Lords of Conquest Boxed Set

by Patricia Ryan

  “God, Corliss, don’t cry...”

  “I never cry!” She raised her chin defiantly. That was true, Rainulf realized. Although generally free with her emotions, he’d never seen her shed a tear—evidently a point of pride with her. “And I certainly wouldn’t cry over this. I just want to know what it’s like for other women, women who live normal lives and have husbands who love them. I just want you to tell me what it is they feel—”

  “I don’t know what it feels like for a woman.”

  “What does it feel like for a man?”

  “I told you. It can’t be described. I can’t help you.”

  She studied him in silence for a moment. “I think you can,” she said quietly. “You just won’t. You’re afraid.”

  He bolted up out of his seat and strode to her chamber door. “I can’t and I won’t.” He held the door open. “I think you should go back to bed, Corliss.”

  She stood, but made no move to leave. “Are you—” she took a deep breath. “Are you sorry you have to put up with my ceaseless questions and my...” She met his gaze squarely. “Do you wish I’d never come to Oxford?”

  He looked away, rubbing his eyes, trying to obliterate a torrent of images—her breasts through sheer linen, her hips encased in snug chausses, a thin ribbon of steaming flesh viewed through a doorway. They were images that tormented him, stirring up unwanted feelings, complicating his well-ordered life.

  Did he wish she’d never come to Oxford? “Sometimes, yes. Frequently.”

  He heard her rapid footsteps, felt the door yanked out of his hand, flinched at the reverberation as she slammed it closed. He opened his eyes on the empty chamber, feeling a sudden, ungovernable sense of loss.

  Without thinking, he wheeled on the door and slammed his fist into it, hard. Pain sucked the breath from his lungs. “Damn!”

  Lurching to the washstand, he plunged his hand into the ewer, letting the cold water numb it. “Damn.” He closed his eyes and filled his lungs with air, letting it out slowly. Then again, and again.

  He remembered the things she’d done and said in the stairwell after Wulfric’s birth, recalled the cool pressure of her palm against his cheek, and her artless wisdom: Just be in your skin... feel what you feel... Don’t fight it.

  Withdrawing his hand from the water, he dried it off, then flexed his fingers thoughtfully.

  He returned to the door and hesitated, questioning the wisdom of this. You scrutinize everything... question everything. Just listen to your instinct.

  His instinct told him to turn the handle of the door, and he did.

  Chapter 13

  Corliss heard the door open and turned toward the sound. The bed curtains enclosed her. A brief shaft of lamplight glowed through the filmy linen, then winked out as the door closed, plunging the chamber once more into absolute darkness.

  She held her breath, but heard nothing for several long moments. Presently there came a soft footfall, and another. She turned to face the wall, pulling the quilt up around her as he approached the bed.

  Go away. Just go away. If he spoke one more word to her, she feared she would burst into tears, and she didn’t want to cry. She hated to cry.

  There came a whispery rustle as the curtains parted. For a breathless interval nothing happened, and then she felt the quilt shift behind her as he turned it down. She sensed his weight on the mattress, and thought insanely that he was going to get under the covers with her, but of course, he didn’t. He sat, then waited, as if letting her get used to his being there.

  Presently she felt the first soft suggestion of his fingers on her hair. He tucked the unruly waves behind her exposed ear; then lightly touched her face, as if searching for something. Tears, she realized. He wanted to know whether she’d been crying, despite her proud insistence that she never did. She was glad she’d managed to keep the tears at bay.

  His hand slipped under the quilt to caress her shoulder, and then her back, massaging her slowly through the sleek silk in an obvious effort to comfort her. It was comforting, she realized. His touch told her, more effectively than words, that nothing all that dreadful had happened between them, that he still cared for her, that he had always cared for her. What surprised her was that he chose this way to reveal his feelings, rather than the tiresome and endless words on which he relied overly much. Was it possible that he’d taken to heart her admonition to save his complicated analyses for the lecture hall?

