Heaving an enormous sigh, she looked down at the hands and arms sheltering her within their circle. Those large, darkly tanned hands, twice the size of hers. Those long, lean fingers easily circling her slender wrists, holding her so firmly, yet so gently. Those arms—sinew and bone and hard, rippling muscles. Arms covered with crisp, curling black hairs. Roped with thick bulging veins. Arms that were laced with the white tracery of assorted scars common to a battle-hardened warrior. Arms that even now flexed and tightened as he bent his head over hers to brush his soft lips against the satin of her cheek.
She held her breath, unable to think as her senses flooded with liquid heat. It melted her insides and sent a tide of unknown needs surging through her. A need to be touched. A need to be held. A need to be comforted and made safe.
And something more. Something hot and dark and raw. Something that made her lick her lips and stifle a moan deep in her throat, as his lips hovered above her cheek, his breath warming her. Her belly clenched, sending a creamy warmth flowing from her feminine core. Needs erupted from deep inside her, churning upward from a bottomless well she hadn’t even known existed.
He held her, allowing the warmth from the furnace of his body to soak into her, warming her in places that had never been warm in her entire life. And as her body warmed, so did her heart. Her soul.
And even as she was absorbing the sensations he was making her feel, she was at the same time trying to pull away from him. From the touch of his lips, the heat of his skin. From the only comfort she had ever known. Because to stay meant death. For both of them.
“I must leave this place.” Her ruined voice sounded harsh against the silence. “I cannot stay. To do so would bring ruin upon this house. I cannot let him find me. Not here. Not anywhere.”
But he would not release her. Muscles flexing, he maintained his hold around her—a hold that sheltered and protected, even as it restricted and confined. “Nay, beloved. No one will harm you here,” he repeated as firmly as he could. “And you might just as well tell me who you are, because I will find out eventually. I would rather hear it from you first.”
She shook her head, rolling it back and forth along the hard wall of his chest. She must not allow herself to be beguiled by this man, no matter how badly she longed to do just that. She must resist the sensuality of his voice, the heat of his gaze, the comfort of his touch. Everything he said, everything he did was weaving a seductive spell around her. It was a stealing of her senses that she knew she had to fight.
She was already fleeing the total domination of one powerful man. It was sheer madness to allow herself to be subsumed by another, even more powerful man. One whose raw sensuality was so potent, so compelling, it called to everything that was feminine in her, making it sit up and howl.
Robert Walford’s treachery had brutalized her body. She could, and would, get past it. But this man. This man was different. This man stirred her beyond imagining, sending raw, hot need clamoring through her veins. Should he be proven false, he would annihilate her very soul.
When it became clear that she was not going to answer, Nicholas cleared his throat. “Very well,” he said on a note of quiet resignation, “we’ll begin with me. I am Nicholas Herron, Duke of Berwick. You are at Berwick Castle, my family home. And you are safe for as long as you remain here. I swear I will protect you, if you will allow me.”
There was a brief pause before she said with a bitter laugh, “Protect me! I may be an innocent in the ways of the world, Your Grace, but even I know what that word means.” Her raw whisper was filled with a cynicism that ripped at his heart. “It means there is a price that has to be paid. And I’ll be the one who has to pay it. Very well, just what do you expect in return for this—protection?” She practically spat the word.
Everything, he wanted to say. Everything you are. Your heart. Your body. Your soul.
But all he said was, “Naught. Naught you are not willing to give.”
She laughed, a harsh bark filled with derision. “You’re a man, aren’t you? Men always want something from women. And if they don’t get it, they just take it. That’s what men do, isn’t it? They take and take and take—” She broke off on a rising note of hysteria.
In the face of such heart-rending anguish, Nicholas said naught. He just held her as gently as he could. What could he say that could possibly mitigate such bitterness? She had experienced the absolute worst from men. She had been vilely abused and beaten. Why would she think him any different? After all, she certainly had to be feeling the granite hardness of his cock pressing against the soft curve of her belly. She had no way of knowing it was an arousal born not of lust, but of need for her and her alone. A need that could be satisfied with naught less than her total surrender to him. A need that, if he gave in to it, would only confirm her low opinion of men, himself included.
