“How will you manage this marriage?” Will wanted to know.
“I? Dear boy, I will have nothing at all to do with it except to sit back and let Elizabeth manage the entire thing, for that is what she will do, you may be certain. Rosamund approves of the Scot. I certainly favor him. Their blood is almost equal, I have reconsidered. Her father was a knight. His is lesser nobility. It is enough.”
“But what of the master of Grayhaven?” Will persisted.
“The man would be a fool not to allow his bastard, particularly a beloved bastard, to wed with a landed heiress, even if she is English. It will all work itself out, dear boy, and I am eager to let it. I want to be home at Otterly by autumn. You must go back and see that my wing is completed on time with no more interference from Banon. I will have my privacy. Think on it, Will! Peace and quiet at long last. We shall spend the winter as snug as two mice in a full granary. When we were in London I found a cache of books and manuscripts for sale. They belonged to some elderly noble whose heir was obviously an uneducated barbarian. I purchased them and had them shipped to Otterly. We shall spend our days cataloging my find. It is a veritable treasure, dear Will!”
“You do not believe your further aid is needed then?” Will said.
“Nay. Elizabeth has the whole situation well in hand. In a few weeks we shall travel home, and all will be well.”
Baen MacColl reentered the hall, Friar bounding ahead of him.
“Dear, dear boy, you have enjoyed your romp with your dog?”
“Aye,” Baen told him. “The evening is fair, sir. The air here has a softness to it that I do not find in my Highlands.”
“It comes from the sea,” Lord Cambridge murmured. “ ’Tis why my nieces have such fine skin. Elizabeth in particular. Otterly is farther from the sea, and Philippa’s home at Brierewode not near the sea at all. Do you not find Elizabeth lovely, dear boy? She is the fairest of Rosamund’s daughters.”
“Aye,” Baen said. “She is lovely.” He flushed with the words.
Seeing it, Thomas Bolton knew he had made his point. He arose, setting his goblet aside. “I must find my bed, for I am fairly exhausted, dear boy. Elizabeth has not come down, and may not. Would you see the house is safe for the night?”
“Aye, my lord, gladly,” Baen answered, bowing slightly.
“Good night then, dear boy,” Lord Cambridge said, and linked his arm through Will Smythe’s as the two men left the hall.
Friar had settled down by the fire, his eyes closed. Baen went to the front door of the house and set the bar across it. He walked through the main floor of the dwelling, making certain that all the fires were banked and the candles snuffed out. Satisfied that all was well, he sat down for a moment before the warm hearth. It felt so natural to do the tasks that would belong to the master of the house. But of course he was not the master here. And he couldn’t be. He owed an allegiance to his father first. With a sigh he arose and went upstairs to his bedchamber.
Opening the door, he saw the fire burning in the small hearth, casting black shadows on the walls. He did not bother to light his taper, for he could see well enough to disrobe. Stripping to his natural state he washed himself in the basin left for that purpose. Then, turning, he walked across the room to his bed. The coverlet suddenly flipped back.
“Get in,” he heard Elizabeth’s voice command, and then she raised herself from the mattress. “You will catch a chill, Baen,” she said in a gentler voice.
He stood there, shocked, more mindful of his nakedness than he had ever been in his entire life. He grabbed at the coverlet to shield himself.
Elizabeth giggled. “I have already seen everything you have to offer, Baen, and it is most impressive, I must say.” Then, tossing the coverlet off, she displayed herself completely to him.
“You’re naked,” he croaked. He could not take his eyes from her. She was slender where a man would want a woman slender, and sweetly rounded where he would want her rounded. Her skin was pale, like rich cream, and her blond hair spilled over her shoulders like a waterfall. Her hazel-green eyes met his gray ones directly.
“Get into bed, Baen,” she repeated.
He backed away from her. “Are you mad, lass?” he wanted to know.
“Did you not believe me when I said I wanted you for my mate?” Elizabeth asked him quietly. Actually her heart was hammering, and she did not feel nearly as bold as she was portraying herself to be. He was a very big man. Big all over. Still, she knew from her sisters what was involved in a man’s coupling with a woman. She had just never realized that a manroot could be that large.