  He closed his hand over her shoulder and urged her onto her back. She looked up at him, but all she could make out was an indistinct form that might have been slightly darker than the blackness surrounding it. His hand glided lower beneath the quilt, along her bare arm, leaving a hot trail of sensation in its wake.

  Her heart accelerated as his fingertips moved from her wrist to her hip. He paused, resting his hand on her thigh, its warmth nearly scorching her through the silken shift. His fingers tightened, gathering the silk and pulling it up. He slowly raised her shift until her legs were bare beneath the quilt.

  She swallowed hard, but her voice emerged as an unsteady whisper. “Rainulf?”

  “Shh.”

  When she felt his light touch on her bare thigh, she bit her lip so hard it hurt. He smoothed his hand upward, over the ridge of hipbone and then, slowly, across her lower belly until it brushed the patch of hair there.

  She clutched the linen sheeting, her heart hammering, her mind a storm of emotions. What was he doing, touching her like this? What was he—

  He was showing her, she realized as he softly caressed her, his touch so feathery, so insubstantial, that she might have been imagining it. He was showing her that which she’d begged him to tell her about, but which he’d said could not be described.

  Oh, my God. Oh, my God. He burrowed a finger through the hair and gently stroked the tight cleft of her sex. No one had ever touched her there, and at first she was too astounded by the raw intimacy of it to feel much. At first. Gradually, as she relaxed, she found her senses focused exclusively on his mesmerizing touch and her body’s strange reaction to it.

  His fingertip barely grazed her, yet suffused her with a thrilling heat, a delicious buzz of sensation. The feeling grew and grew as he stroked her, very slowly, very patiently. Presently he brought his other fingers into play, caressing her until her heart pounded painfully in her chest and her breathing accelerated.

  She closed her eyes and pictured a tightly closed flower bud slowly swelling, opening...That’s what she felt like, that’s what his touch did to her. When he slipped a finger between the petals, she gasped at the sudden charge of pleasure. This soft, hidden part of her had become so sensitized that every delicate touch made her quiver.

  He moved a finger lower, to the mouth of her sex, drawing its moisture up...

  Corliss’s breathing grew ragged as he explored the slippery heat between her legs. It was almost too intense, too much to bear. She had the sense of something welling up, building to a fever pitch. Her heart raced wildly; her fingernails bit into her palms through the linen sheet. An element of alarm mingled with the pleasure. She had never traveled the path on which he led her, and didn’t know what to expect at its end.

  He deepened the caress, massaging her slick, aching flesh until she moaned. The reaction embarrassed her; even though he couldn’t see her in the dark, she turned her head toward the wall, fighting the urge to move her hips. She thought of the young Rhineland widow and her screams.

  Sorcerer’s hands. The widow said he had sorcerer’s hands... It was true. He was using them to cast a spell over her, a spell both marvelous and frightening.

  He paused, backing off a bit. Her hips rose, hungry for his touch. He obliged her, then lifted his fingers again; again she thrust upward, aware this time that he was teasing her deliberately, trying to make her move. At this point, she had no choice, no conscious control over her body. She rocked her hips in rhythm to his caress, as if she were a puppet and his sorcerer’s hands were pulling the strings.

>   She felt herself approaching a dark threshold at the end of the path. It beckoned with irresistibly seductive force, even as it made her heart tighten with fear of the unknown. It was as if she were about to tumble off the edge of the world.

  His quickening fingers coaxed her swiftly toward that threshold. No longer could she still her writhing body or silence the low moans that escaped from her.

  The dark abyss beckoned. Yet even as she approached the edge, she felt a lacking, an emptiness, a need deep inside her.

  Him. She needed him...

  And then she felt him, felt a long finger enter her, pushing inside. He knew it. He knew this was what I needed.

  He pressed down with the heel of his hand; she cried out, arching her back, as she felt contractions, like pulsing waves, plunging her over the edge of that mysterious void. A delicious frenzy overcame her, pummeling her from the inside as he continued stroking her. Her heart stopped. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think as the rapturous seizure crested, rocking her with convulsive pleasure.

