depths of her heart, and the terror itself responded Aye, aye.

  A stranger. Easier with a stranger. No giving. No loss. No power.

  He reached around and slowly untied the sash of her robe. “But you will give yourself to me now,” he commanded gently. “It will be a simple thing, for your soul made the choice long ago.”

  Something in her tried to rebel, but the robe fell open and his hands found her body through the shift. A rush of exquisite sensation crushed the resistance.

  He stroked the length of her, sliding the robe off and letting it fall in a pool at their feet. He stayed behind her, kissing her shoulders and neck, his arms surrounding and turning her a little so that his lips could also reach her face. She pressed against his warmth while his hands caressed her, coming up to stroke her breasts, causing pleasurable shocks to quake through her. She moaned and arched, and he caught her hips with one arm and pressed her to him while the other hand continued its slow arousal.

  “I have wanted you too long.” He held her, his fingers circling and stroking her nipples, his warm breath en-flaming her skin, his kisses biting her. The wonderful madness rose through her.

  He pushed at the shoulders of her shift and the soft wool fluttered down her arms and hips, following the robe to the floor. She trembled at the sudden vulnerability of her nakedness. He stepped away as his hands stroked over her back to her hips and bottom. His invisible gaze felt warmer than the heat from the hearth, more arousing than the caress of his hands.

  He turned her to him. His fingers drifted, feathering over her. “You are beautiful.” He held her breasts as he looked at them. She gasped as his thumbs grazed her nipples.

  “Beautiful. All of you. Your spirit and your strength and your body. I have never told you that, have I? They were words I had used too often before, and they felt too cheap for you.” He let his gaze and caress do their worst, and by the time he pulled her back to him her body was crying with desire.

  His controlled passion broke loose. He abruptly lifted her in an embrace that raised her breasts to his mouth. “Did you really think that I would let you deny what waits for us this night?” he said, his ragged voice smothered against her skin.

  It felt so good. Too good. It always had. She abandoned herself to the flows and peaks of passion as he drew on her breasts and his lips and teeth pressed along her neck and chest. Through the fog, in the distance, she heard her own sighs.

  He lowered her and moved away from the hearth, his arm on her shoulders and his hand on her breast. “Come to bed now.”

  Somehow she found her legs and went with him. She climbed into the bed and watched the emergence of his beautiful hard body as he stripped his clothes off. She ached impatiently for him, but the waiting and watching brought its own tantalizing pleasure.

  He stood beside the bed a moment, his eyes slowly moving up the length of her, their bright flames of desire burning hotly. She let her own gaze linger on that handsome face for a moment, and then drift lower to his chiseled chest and shoulders, then lower still. He came down beside her.

  The feel of his skin and warmth along her body intoxicated her. She wrapped her arms around him to hold on to the sensation. He gave her a consuming kiss as his hand sought her breasts. She moved into his caress, instantly as excited as she had been moments before.

  His head turned and he watched her body react to his touch. He traced around her breasts' swells, teasing her, before his fingers tantalized her nipples. She turned her head to the arm on which he rested and pressed her mouth to its warmth, tasting where her mouth could reach.

  Her body and her skin were alert and waiting every inch of the way for the rough pressure of his fingers as he caressed down her body. Long before his mouth drifted to her breasts and his hand lowered to her thighs, she was frantic.

  The pleasure felt so delicious that she thought she would scream or die. She knew no space or time anymore, just a small world of flickering light and incredible sensation.

  As he brought her dazed passion higher and higher, she became aware of his caresses moving over her stomach and thighs. All of her body's attention focused on that hand that ventured so close to her crying need. When he slid his hand between her thighs, her hips rose anxiously to meet his touch.

  He looked at her, watching first her body as her legs opened to accept him, and then her face as his fingers stroked, sending her into a need that mounted and grew until it totally undid her. Nothing existed anymore but the incredible pleasure he gave her, a pleasure so intense that the rest of her body didn't exist either, a pleasure filled with wonderful, shivering anguish.

  “Your passion is beautiful, Anna. Glorious. Give me all of it. Come to me now.”

