by Nicole Locke
The colour of her. As red as her nipples, swollen, wet. Her scent flaring his lust. She was exposed to his every prayer and depravity, and he breathed her in.
Fingers now gripping his head, he dipped. Nuzzling his mouth, his chin, along the outside, coaxing her folds to unfurl before he laid wet open kisses. A sudden tightening of her nails in his scalp. The sharp pain that she might want a say in this. He stopped.
‘You’re...kissing me,’ she said.
He nodded. Words were beyond him. When her fingers eased, he did it again, ending with suckling the nub.
One hand slipped to his shoulder, the other tangled in the hairs at his neck, and brought her against him. Then, then he tasted her. One long swipe of his tongue and another until she was shivering, until she pulled his hair. Until the tightness of his breeches felt like a blade against his need for her.
Again and again, while her body swayed over his, while her hands slipped against the sweat gleaming his shoulders, his torso, while he gripped her hips to press her tighter.
Hunger. He knew only hunger and wouldn’t be sated until she came for him.
‘Aliette, give yourself to me.’ He thrust with his lips, his mouth, his tongue.
Her gasps of pleasure turning to whimpers. ‘I can’t. I can’t.’
Denial from his every desire. Maddened, he yanked her against him. Supported her in his arms, laid her on the ground as an offering to him. Fell upon her like a starving man to feast.
When her legs curled into herself, he took advantage. Using his shoulders, his body to support her legs and ever so gently circled her entrance with the tip of his finger.
She held her breath at that telling touch and he eased his kisses. When she gave a sound of capitulation, he knew this was what she needed. This tenderness, this loving. This savouring.
It would kill him.
‘Come for me. Come. I’ve got you,’ he said the litany over and over, his warm breath adding to his gentle touch. And then—and then she did. A fluttering around his finger, her back suddenly arching, a keening whispered scream.
Tenderly inserting his finger until he reached her maidenhead, his mouth descending upon her to prolong, to fulfil, to—
A pounding of sound. She jerked beneath him.
Her clit against the tip of his tongue, his mouth covered with her essences. All he wanted was more. More. Splaying his fingers, he pushed her legs tighter against her body, opening her further—
Thunder reverberating under his bent knees; Aliette yanking her left leg from his grip. He lifted his head, to tell her, to explain what had only begun.
‘Reynold...’ Aliette whispered, her voice a warning.
He ignored her. Only what they’d become mattered. His ache utter agony, he reached for his breeches to release his laces. To free himself and complete what was between them.
Chapter Nineteen
‘Open up!’ Louve shouted, pounding on the door.
The double-metal latches rattled.
Doors. Metal.
Reynold’s fingers shook.
One lace undone, Aliette’s delicate hand was frantically tapping against his.
‘We need to get up,’ she said.
Her hair was partly fanned, partly tucked beneath her shoulder. Her skin flushed, a light to her blue eyes he never wanted to see dimmed again. If he thought she was an angel he’d flown too close to, there was no doubt now.
‘Reynold.’ She pressed down as if to sit up. Mimicking her, he straightened.
His arms and legs shaking, a coolness to his body from the air where he wasn’t pressed against her. One lace unhooked in his breeches. At his sudden movement, he pulsed once, readying for her tight sheath laid bare and plump before him, while Louve hammered on the door, trying to break in.
Reynold made the doors to his sanctuary thick for privacy, and as a last bastion of defence. The fact they reverberated at all meant they had been beaten on for some time.
He was a madman. A monster. Lost in himself, in her, in everything that she was, starving, he...devoured her. Had she protested, pushed him away? Her gripping fingers could have been anything, but he’d ignored the pinch, the rendering.
Her ephemeral words unheard, the part of her thighs, the flat of her feet against the ground. In the end, had she been shoving away from him, his strength too strong to overpower? His need for her had overpowered him.
‘Did I hurt you?’ he said. ‘Aliette, are you in pain? Did I—?’
She gripped his wrist. ‘No, only surprised me. That wasn’t the kiss I thought I’d receive.’
She hated it. Untried, untouched and he flipped her around like a practised whore.
