She did look at him then, but her green eyes were stormy as a wind-tossed sea and there was no yielding in them. “You broke your word to me. You swore that you would not attempt to force me to—”
Broken his word? Forced her? Christian had fought his every desire as far as this woman was concerned, and still she accused him.
Very well then.
If he was to be accused…
Without another thought, he pulled her forward into his arms as he had wished to do each and every moment since last he had done so. A soft gasp of shock escaped that sweet mouth, and he silenced it with his lips.
She struggled against him, but only for a moment, before her lips softened under his and she tilted her head back even farther, inviting an even deeper contact. Christian knew a brief instant of amazement at her reaction, yet he was happy to oblige her desire, kissing her with a thoroughness that made his own head spin with wanting.
Her response was to reach up, drawing his head down to her even as she strained against him.
Christian’s arms tightened around her slender form. There was no mistaking her yielding, her need.
He lifted her in his arms and laid her down upon the ground. Her cloak spread out around her, creating a spill of blue in the bed of autumn leaves.
Rowena could not fight this, had no desire to do so. The moment his mouth found hers the fires that she had thought so carefully banked inside her burst into blazing life.
She had only been fooling herself to think she could resist her feelings for Christian. She would never stop wanting this man, loving him with every fiber of her being.
When he attempted to pull back, Rowena clung to him with her arms, her lips, her being. She could not bear for him to leave her now, not with this ache of desire so hot and wet inside her.
It must be slaked.
But when he leaned down to whisper, his breath hot and intimate against her ear, “I would free my flesh to better feel yours,” she gasped with a renewed rush of passion and let him go.
Christian watched her as she lay there, her eyes hungry with desire, and his body ached all the more as he tossed his tunic aside. As he removed his hose, he found himself unable to look at her. He was afraid that her wanting would only unman him, when he so desperately wished to give both of them pleasure.
When he had shed the rest of his garments and turned back to her, he saw that Rowena was seeking to draw her gown up to her hips.
Moving to stop her with a hand that trembled with ill-suppressed longing, Christian held her startled gaze with his. “Nay, I would not let you rob me of the pleasure of this task.”
Rowena gave a deliciously pleasurable shiver under that hot gaze. She caught her breath as a deeply arousing and lascivious smile curved those sensuous lips. She whispered, “As you will, my lord.”
Christian watched as she slowly and deliberately pulled her gown back down so that it covered her all the way to the tips of her toes. Then she lay back, her hands behind her head, her eyes inviting his attention.
A thrill of desire shot through him and he surged forward to place his lips at the hem of her garment. Then, with a delicateness born of his sheer pleasure in his task, he slipped her gown up to uncover a pair of red leather slippers. Slowly he slipped off one, then the other, exposing slender and shapely feet.
Rowena sighed as he uncovered her feet, anticipating the moment when she would be bared in preparation of their joining. But as his mouth touched her toes, her instep, her ankles, exploring skin she had never given more than a cursory thought, she found her breath quickening, and tremor after tremor raced up her body.
Christian had never kissed or explored a woman in this way, had never thought to do so. But something inside him made him long to know each and every inch of the woman before him as he had never known another human being.
He kissed her ankles, her calves, pausing at the lovely angles of her knees, removing her clothing from his path as he went. All the while he was aware of the way she quivered at every caress. Unexpectedly, her reactions seemed to dampen his own passion. For he found himself longing to give her the sweetest and greatest of pleasures above all else.
Yet when he reached the tops of her tights, it was his belly that spasmed, his breath that caught in his throat as she grew very still, her body rigid with expectancy. Nay, not yet; he could not cut their loving short no matter how the thought of her wanting enflamed him.
Rowena felt as if her body was a bow, pulled tighter and tighter with each kiss, each touch, each delicate flick of Christian’s tongue on her eager flesh. When he hesitated there at the tops of her thighs she thought she might die of sheer anticipation. But he drew away, raising up to lean over her. Rowena’s body seemed to cry out with aching disappointment.
Her disappointment instantly dissolved when his scorching mouth found hers, communicating his ardor. “Rowena.”
“Christian.” She surged toward him, inviting him.
He kissed her again and once more pulled away, urging her up with him. At first she clung to him, but when he put his hands on the hem of her gown she released him, not having to be told what he wanted. Eagerly she sat up, looking out from half-closed lids as she raised her arms and he drew her garments over her head.
Once bared, she lay back down, holding out her arms in welcome. For one long moment his gaze moved over her, his eyes darkening to indigo, before he came to her.
Christian had forgotten how exquisite she was, with her high firm breasts, narrow waist and perfectly proportioned hips. Yet, as he had told her before, how could any man be expected to recall such beauty from memory?
He kissed her once more on the mouth, then traced a trail of wonder down her throat, across her collarbone, until he at last found the rise of her breast. He lingered there, savoring the smooth softness of that curve, breathing in the warmth and womanly essence of her, which seemed both musky and fresh at the same time.