“If I get into that bed, Elizabeth,” he said in dark tones, “there will be no going back for either of us. You cannot cry rapine in the morning.”
“Why would I?” she questioned him. “You are my mate.”
“If you are a virgin I will ruin you for any husband,” he said.
“I am a virgin, and I want none other but you,” she told him.
“I cannot remain with you once my business here is complete. I must return to Grayhaven, lass,” he attempted to reason with her. “My sire has my loyalty, as he must.”
Elizabeth held out her hand to him. “Come,” she said softly.
“If I do . . .” he began.
“You will take my virginity, and then that barrier between us will be over and done with, Baen, my hinny love,” Elizabeth answered him.
He swallowed hard. Then, gathering up strength from the depths of his soul, he turned his back on her and walked away from the bed. “Nay, lass, I will not dishonor you,” he told her.
Elizabeth jumped from the bed, her feet making a thumping noise as she did. She threw herself at him as he turned, startled. Her slender body, her small, soft breasts, pressed against his hard body. Her hands reached up to take his face between them. “Do not dare run from me, Baen MacColl!” she cried. “It is not worthy of you!”
His control broke. His arms wrapped about her. His dark head lowered, and he kissed her with a violence that sent a thrill through her from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. “You are a bold witch, Elizabeth Meredith, and whatever happens now between us is on your own head, damn it! Do you understand that?” A single hand caressed her face, cupping it.
Her heart was going to burst through her chest. She was melting with the heat the conjunction of their two bodies produced. “Yes!” she whispered fiercely. “Yes!”
“Then so be it!” he groaned, and, picking her up, carried her back across the room to the bed, where he laid her gently before joining her. “I have wanted you almost from the first moment I saw you,” he admitted.
“I know,” Elizabeth told him. “You were not very good at concealing your feelings, Baen MacColl. It was very flattering, and when I was sent off to court I had a new confidence because of it.” She pulled his dark head down to hers and gave him a slow, sweet kiss.
“I didn’t teach you to kiss like that,” he said, jealousy rising at her expertise.
“Nay, you didn’t,” Elizabeth said, smiling up at him. “You were my first kiss. I have kissed others since, but I shall never kiss another again,” she promised him.
“You will have a husband one day,” he said.
“Do you think me so without honor, Baen, that after giving my virginity to you I should take another man?” Elizabeth responded. “You are my man. There will be no other.” Her hand tangled in his dark hair, and she caressed the nape of his neck with delicate fingertips. “You will have to tell me what to do,” she murmured in his ear.
He shuddered and closed his eyes briefly. This had to be lunacy, he considered tersely. But then Elizabeth was placing little kisses across his face. Baen shook his head in a gesture of surrender. There was no denying his arousal. He was mortal, not some saint. She was soft. She was perfumed. And she was oh, so willing to be loved. And he did love her. He opened his eyes and looked down into her lovely face. “Has anyone told you it may hurt the first time?” he asked her softly. His
big hand smoothed the soft blond hair from her forehead.
She nodded, and he could see the small fear in the back of her eyes.
“You must let me take my time and prepare you, sweetheart,” he said.
Elizabeth nodded solemnly. “I trust you, Baen,” she told him.
He smiled gently. “Touch me,” he told her. “Let your pretty hands explore me. You will find it difficult to fear that which you know, Elizabeth. A man likes to be touched every bit as much as a woman,” he explained to her. Then he lay on his back.
She propped herself on her side and looked closely at him. Her first impression of bigness was confirmed. Was his manroot larger in this light? Shyly she ran a hand over his chest. His skin was smooth and warm. The hand slipped to his taut belly, but then drew quickly back. She had never before seen a grown man fully naked. He said nothing. Lowering her head she began to kiss and lick the nipples on his chest, as she had once before. He sighed pleasurably. Emboldened, she now climbed upon him, her bottom resting on his belly. Her two hands smoothed over his broad chest. She feathered little kisses across the hard flesh.
