by Nicole Locke
‘Is this acceptable?’ she asked, further exploring the areas he’d allowed, behind his ear and along the shell of it.
‘What?’
‘My hand here?’ She gently pinched his earlobe before going over his temple, then his brow.
He closed his eyes briefly as her palm skimmed to explore the other side. ‘It’s...different.’
It was as if his bones were mountains, his skin the earth. She wanted to explore him. ‘How?’ she asked.
‘You touch me all the time. On my shoulder, on my arm, on my hand...’ he said.
He held so still she wasn’t certain that he breathed or that his heart beat.
She shifted closer.
His eyes widened. Was he alarmed?
She felt the fluttering of apprehension in herself, but also the wonder of this moment. All her life she’d kept her family close, but fled from others. From the tug and pull of them. Their demands and orders. She’d gone with Josse as willingly as she could under the circumstances, and with Roul reluctantly, but it hadn’t been about her...it had been about them and their needs.
This man... She wanted him.
Reason told her she should keep boundaries as large as the fortress. That she should play the game of false smiles and false words and then hide. Not be alone with him...not want to kiss him. But hadn’t she already realised he was different? That despite their differences in size and gender they shared similarities? They were alike because he needed to defend himself, too.
Keeping her eyes with his, she continued what she’d started, what she seemed unable to stop. He fascinated her... She moved down the thick cords of his neck and under the softest part, just under his chin. She darted forward to kiss it.
He started back.
Pulling away, she placed her hands in her lap. ‘Sorry.’
‘What are you doing, Margery?’
She shook her head and lied. ‘I don’t know.’
If his gazes were touches, they couldn’t be more potent.
‘No woman in many years has touched me.’
‘Nor tried to blister your palm.’
His brow drew in. ‘No, I mean...the women who’ve tried I could never trust,’ he said.
What was he saying? That he’d had no women in...years?
‘You are the most singular woman I know.’
She’d been imprisoned in a room, but over the last days had been allowed to wander, and had seen women here. ‘I can’t be so unusual.’
His lifted his hand, as if he meant to caress her in return, then lowered it. She eyed that hand, and his wary expression. She added what his body was telling her to his words...
‘You’re afraid of me.’
He huffed. ‘Any man would be.’
‘Because of Ian?’
‘I haven’t thought of Lord Warstone all day. I do not when I’m with you.’ He looked away, as if he’d revealed too much.
She grabbed his hand, which was gripping the quilt. He looked at their joined hands as if they were something wondrous.
He was beautiful to her. Maybe he wasn’t like Josse or Roul or even Ian. Still... ‘Why no women?’
‘This is what makes you singular.’
People avoided him. Did they purposely not talk to him either? ‘Because I ask you questions?’
‘Because I am not a man to others. I am Ian’s guard—a Warstone acquisition. I am a way to get what they want. I learnt that early on.’
He talked as if it hadn’t been early enough. Had they hurt him?
He released the quilt and rested his hand on hers. ‘You never talk of my size.’
She didn’t. ‘Am I supposed to?’
He looked flummoxed at that.
‘I don’t believe I’ve ever mentioned someone’s height before,’ she said. ‘You never mention mine.’
‘I’m large.’
‘Almost everyone is bigger than me,’ she said. ‘I like it that I can spot you easily.’
‘Women talk of my size.’
‘Well, of course they do,’ she teased, but then she saw his expression... ‘Are they scared of you?’
A quick nod.
What an odd concept. ‘Not all of them can be scared of you.’
‘There are women at the Warstone fortress,’ he said. ‘I have met them here, and at many other holdings as well. If it is not me...it is my relationship with Lord Warstone that precludes any of them getting close. And if I am with him elsewhere I am guarding him.’
Ian needed guarding...but she was still missing something. Evrart talked, but his body...his expression... He was still so reserved.
Carefully, she turned her hand in his, so their palms faced each other. Then, while she watched him, she curled and fanned her fingers around his.
He shivered.
‘When I do this...do you not like it?’
‘No.’
‘No? You don’t like it, or you do?’ She trailed her fingers over his wrists.
His eyes lit up, but he kept silent.
‘Other women must have tried?’ she pressed.
The light in his eyes fell. ‘It was wrong.’
Evrart was at the beck and call of one of the most powerful men in the country—it shouldn’t matter if he was ugly or frightening. If she’d learnt anything under Roul’s house it was that women wanted power. So it couldn’t be that women didn’t try.
‘Wrong because you would not compromise Lord Warstone in your duty to guard him?’ she said.
He gave a half-jerk of his head. ‘That is the reason I gave.’
‘But not the reason you felt?’
‘It felt wrong.’
She pulled back her hand and laid it in her lap. He gazed at her hand as if he wondered why she’d moved it. Wasn’t it obvious? He’d just told her he didn’t like it.