She gasped with new rapture as his mouth closed on her nipple and he suckled first one breast and then its sister. As he did so they seemed to harden and swell, as if bidding him to attend them further, to pleasure them.
Rowena had thought she burned before, but Christian’s attentions to her breasts were as a spark to a keg of hot oil. She arched up beneath him, her hips seeming to search for him of their own accord. “I…oh, Christian, no more. I am afire.”
Christian knew that he, too, could take little more than this. Her reactions to his loving were as heady, as passionate, as any physical joy he had ever known. Without even trying she had moved him to the brink of a craving that was so intense it left him quivering with need.
He rose over her, and found that there was no need to part her thighs, for she lay open and waiting for him. He slipped into that moist, beckoning darkness with a groan of elation and relief.
Then both those emotions were drowned in wave after wave of inexplicable delight. They crashed over him, through him, leaving him gasping at their intensity.
Rowena felt the rhythm of his body and responded in kind, eager to welcome him into her being. She was climbing ever higher on the wings of the passion Christian had awakened inside her. Because of their previous lovemaking, she knew what fulfillment could be, and fell into the joyous rise of her own desire eagerly.
When she rose to the crest that she thought she recalled so well, so vividly, she called out with amazement and wonder. For it washed over her in a feeling so intense and moving that its rapture was too great to hold in her mortal and all too fallible mind.
She was Christian and he was Rowena.
Only when the ecstasy had eased could she breathe once more.
But could she ever be separate from this man again? she asked herself as he rolled to the side. Sighing, she flung her arm across her eyes, her tongue flicking out to wet lips that were dry from the harshness of her breathing as he loved her. Would she ever again in her entire life feel complete without Christian?
Rowena did not think that would be pos
sible.
The very knowledge of this seemingly inescapable truth rocked her to her core.
She looked over at him, her eyes hungry for the sight of his face, so dear to her. Even more dear than his touch on her body.
His eyes met hers. Shocked, she winced at the painful hopelessness in his expression. She wanted to close her lids, to block out the sight of it so soon after their loving, but knew she could not shield herself from what he was about to say.
His voice was filled with weary resignation. “Forgive me yet again, Rowena. I had no more right to touch you just now than I ever have. Would that there was something that could be done about the situation.”
She returned that gaze for a long moment, feeling resentment rise up inside her. “What do you mean, would that something could be done? It is your own choice whether something be done about the situation or nay.”
He frowned, clearly startled as well as displeased by her anger. “You know how things stand between me and my father.”
A wave of hopelessness washed over her. They were exactly where they had been.
She sat up and pulled her cloak close about her before standing. She then swung around to glare at him. “Oh yes, I know. But I am not sure that you do.” She began to gather up her clothes.
“What say you?”
She cast him an assessing glance. “You insist that you are responsible for making life easier for your father. Yet I begin to wonder if what you do is based on your own need, rather than his.”
“My own?” He was clearly incredulous. “How can you accuse me of that when you know I owe him so much after deserting him for so long?”
Having gathered up her garments, Rowena faced him again. “I wonder if you are not more attached to your guilt than to your father’s well-being. Or perhaps it is fear that binds you, fear of giving too much of yourself away. Those are the only possible explanations I can find for such utter and complete blindness in an otherwise observant man.”
“You speak in riddles.”
She grimaced. “Do I? Convince yourself that this be true and you have no need to examine your motives.”
She swung away and came to an abrupt halt as he grabbed her arm. She turned to glare at him, finding him gloriously naked and unashamed in his outrage. “You will tell me what you mean.”
“You accuse me of not seeing. But there is so very much that you refuse to see. You see your father as a crippled, helpless man, because you wish to. See him through another’s eyes. Perhaps the lady Jannelle’s.”
“Lady Jannelle?”
Rowena simply stared at him. “Even if all you thought was truth, if your father was in need of your attendance upon him, you would also have a right to your own life. You left your father when he was grieving and did not respond to your grief. As you have come to realize, he is surely not an evil man for having made this error, but the error was his.” She glared at him. “Children do not belong to their parents. Their lives are their own.”
There was no change in his stubbornly set, yet frustratingly handsome features. “As yours belongs to you.”
“Yes!” Rowena jerked her arm free. And ran.
He called out from behind her, “Rowena, don’t…! It is too dangerous for you to go off alone here. You must stay with me.”
But she would not heed him, could not. Her peace of mind depended upon her finding some measure of immunity to him and her love for him.
She ran on and on, his voice following her for a time before it died off. Yet she continued, desperate to get away from the man who could with a kiss sway her from the path of her own good.
It was only after she had come to the edge of the forest that she stopped to look out at the farmland spread before her as she hastily drew on her clothing. Where was she?
And how did she get back to Avington from here? A growing sense of unease gripped her.
She and Christian had ridden quite some distance this day. Now she was on foot.
Rowena decided to skirt along the edge of the wood. It would at least give her some cover to move. Though they had seen no one who had even attempted to speak to them, she was infinitely aware that they were on Dragonwick lands.