  The movement of his hand gentled as the spasms gradually subsided. She kept her eyes closed, as if this had all been an astonishing dream that would vaporize if she opened them. To her surprise, he was breathing as rapidly as she was.

  When he began to withdraw his finger, her body clenched it involuntarily. She heard his sharp intake of breath as he stilled his hand, then eased it away slowly. A flurry of little tremors coursed through her. She brought her hands up to cover her face, finding it damp with perspiration.

  He smoothed her hair off her forehead, his hand unsteady. She uncovered her face and looked at him, finding that she could make out his image, now that her eyes had gotten used to the lack of light. His eyes glittered in the dark as they locked with hers. She knew that look; all women were born knowing it. It was a look akin to that of the hungry wolf—a look universal to the male animal, a look as old as the ages, as primal as breathing. He wanted her.

  He wrenched his gaze from hers and took a deep breath, letting it out shakily. Aye, she had no doubt he wanted her... but he was not going to take her. He wasn’t just any male animal; he was Rainulf Fairfax. And this wasn’t lovemaking; she’d known that all along. It had been more in the nature of a... friendly demonstration. At least, that was obviously how he had intended it, even if he now had to battle his natural response to her.

  She wondered about that response, wondered what his reaction would be if she were to reach for him and pull him down on top of her. She wanted him with a desperation that stunned her. She wanted to make love to him, wanted them to join their bodies and their souls, wanted to spend the rest of her life in his arms.

  Martine was right. I’m in love with him. What do I do now?

  Nothing. To tempt Rainulf into making love to her would be unfair to him. The chancellorship was all he wanted in life. Toward that end, he’d made a commitment to celibacy. For her to undermine that commitment by seducing him—and that’s what she’d be doing, for he’d never meant to share her bed tonight—would be inexcusable.

  She’d best accept tonight as he had intended it—a kind of gift from him to her, a favor.

  She cleared her throat. “Is that what you made happen to that woman in the Rhineland?”

  “Aye.”

  “More than once?”

  She saw him smile slowly. “Quite a few times, as I recall.”

  “No wonder the ladies of Paris went into mourning when you took your vows.”

  He chuckled and tucked the quilt up around her, then stroked her cheek. She felt the tension in him, and knew he wasn’t nearly as calm and unaffected as he wanted her to think. “Good night, Corliss.”

  “Good night.”

  He rose and pulled the bed curtains closed. She heard his footsteps retreating, saw the fleeting shaft of lamplight as he opened and closed his chamber door. And then all was quiet and dark once more.

  * * *

  Rainulf and Corliss set out from Blackburn at dawn. They’d ridden perhaps a hundred yards from the castle when the distant rumble of hoofbeats from behind made them rein in their mounts.

  What’s this? thought Rainulf as he and Corliss looked back over their shoulders. Thorne and Martine still stood on the drawbridge, where they’d said goodbye. On the path, advancing at a gallop, was a lone horseman.

  Peter.

  He drew up his mount, nodded in a cursory way to Rainulf, then reached over to take Corliss’s hand. “I didn’t realize you were leaving so early. I wanted to...” He glanced uneasily at Rainulf.

  “I’ll wait up the road a bit,” Rainulf said tersely, nudging his horse into a walk.

  Of course Peter would want to say a private farewell to Corliss, Rainulf realized. They’d been inseparable, and from all accounts, she had affected a remarkable change in him. Gone was the haunted creature he’d been when they’d arrived, replaced by the old Peter—the charming, easygoing fellow women had always found irresistible.

  A little ember of jealousy glowed red-hot in Rainulf’s stomach. He wondered how Corliss felt about Peter’s attentions. She’d be flattered, certainly. Peter was young, handsome, and of noble blood. He was the perfect knight, a skilled and loyal soldier whose prowess with his fists had become legendary. Young knights and mercenaries from all over England journeyed to Blackburn to challenge him, hoping in vain to best him and thereby steal his fame. Rainulf himself had sparred with him during his last visit, and had found it a punishing experience, although Peter seemed impressed; he claimed Rainulf had fought better and lasted longer than anyone in recent memory. The praise had taken some of the sting out of his bruised and battered flesh.