‘I’m sorry.’ She looked around, pulled her entire body away from him. When had she become so coarse, so disrespectful? She knew what it was not to want touch...to simply endure it.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘I know what it’s like.’ She waved her hand in front of her. ‘And I want to say how sorry I am for—’
His brows drew in. ‘I want to understand—especially since even I can tell something is changing the colour of your skin—but I don’t.’
Would he make her say it? ‘I am sorry for flinging myself at you. I know what it’s like to hold still when all you want to do is run away or clobber someone on the head with your comb.’
‘You believe I don’t like your touch?’
‘You just told me of those women touching you and it feeling wrong.’
He looked around the room once, then again before he shook his head and looked at her. ‘It was wrong because of why they touched me. But you... You don’t touch me for conquest or to boast. You don’t say words to me that break me from my duty.’
Oh, how was it possible? But it was, and it was true. Evrart had been used. Used by Lord Warstone because of his size, and used by women who wanted to boast.
‘If there is anyone to apologise it’s me,’ he said.
She thought back; he’d never once touched her. ‘For what?’
‘I hold still. And I do more than that when our height or proximity won’t suffice.’
What was he telling her? ‘You allow my touches?’
‘I do. A shoulder, an arm... You hold my hand. A warrior doesn’t allow his hands to be filled unless he wishes to die. If we found enemies and I could not get to my sword quick enough, you would die.’
‘But I hold your hand all the time.’ At his knowing look, she added, ‘Because you allow it.’
The corner of his mouth curved, and his eyes softened.
In her head she had often compared him to a great oak, but that wasn’t right. He w
as a flesh-and-blood man who could move. All those times she’d brushed her hands and fingers against him. Laid her head on his shoulder or bumped her hip into his side... He’d allowed it.
The odder part of it all was—now that she reflected on it—she’d realised just how much she did touch him.
‘Are you thinking of how much you’ve touched me?’ he said.
She put her hand to her mouth, utterly embarrassed. ‘I’m horrified.’
‘Horrified? It shocked me because you don’t touch other men.’
‘Of course I do. I’m Ian’s mistress.’
He shook his head. ‘You’re not. He told me. But even so, he touches you. You don’t do it back. You clasp your hands in your lap and go still, like a deer who hears a branch crack.’
That was an apt description for exactly how she felt. How she’d always felt since Josse had first touched her. And Evrart had observed this.
Which didn’t adequately explain why she touched him. At all. Was it familiarity? How much of her feelings had she revealed to this man?
‘You’re my guard. You’re always around. You’re just there.’
‘You don’t walk stiffly in front of me like you do with Ian. You walk by my side.’
How often did her shoulder brush his arm? Or her skirts get caught around his legs when she passed him in a doorway? On the narrow stairway, how often did he stop so she ran into his back?
Every day.
‘You truly allow me to touch? You’ve been given me opportunities to touch? To test?’
‘To know.’
‘To know what? Whether it felt right?’
‘To know whether you would. Because from the first moment you touched me it was right.’
Margery’s insides flipped—and it wasn’t because of embarrassment, but because of something lighter...happier. All this time Evrart had been purposely putting himself in places where she would touch him. For what purpose? That was a question that didn’t need to be asked. She felt the pull of it now.
She wanted to.
In fact she felt this need to climb onto his lap and give him a thousand kisses all over.
‘You’ve been...courting me,’ she said.
He jerked. ‘What?’
That wasn’t right...there were better words than that. ‘Trying to woo me?’
At his expression—half-desire, half-longing—she broke. This man had seduced her beyond all reasoning or comprehension.
‘I believe you need to move towards me now,’ she said.
He looked at the distance between them, straightened, and rubbed his palm down his thigh as if bracing himself to move. Something inside her recognised him. All her life she’d avoided people, tried to protect herself from them, from men. But with Evrart, she brushed against him.
Hopping over, she straddled his body and laid her hands on his shoulders. He froze, his mammoth hands hovering somewhere along her back, her hip.
He pulled back, his brows raised almost to his hairline.
He was startled—which was good, because she was startling herself. ‘Is this acceptable?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
Chapter Eleven
Nothing of this was true. It couldn’t be. Not this room...not this woman. Nor the facts of her kindness—no, more than that...her caring. She cared for him.
At any time he could have told her he couldn’t see colours, like her, but saw her eyes were lit by something he’d only seen from the stars at night. But he’d kept his mouth closed, and everything else about him open to her. To the light touches of her fingertips as she’d placed objects in his palm. To the light way she breathed. To the tiny gasps she’d made as she picked something up and then the other little hitch as she’d placed them in his palm.
In the silence of the room everything became about her.
Everything was about her now.
She straddled his lap, her slight weight significant against him. Her eyes were sparkling, with a light of mischief in their depths that was darkening more the longer she gazed at him. He saw the curve of her lips in her delight that she surprised him.
And he was surprised.
‘You’re supposed to touch me now,’ she said.
She shifted her hips, brushing against his breeches, brushing against him. Touch her? If he did... Caressed, kissed, suckled her small breasts, dug his fingers into the curves of her ample hips? Would he see if he was right that the span of his hand could wrap around the tiny waist?