A part of her longed to go back the way she had come and find Christian. No matter how bad things were between them he would get her safely back to Avington.
Pride would not allow her to do so. It told her that she did not need Christian Greatham. She had roamed the woods about Ashcroft alone for years. She would simply call upon her wood lore to get her back. Once on Avington lands she would surely be able to beg aid from someone.
Allowing the position of the sun to guide her, she walked on.
Rowena only wished that she could stop thinking of Christian, of how good it had felt to be loved by him, of how painful it was to know that he could not be swayed from his determination to hold tightly to his guilt. Perhaps it was her preoccupation with him that made her fail to note the three men who rode out from the cover of the trees until one of them had actually dismounted and run toward her.
Rowena spun around and raced into the forest. For a moment she thought she had eluded him, but then she felt herself brought up short and realized he had grasped the back of her cloak.
Her heart rising up in her throat, Rowena cried out, straining forward with all of her might, hoping the fabric might tear or his grip might slip. It did no good. The fabric was too heavy and the man’s hold too sure.
Even as he read her fear, the fellow laughed, his blackened teeth showing. He motioned to the others, and one of them rushed to drag Rowena to the ground.
All she could do was scream in helpless terror.
Christian chased after Rowena for some time, calling out her name. Suddenly he stopped short, cursing as he stepped on a sharp twig. Looking down, he recalled his bare feet, his nakedness.
Hurriedly he went back to the place where they had lain, gathered up his discarded shoes and clothing. He dragged them on, then grabbed up the reins of his patiently waiting stallion.
Mounting, he rode in the direction Rowena had gone, still cursing under his breath, knowing he was going too fast for Gideon’s safety. Yet also knowing that he must find her.
Damn her eyes. The things she had said.
Clearly Rowena was so angry and confused that she was not making any sense whatsoever. Her assessment of his motives was not rational.
He had chosen his future because it was the only thing he could choose with any honor. He had shirked his responsibilities by staying away from his home and duty for too long.
Yet the very thought of his life, his future without her caused a sickening ache in Christian’s pounding heart. He knew he had to get hold of himself. He could not have Rowena see how truly devastated he was at the life he had chosen for himself.
He knew that she would say he was disturbed because he had not gotten what he wanted, had not avenged his foster father. Feeling that ache inside him, the sheer agony of it, Christian was not at all certain that this could explain his feelings.
Somehow he knew that whatever else might have caused him to hurt so dreadfully, it must be even more closely guarded than his disappointment over not convincing her to stay in England. For it was not The Dragon he thought of now, but Rowena herself, of the way he felt each time he held her in his arms, each time he saw her smile.
Again that ache rose up to roll over him.
It was into this state of misery that a sound intruded upon his consciousness. And it was because of his misery that it was a long moment before he realized the sound for what it was. A woman’s scream.
Rowena!
Instantly he rose up in the saddle, pulling his horse around at the same time. The scream seemed to have come from behind and above him, where the cluster of trees marked the edge of the patch of forestland he had just come through.
He imagined that he must have passed close by her without even knowing he had done so. He galloped back, leaning low over the stallion’s back.
> He heard no more sounds—no more screams—but he did not try to tell himself that the scream had been other than what it was.
God rot him, he had been lost in his own selfish thoughts. He did not know what had brought about the scream, but he did know that it was his fault. He should not have let her go off alone.
The fact that he had only stopped to clothe himself seemed unimportant in the face of the fact that Rowena might be hurt…or worse.
He had only that one piercing scream and nothing more to guide him to her.
It was not until he was nearly to the edge of the wood that he saw her and the disturbingly filthy man who held her, as well as the other two who stood by. And when he did the blood that had felt so hot in his chest only moments ago seemed to have turned to ice. The chill from it spread over his body, making his limbs feel leaden as he pulled the stallion up short only a few feet from where they stood.
His gaze found Rowena’s even as the man who held her pulled her more closely against him. The gleam of a knife flashed out from the whiteness of her throat.
Her captor called out, “Don’t ye try to fight us, m’lord. ’Tis not beneath me to spit yer fine lady here and now.”
Christian heard the chill in his voice as he replied, “Do you so much as prick her flesh you will wish you had never been born.”
Even though he held the knife against Rowena’s throat the man and his fellows shifted slightly. As the knife wielder collected himself and went on, Christian could not help wondering if the words were more bravado than certainty. “A fine threat. A fine threat indeed, m’lord, when ye’ve to get through her to get to me. Ye must give us yer sword.”
Christian cast assessing eyes over his opponents. They were a poorly equipped lot. Obviously they were displaced men from some army. Perhaps even Kelsey’s, though Christian registered surprised that the motley crew would have the temerity to take their lives in their hands by preying upon those on the earl’s lands. They could not know that he and Rowena were not riding upon Dragonwick lands by permission of their lord, and he was sure Kelsey preferred to do the preying if any was to be done.
Dragon's Daughter Page 19