  He kept touching her gently but insistently, sending her to a wonderful, horrible place. Invisible walls closed in on her slowly, containing the sensation into a smaller and smaller spot, increasing its intensity as they compressed it. Everything in her wanted to break through those walls, and the need became excruciating.

  “Come to me,” he said. “It is but a small step.”

  The walls shattered. The intensity coursed out from its center through all of her. For an instant she wasn't alive at all, but existing only in a dark point of perfect pleasure. It continued to flow through her in slower waves. While she floated in the sensation, Morvan eased on top of her.

  She wanted the closeness and the fullness and even the pain seemed a part of that and so she didn't mind. She held on to him as his careful but relentless press claimed her to an intimacy that would be his alone. She knew when the virgin tear was coming from the way he paused and captured her gaze with his own. She knew that he did it to brand both of their minds with the memory, but also to distract her. Even so it was a burning tear, and he stopped, buried inside her.

  Morvan closed his eyes to the overwhelming pleasure and fought a brief battle for control. She was beautiful. Beautiful in her abandon, in the silent scream of her ecstasy. In her eyes, still dark and liquid with her passion, he saw the desire that he filled even as her body wanted to rebel against this invasion.

  He briefly lost himself in the soft warmth, and felt her sheathing him tightly, accepting him slowly, opening to him. Her fingertips lightly stroked his back and his breath caught in his throat.

  “Is it done then?” she whispered.

  It was easy to forget how little she knew of these things. “I will finish quickly. I know that I have hurt you.” He rose up on his arms and moved carefully inside her.

  She smiled at the sensation, drew a hand between them and placed it on his chest. “I am not one of your delicate court ladies, Morvan. Stay with me.”

  The request surprised and disarmed him, since he knew that she must be sore. An unfamiliar emotion poured through him, and his chest clenched. He slid his hand down and closed on her leg. “Then bend your knees up like this, Anna.”

  He moved in her accepting body again, deeper now, and the well-known pleasure flooded him. But that new emotion joined it, transforming it, making it something stronger and more than physical. He felt as raw and exposed as he had that first night with her, and the connection spread like a river undammed. He looked in her eyes and saw her awareness of the intimacy claiming them. He also sensed her fear of it. With the thrusts of his body and the gaze of his eyes he commanded her to accept this other thing, this total joining that had been waiting for them since that despe
rate November night.

  He knew when she succumbed to it, when the power vanquished her guarded separateness, when she gave herself to him. He felt the walls crumble, sensed the sweetness flow through her and into him, saw the wonder of it in her eyes. In the small world where they joined, nothing existed but the two of them wholly together.

  He reached down between them to bring her with him to the end. Soon her frenzy began forcing him to fulfillment. She clawed at his shoulders as the release climaxed through her again. She screamed this time, pulling him into her and crying his name. In the echoes and eddies of her ecstasy he came to her hard, the profound emotions splitting his mind, the intensity making his soul shake.

  “Aye, my love,” he said, breathing out the last of his passion.

  Anna held him, her arms and legs wrapped around his body. She was afraid to let him go, afraid that the feeling would go with him and never return. And she was terrified of the emotion itself, and of the vulnerability it contained.

  He had been waiting for this, she realized, since that first night. It was what he had offered her in the shelter, what she had refused. It was why he had stayed, why he protected her, why his will kept reaching out to her in that almost physical way.

  He had called her “My love.” Did he know that he had? Perhaps in the space and time of this bed he had meant it. But he had no doubt known this before with other women, and probably better and stronger. It was something that he controlled, and accepted or rejected at will.

  What now? He had used their bond to bring her to this. She had felt his spirit demanding it, absorbing her into him, forcing her to acknowledge her love for him. Was that love supposed to change everything? Change her? Would refusing such unity be the ultimate unnatural act?

  He took her face in his hand. His gaze met hers, and she knew that he read every thought. “Do not be afraid. I have always known that this would be the easiest part of our marriage.” He pushed some pillows against the board, then rolled over to them. “Come and lie with me now. Sleep in my arms.”