Reaching up he took her two small breasts in his hands and began to play with them. He fondled the twin globes gently. Leaning forward, he licked at them. He teased the nipples until they stood hard with her budding passion. When she bent forward to kiss him on the mouth, Baen wrapped Elizabeth in an embrace and rolled her onto her back again. She gasped, and he soothed her with little murmurs and kisses. She quieted, but then tensed as he caressed her as she had him. Boldly his hand moved to tangle itself in the nest of golden curls between her milky thighs. “Easy, lass,” he whispered to her. His finger slid along the pouting slit of flesh, and Elizabeth trembled.
“I have never been touched there before,” she confided.
Her words were a most potent aphrodisiac, for he believed her. He was the first! He pressed the first joint of one finger between her nether lips. She was moist there, but not yet ready. He sought for and found the tiny nub of flesh that he knew if stimulated properly would excite and pleasure her. He touched it, and she trembled as if sensing the mystery about to be revealed. He rubbed that tiny bit of flesh with his fingertip.
Elizabeth stirred restlessly beneath his hand. What was he doing? Why was he doing it? But instinct suggested she not forbid him, and instinct prevailed. She felt the tiniest of tingles in that secret region of her body, and as he continued to stroke that sensitive bit of flesh she sensed a burgeoning of not just her flesh, but something else to which she could not give a name. And then suddenly it was wonderful! She gasped. “Oh!” she was surprised to hear herself cry out. “Oh! Oh!” Their glances met, and she could see the delight in those gray eyes that his actions were offering her pleasure.
“You like it?” he asked eagerly.
“Yes!” she managed to gasp. “Oh!” His finger had penetrated her to the knuckle. “Baen! What are you doing?”
“Making certain you are ready,” he groaned. Then his mouth found hers. He was burning up with his impatience to have her. To fill her full with his manroot and hear her cry of surrender as their two bodies became one entity. And Elizabeth was very ready, he realized. Her juices were flowing copiously, soaking his big hand. He withdrew his finger from her, sucking it, tasting her, and he thought his lust would explode then and there.
Her breath was coming in short, sharp pants. She was somewhat shocked to see him sucking on the finger that had so recently been within her. “Baen?” She felt fear beginning to well up within her.
“I can’t stop now, Elizabeth,” he half sobbed. “I can’t!”
She swallowed hard. “I know,” she acknowledged. “Just do it! Please!”
“Ah, God, sweetheart, don’t be afraid,” he pleaded with her. “I will love you as sweetly as I can.” His big hands spread her wide, and he slid between her legs. She was so delicate, he suddenly realized.
She felt the head of his manroot penetrating her, and stiffened. She had not dared to look, but it felt as if she were being pierced by an iron rod. She struggled to maintain her composure, for she had initiated this encounter. But God’s blood! He was so big!
“If you fight me, even without meaning to, it will hurt more than I want it to,” he said, and he shuddered. Then he pushed firmly against her resistance.
Elizabeth drew a deep breath. She wanted this. She wanted him! And, reassuring herself, she did what Banon had told her would give her man pleasure. She wrapped her slender legs about his hard torso, gasping, “Hurry!”
He needed no further encouragement. Drawing himself back just slightly, he plunged deep into her fair body, feeling her virginity tear and give way before his passionate onslaught. Elizabeth’s cry of sudden pain was like a knife to his heart. He stopped a moment to let her body grow used to this invasion. Then he began a slow and carefully measured rhythm, moving himself back and forth within the tight, hot passage that had welcomed him.
Beneath his sweating male body Elizabeth Meredith was filled with a surprising sense of power. She held him in her arms as he labored over her, almost weeping as her fears subsided and her own desires began to overwhelm her. “Oh, Baen!” she cried. “Oh, my love! My darling!”
He couldn’t get enough of her! And the sweet words of her building passion but roused his lust for her more. “Elizabeth! My angel! My own!” he sobbed, kissing her wet cheeks tenderly.
“Don’t stop!” she innocently begged him.
“I don’t think I can,” he groaned low. “I have never had such a need!”