She gave him a knowing look before dropping her eyes down between them. He hadn’t even laid his hands on the small of her back. He hadn’t even kissed her. And he couldn’t be harder...couldn’t want her more.
Pressing on his shoulders, she curled her weight against him. ‘Oh!’
‘Margery...’ he growled.
‘This will do.’ She tilted her hips again.
His hands dropped to her waist. The warmth of her skin beneath the mountain of clothing undid him. Wrenching it up, he wanted it off, off, off.
‘Wait!’
He stilled.
‘I have to untie it here.’
‘I want to rip it from you.’
She jerked. ‘Oh, well...’ Laughter. ‘I want that, too.’
He meant it. Watching her fingers daintily tug this way and that, it felt as if she tugged at his own braies. He grabbed her hand, shoved it out of the way, fisted the silk and jerked it free. There was a slight ripping sound as her body flattened against him. Clenching the wrecked fabric, he pulled it over her head, tossed it away, and was left with a fine chemise and Margery, who was grinning at him.
‘Better?’ she quipped.
He couldn’t answer. His mouth was dry, his chest constricted. His cock was flexing against her.
Her eyes widened and then her lids lowered. ‘Oh, that is better...’
‘Is it?’
He felt as if he’d soon tear off the rest of her clothing and devour her. Bury himself—his entire body—right underneath her skin and wallow in the very essence of her. Wrench her soul right out of her heart, hold on to it and defy the very heavens because it was his.
He felt alive.
His hands skated up the small of her back, feeling the slight furrows of her ribs, the hills of her spine, until he cupped her shoulders and pressed her undulations down harder on his body, feeling the spike of lust. Releasing her shoulders, he kneaded the small of her back, the roll of her hips.
She gave a low moan and lowered her head to his shoulder. ‘Oh, I don’t know why that feels so good...but don’t stop.’
Spanning his fingers against the generous globes that had fascinated him since she arrived, he flexed her against him.
She shifted her head, breathed words and sounds into his neck. ‘Yes, Evrart... Yes.’
He did it again and again. Her scent, her noises, were driving him mad and he buried his nose in her neck. She smelled of that flower he had been told was white. The one that grew in the chapel gardens and the kitchen gardens, like the rosemary from the shrubs that dried their clothes. Like her.
Did she taste as sweet?
He licked. She gasped. He licked again, from her collar to her ear. She giggled. He rubbed his face, kissed, nipped, licked, until she was laved by his kisses, his touch. Every sound, gasp, laugh and purr encouraged him.
And all the while the pressure of his hands never stopped. Palms spread over curves, thumbs forked into her hips as he moved them both. Until the hitches of her breath against his neck stopped and stuttered. Until he pulsed with the need to release, but just held back.
Until she said, ‘Evrart... Evrart.’
Her fingers dug into his arm, her body shuddered and thrashed, and he slammed her down hard against him, feeling the fluttering heat of her core press against him. He raised his head to the ceiling and clenched his
body, holding until her shivering stopped. On a low growl he ripped off her chemise, rolled her underneath him and latched his mouth on the plump rosebud nipples that had teased him since the day she’d slid into his life.
* * *
The more Evrart touched her, the more Margery’s body starved for more. Something in her might have begun this, but everything between them was so much more because Evrart touched her and kissed her as if he hungered, too.
It was the feel of his hot hands rubbing her back. The piercing draw of his mouth as he encompassed her entire breast with his mouth and pulled until he had the very tip, which he lightly bit. He went to the other breast to do the same. Then back to the other. And when she expected a nip, he swirled his tongue.
She clutched his head, tugged his hair. She had released in pleasure from a man for the first time before he unleashed his mouth upon her breasts and now her body wept for more.
‘What are you doing to me?’ she asked.
‘Tasting you...’
He ran his kisses up to her collarbone, down the valley between her breasts, squeezing her breasts together so he could lave them with his tongue.
She wanted to laugh...wanted to moan. It felt so good. She wanted to do the same to him as he descended to her navel. It was as if he was marking her, claiming her—and he was still fully dressed.
She plucked at his tunic. ‘Please...’
He lifted his head, and a brown lock of hair fell across his shoulder and slid against her stomach. ‘You want me to stop?’
‘I want this off.’
He hesitated, his eyes on hers, as if determining something. She didn’t know what words he wanted to hear, but she kept her eyes on him, letting everything she felt in this moment be seen.
Lowering his head, he began to explore again.
She pulled on his hair. ‘Evrart,’ she said. ‘Please.’
He huffed and eased back. Her legs were stretched wide to accommodate his bulk, to make room for him. Something she hadn’t even been aware of. Giving freely wasn’t something she’d thought possible, but she did because of him. Her reluctant giant.
He reached behind him and she was temporarily mesmerised by the flex of the muscles in his arms, before he pulled the tunic up over his head and flung it towards her gown.