Minutes ticked by. Neither spoke. Flames crackled in the fireplace, a log settled with a loud thunk sending a shower of white-hot sparks bursting out across the hearth.
Then she heaved a tremendous sigh and said, still in that harsh, barely audible whisper, “My name is Kathryn.”
Kathryn. He mouthed the word silently, fighting the need to ask Kathryn who? “Kathryn.” He repeated it softly, tasting it, testing the shape of it in his mouth. Kathryn. It was a lovely name. It suited her.
Nicholas’s head fell forward. He kissed the top of her head, then rested his cheek against it, rubbing it gently against the silk of her hair. He felt the tension draining out of her. “Thank you, my love,” he said in relief. “Now that you have trusted me with that information, will you not tell me who you’re running from?”
“Nay.” She shook her head. Her tone was adamant.
“Won’t your father be worried about you?” It was purely a guess, tossed out just to see what her response would be.
“Hah!” she scoffed bitterly. “My father cares naught for me,” she spat out. “Nor I for him.”
“Then, who is looking for you? Your husband?”
At first he thought she was going to refuse to answer. She just sat there in the protective circle of his arms, not moving, hardly daring to breathe. Then she seemed to sag back against him. “A very powerful man,” she said at last. “And he won’t be worried about me either.” Her tone was flat. “He will be coming to get me back. And when he finds me, he will kill me. And you. And everyone else in this castle.”
“That will not happen.”
“It will happen,” she insisted. “You must let me go, my lord. I cannot allow you to place yourself and your household in peril simply because you gave me shelter. I cannot allow an act of kindness to be repaid with so much bloodshed. I will not have that burden on my soul. Please allow me to leave, Your Grace, I beg you.”
“Nay.”
She was sobbing. Hot, desperate tears plopped down onto his hands still circling her wrists, resting in her lap. Wet blobs of pure misery scalded his skin, scorching his heart.
At that moment, Rolf emerged from the privy tower. His eyes met Nicholas’s over the top of Kathryn’s head. With a nod, Rolf quietly gathered up his clothing, his boots, his baldric with the twin swords, and exited the room. With a sigh, Nicholas tightened his arms, enfolding Kathryn even more closely in the shelter of his strength.
“Nay, my love, don’t cry,” he begged softly against her hair. “Please don’t cry. No one is going to die save the man who beat you and raped you and forced you to flee out into the night. This I know because I am going to be the one who kills him. And you need never fear him or anyone else ever again.”
“This is not your fight!” she cried desperately.
“I have made it my fight.”
“But, why?” she wailed. “Why would you place yourself in jeopardy for me? I am naught but a stranger to you.”
To her utter astonishment, she felt him smile against the top of her head.
“Nay, my love. That’s where you are wrong. You are no stranger.” His voice was filled with a quiet
intensity that left her shaken. “Over the last four days I have seen and touched every inch of you. I have bathed you. I have slept beside you, held you in my arms. And as soon as you are well enough—if you allow it—I intend to make love to you. The man who brutalized you was naught but an animal. I want to show you that not all men are like that. I want to show you how pleasurable loving between a man and a woman can be.
“You accuse me of wanting to take from you. That is not true. I want to give to you. I want to give you a joy that you have never known. I want to give you pleasure so exquisite you will cry out and beg for more. I want to worship every part of your body with every part of mine. I want to love you until you fly apart in my arms and soar to the heavens. I want to be inside you and feel your body tighten around me and explode with pleasure. And if, in giving this to you, I also take pleasure for myself, I swear that is all I will ever take from you.”
The carnal thrill of his words, the fierce intensity of his voice had her struggling for breath.