“You see!” And he heard the triumph in her voice. “I told you we were meant to be mated, Baen MacColl! Oh! Oh!” She was growing dizzy with the pleasure now beginning to race through her body.
The knowledge that his own passions were stoking hers filled him with an incredible sense of power. He had wanted her. Now he needed her. She was necessary to life itself. She shuddered beneath him, and, unable to sustain himself further, he loosed his love juices into her fevered young body, growling into her ear as he did so, “Now, you border witch, are you satisfied?” And to his surprise she answered him.
“Not yet, hinny love! This is but our beginning.”
He fell away from her, laughing, a sound that was part amusement and part relief. “Elizabeth! Elizabeth! What am I to do with you?” he asked her.
“Love me more!” she told him, flinging herself atop him so that their bodies met.
“You are newly breached, sweetheart,” he said. “And I need some sleep.”
“Do you not want to make love to me again?” she asked him.
“I will need some sleep in order to recover my strength,” he explained.
“I have seen the stallion mount several mares in succession out in the fields,” she told him, sounding puzzled.
“As much as I would like to be the stallion, I am but a man,” he told her. “And you should not be found in my bed on the morrow, sweetheart.”
“Aye,” she agreed. “What is between us should remain between us only for now.” She slipped from the bed and donned her chemise, which he had not seen before. Then, going to the door, she turned and smiled a sweet smile at him. “Good night, Baen,” she said, and was gone.
He lay back in his bed, considering the last hour and what he had shared with Elizabeth Meredith. She had boldly seduced him. He almost laughed aloud again. And he had allowed himself to be seduced, even though he knew better. But there was no going back. He could not change what had happened, and the truth was, he didn’t want to change it. He loved the brazen baggage. He loved the lady of Friarsgate. Then his thoughts grew sober. It could not happen again. He owed his father his loyalty, and it was a loyalty he could not share with Elizabeth Meredith.
But Elizabeth would not be deterred. She entrapped him in a barn the following day, and before he knew it he was fucking her lustily in a stall full of sweet-smelling hay. She shamelessly pulled him beneath a hedgerow in a sheep meadow one afternoon, and they coupled despite his laughi
ng protests. She teased him wickedly with little touches and kisses when no one else was looking. She came to his chamber each night, and he could not refuse her. He felt complete now only when he was with her. When he was filling her with his passion. When she lay beneath him crying out with her own need. It was madness, yet neither of them could cease indulging in their desperate hunger for each other. Elizabeth was certain her plan was succeeding. Soon he would be hers forever!
“I will surely get you with child,” he warned her one night as they lay, limbs entwined, in his bed. “I don’t want you shamed by a bastard, as my mother was shamed. I don’t want the child ridiculed by the circumstances of his birth. I will have to leave you soon, sweetheart. We do not speak of it now, but you know it.”
“Handfast with me,” Elizabeth said casually. “That way if you return to your father’s house, any child that comes of our love will be legitimate. A handfast is good for only a year and a day, Baen. If I do not have a child in that time then there is no harm done to anyone. Soon it will be Michaelmas, and many handfast secretly then. If you would leave me, then a handfast between us will protect me.”
“You know I must go,” he told her unhappily. “I have never made a secret of it.”
“You could come back,” Elizabeth said. “I do not believe your father needs you more than I do, Baen. He has two legitimate sons. If you were not so stubborn you would see that. We are equals in so many ways, my darling. Are you telling me that the master of Grayhaven is such a tyrant that he would forbid you marriage to an heiress with good lands? That he doesn’t want you to be happy?”
“I warned you!” he growled at her. She was confusing him.
She pulled his head to hers and kissed him passionately. “Aye,” she agreed. “You warned me, but I did not believe that once we became lovers, you could so casually cast me aside. I am not some cotter’s daughter or tavern wench!” Her hand reached down to fondle him, and he grew instantly hard within her warm, taunting fingers. Then Elizabeth boldly mounted him, feeling his length slip into her love passage, filling it with his bulk and his heat. “Can you so easily desert me, my love?” she demanded of him, riding him, seeing the lust rising in his stormy gray eyes.
The Last Heiress Page 26