  “Whoa.” Rainulf patted his bay stallion on the neck and glanced back down the road. Corliss and Peter had dismounted. From this distance, they looked like two young men, Corliss having returned to her male disguise, although her saddlebags bulged with the kirtles and tunics Martine had had altered for her. Peter took both her hands in his and spoke to her while she stared at the ground. Then he reached down and lifted her chin, lowering his face to hers.

  The little ember burst into flame as Rainulf watched her accept the kiss. When the couple drew apart, Corliss turned to look in his direction. He abruptly looked away, yanking on the reins and kicking his mount into a trot. He didn’t stop until he reached the main road that led north. By then, Corliss and Peter were a quarter mile away, and he could barely see them.

  Self-doubt—Rainulf’s special curse—curled its claws around him. What kind of a man was he? How could he just look on as Peter kissed her, given what had happened between them last night?

  Nothing happened between us. He had satisfied her curiosity about the mysteries of the flesh, nothing more. She’d known it was nothing more. It was nothing. Nothing.

  Nothing? It had been the first time he’d touched a woman so intimately in eleven years. And it had been...

  He expelled a shuddering sigh. It had been more than he’d wanted it to be, more than he’d intended. He closed his eyes, reliving the breathless excitement that had gripped him as he caressed her, guiding her toward a fulfillment she’d never known. How he’d missed the magic of a woman’s body... the hot, hidden places that felt like wet satin to the touch... the challenge of coaxing that mysterious flesh into revealing its secrets... the thrill of driving a woman senseless with pleasure.

  It had gratified him to be the first man to make Corliss lose herself so completely. He could still picture her at the end, her head thrown back, her eyes half-closed, moaning and writhing. He could still feel her, slick and tight around his finger. He’d wondered how it would feel to be buried deep inside that pulsing heat. Then, as how, such speculation aroused him painfully.

  He’d been hard as a steel rod as he touched her, and perilously close to orgasm. When she climaxed, it was all he could do to keep from whipping the quilt aside and ramming himself into her. But even then, even in the grip of such excruciating arousal, he’d known better than that. Had he surrendered to his ac
hing hunger, had he crossed that line, they could never have gone back to the way it was before. Corliss was not like the women he knew in Paris; she was not someone he could enjoy briefly and then set aside. But anything more was out of the question.

  The effort of will it had taken for him to get up and walk away from her last night had been profound. Alone in his chamber, he’d leaned back against the door and untied his chausses with trembling hands. Cursing himself, he closed his fist around his tortured flesh; release came almost instantly. The ache in his heart had persisted, however; he felt it still.

  He watched Corliss ride toward him, turning to wave to Peter, on horseback, who gazed after her. What would the enamored young knight think if he knew what had transpired between Rainulf and Corliss in her darkened chamber?

  She joined him, and they wordlessly proceeded north along the main road. The rhythm of his horse’s gait and his stubborn memories of last night conspired to keep him in a state of high arousal most of the morning; he was grateful for his concealing tunic.

  * * *

  At noon they spread a blanket in a clearing in the woods through which they had ridden. They ate their cheese and bread in near silence, and then Corliss lay on her back and squinted up at the forest canopy above them. Flickers of sunlight danced on the translucent skin of her face. A very singular face, a face like no other he had ever seen. God, she’s exquisite.

  “Looks like diamonds,” she murmured.

  He lay down next to her and shielded his eyes to study the sun glittering through the leaves, something he hadn’t done since he was a boy. That part of him—the part that looked at the world with childlike wonder—had lain dormant until she’d come to Oxford. His memories of life before Corliss were shadowy and vague, like a poorly recalled dream. Now, colors and scents and sounds were sharper, details more vivid, everything more... real, more there. She’d awakened so much in him, changed him so immeasurably.

  “You’re right,” he said softly. “It does look like diamonds.”