He turned her in his arms so that she was sitting sideways across his lap. His hands came up to frame her face and turn it up toward his. His eyes roamed over her healing cuts and bruises, seeing the fey, fragile beauty beneath. “And after I have done all that,” he resumed in a voice that shook with raw passion, “I am going to do it all again. And again. Until you know to the bottom of your soul that there is one man in this world who loves you. Who adores you. Who cherishes you above all things.” His eyes darkened, holding her gaze. “You are no stranger, Kathryn, of the sunshine hair. You are the woman I have been seeing in my dreams for the last four years.”
She gasped. “I have been dreaming of you!” she cried in shock. “You are my dark warrior! I recognized you the instant I awoke!”
“Then,” he said with a slow, faint smile, “’tis more than just coincidence. ’Tis fate.” He leaned forward to place the gentlest of kisses on each of her bruised, swollen eyes. “And there’s no arguing with fate. So you see, beloved, you cannot leave. For if you do, you will destroy my heart.”
Stunned by the force of his words, she stared up at him, shivering at the towering hunger she saw in the blackness of his eyes. All those things he just said—Blessed Virgin, she wanted them, too! More than she’d ever thought possible.
All her life she had dreamed of finding someone to love. Someone who loved her in return. But it had been a hopeless dream, crushed by the callous indifference of her father and mother. Crushed by four long, soul-leaching years in a convent with no hope of a future other than as a virtual slave to a group of prune-faced, parsimonious nuns. Destroyed utterly by her ordeal at the vicious hands of Robert Walford. She had feared her life was over without ever finding the one thing she had longed for above all else. Love.
And yet, here was this man, Nicholas Herron, telling her that he loved her. And she believed him. It was there in the rawness of his voice, in the intensity of his look, in the fierce tenderness of his touch. She could feel the reality of it, the certainty of it, flowing over her parched soul like a healing balm.
He would not subsume her, as she had initially feared. He would free her. Free her not only to accept his masculine touch, but to enjoy it, seek it, revel in it. Free her to give herself—body, heart and soul—into his keeping, knowing that he would treasure her as a gift, and not as his due. No, he would not subsume her. He would complete her. He would free her from her painful memories and awaken her to the passion she knew was simply waiting to be unleashed inside her.
His eyes were a black, fathomless abyss and she was drowning in them. Swamped by the dark tide of his masculinity, she felt the rising tide of her own response rushing up inside her, buoying her. She held herself still, almost frightened by the depths of the feelings he stirred within her. Feelings that were not gentle or restrained, or filled with romantic notions. Nay, these feelings were wild and earthy and seething with raw, desperate hunger.
A hunger she had never experienced before. A hunger, the force of which would annihilate her very soul if she gave herself to him and he did not value her. If she allowed him to take her body, that’s exactly what it would be. A taking. A claiming. A masterful subjugation of everything she was. Was she ready for that?
Oh, he would give her pleasure. She had no doubt about that. He would give her pleasure beyond anything she had ever known or imagined. And she wanted that. Desperately. But she also wanted him. Everything he was. Would he give her that?
She had endured and survived Robert Walford’s attack on her. He had, after all, demanded only one thing from her—her fear. Nicholas Herron would demand everything she was—her body, her heart. Her very soul. Was she ready for that depth of surrender? Was she even capable of that depth of surrender? Could she give him what he wanted without losing herself? She didn’t know. But she knew she had to try.
Something clenched deep within her feminine core, heating her blood, melting her bones and sending hot moisture cascading through her system. Her skin prickled, tiny pinpricks of fire sparking across her nerve endings. A profound, thrilling ache began deep in her womb. She could feel the wetness pooling between her legs. Her breath caught and she found herself wondering what it would be like to be kissed by this man for real, not just in a dream. To be kissed with love and passion instead of assaulted with anger and hatred. She shuttered her lids, imagining the feel of those full, sensuous lips covering her own, seeking, plundering, devouring…
As if reading her thoughts, he dropped his gaze to her mouth. Her heart stopped, squeezing painfully in her chest. Her own eyes fell for an instant to his unmistakably masculine mouth before lifting back up to the black shock of his gaze. The blistering heat she saw there incinerated her resistance, reducing it to ash, leaving her aching for something she could not even name.
Lifting her head, she shocked them both by placing her lips against his. He gasped into her mouth, but didn’t pull away. He couldn’t. He needed this too much. He needed her too much. Her lips were soft, warm, flavored with sunshine and honey. They sat without moving, lips barely touching, a kiss more of breath than touch. Then he applied the tiniest pressure, brushing his lips gently and slowly back and forth across hers, creating a sweet friction that sent sparks of fire shooting through her.
Her heart jerked, her breathing hitched. It was the most exquisite sensation she had ever experienced. She had never expected a kiss to be so…so…her brain shut down. Her insides combusted into a pool of molten fire.
He took her lips in a series of sipping, savoring kisses, as if he were studying her mouth, memorizing her shape, her texture, her flavor. Sweet Jesu! His heart slammed against his breastbone, sending blood thundering in his ears. Out of breath, he finally lifted his head and smiled at her. A smile that was relentlessly compelling and intoxicatingly male.
She gazed at him steadily, aware of a crushing sense of inevitability. Nothing, not even her dreams, had prepared her for the reality of this man. Yet everything in her life had been leading her to him.
Without a word, he lay back down, pulling her into the protective curve of his body. She was breathlessly aware of his enormous erection pressing against her buttocks, the heat of his hand stroking her belly, sliding up her abdomen to just below her breast. She sucked in her breath and held it, fear warring with a deep hunger as his fingers brushed against the soft underside of one ripe curve.
But his hand stilled and he made no further moves, seemingly content just to hold her until she relaxed back against him with a sigh.
“Have no fear of me, beloved. I am not going to hurt you. I will never hurt you. But I am going to make love to you. When you are ready, and not a moment sooner. I am going to pleasure you until you scream my name in ecstasy.” His voice was a rumbling sound that stroked across her nerve endings and made her shiver. For a moment, he feared her fever had returned. Then he realized it was the effect of his words. She was shivering in anticipation. The knowledge made his heart sing. He closed his arms around her in a tight hug before
letting them relax once again. “Sleep now, my angel,” he murmured.
* * * *
“Nick.” Rolf Torgesson and Thomas Parsons practically tumbled into the solar, urgency tensing every line in their bodies. Nicholas rose quickly from the table, glancing toward the bed where Kathryn lay sleeping. “What is it?”
“We know who she is, Nick.” Thomas said, keeping his booming voice low as he and Rolf approached the table. “She’s Carrolton’s daughter.”
“Carrolton!” Nicholas couldn’t hide his surprise. “I didn’t even know he had a daughter.”
“She’s been in a convent,” Thomas shrugged.
“For eighteen years?” Nicholas hissed, frustration evident in every line of his body. “Then who beat her up, for Christ’s sake? And don’t tell me the nuns—although, I know a few who could.”
Rolf grimaced. “Thou’rt not going to like it, Nick.”
“I already don’t like it,” Nicholas replied grimly, an edge of steel in his voice. Gesturing for them to follow him into the adjoining antechamber, he closed the interconnecting door quietly behind them. “Out with it. Who brutalized her?”
“Robert Walford.”
Nicholas’s eyes widened in shock. “Walford! That murdering son of a bitch?” God’s Blood! This was worse than he expected. Walford was the most corrupt and ruthless bastard in all of England. As King Edward III’s distant cousin and Magistrate of the Crown, he wielded an enormous amount of power and influence. Power and influence that, according to rumor, had sent more than one unfortunate nobleman to Newgate on trumped-up charges of treason.
“What happened?” Nicholas sank into a chair. “How did Carrolton get mixed up with the likes of Walford?” Thomas and Rolf followed suit, Thomas perched on the edge of his, Rolf in a loose-limbed slouch, his long, lanky legs stretched out before him, crossed comfortably at the ankles. His twin swords rose above his head like antlers. He folded his hands across his abdomen.
Dark Warrior (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 7