‘I scared you, then.’
She brushed his arm, gave a tender smile. ‘I don’t think I’m capable of fearing Darkness now. I only want more of him.’
Three hard thumps on the door. Louve was slamming it with his body.
‘I’m coming!’ he yelled.
Louve cursed. ‘You could have told me that before I hurt myself!’
Jerking away, Reynold reached inside his breeches, and stopped at Aliette’s smirk. ‘It won’t go away with that satisfied grin on your face.’
‘We’re in trouble!’ Louve called out.
Reynold shoved to his feet, yanked his tunic on and cracked open the door.
‘We have to go,’ Louve said.
‘Has he returned?’
A low murmur... And another.
‘We go immediately.’ Reynold closed the door. Kept his pressed hand against it and didn’t turn. ‘Get dressed.’
Aliette sat up. ‘Are we leaving? I thought we were waiting for someone.’
Reynold stayed quiet. His back to her, his breaths evening out, but deep as if he was bracing himself against a coming storm.
A fissure of fear blasted any warmth she felt. ‘He’s not coming, is he? Your messenger. Because he can’t come.’
Reynold turned around. His eyes darting from her, to his books, to his belt on the floor. He snatched it up. ‘Eude’s dead.’
Her legs shaking, Aliette scrambled for her chemise. Out there, people died, but they were secure in a fortress. ‘Then we’ll stay here.’
He tightened the belt, pulling up the tunic, revealing the tightness of his breeches. He had not been as satisfied as she. She whirled to find her gown.
‘We go, or we’ll all be killed,’ he said.
She pulled the gown over her chemise, her entire body shaking. Reynold before her, holding her hands.
‘Breathe. There’s time,’ he said, adjusting her clothing. She couldn’t look at him.
‘My boots!’
He let her go, grabbed her boots and stockings. Pointed to the padded bench where she sat down.
Grabbing one stocking from his hand, she pulled it up her leg. ‘Whoever’s after you can’t know of Grace and me, of Helewise and Vernon. We’ll return to the streets. No one need know we were ever here.’
She reached for the other held stocking. ‘We’ll—’
He clenched the limp garment. His open expression one of pain. Agony. As if he was hurt by what she said.
Cursing, he placed the stocking in her hand and whirled to his desk. Securing the message he started with one hand, he picked up his quill. Stopped. Cursed again.
A message for a messenger who was no longer alive.
She’d never seen Reynold without thought, without control, except for his kiss. She revelled in it. Now there was a vulnerability to him as he bowed over his papers.
It wasn’t Louve informing him a mercenary had died that did this to him. It was her...telling him to leave her and her family behind. She hadn’t thought how those words could be interpreted. Her entire body shook with what they shared and death stalked their sanctuary. She couldn’t think!
‘I’m so
rry, Reynold—
He swiped a satchel and propped it on his chair. Flipping it open, he slid parchments inside. He kept his thoughts, and his grey gaze, turned away from her.
Aliette sighed. She was only just now learning to trust, of course she’d make mistakes. Of course she’d have doubts. In truth, it wasn’t completely unreasonable to leave her behind. ‘If there is danger, it is safer for you to leave us.’
He looked then, and his look...his look said she’d taken a knife to him. When she finally blinked, the tide of his grey eyes had ebbed. ‘For Grace’s sake, I won’t risk it. I can’t carry a child around if there is no parent. She would be exposed.’
There was no explaining her emotions now. He wasn’t listening to her fumbling attempts. If it was true there was danger, then there was a flaw in his plan. She had to say it. ‘Even if they believe I’m the mother, you could still be the father. Wouldn’t it be best if—?’
Then his lips curved into a smile. One that did not meet his barren eyes. ‘They’re watching. Always. I’ve never lain with a servant before and they wouldn’t expect it now. They’d never believe it. Why would I demean myself so?’
Demean. Aliette took a step back. All her life she’d been treated as if her worth was lower than the slop thrown at her. Since her family had abandoned her, she’d believed it. The pain of their departure had defined her. She’d told Reynold he could do no worse to her than what her family already did, but she was wrong.
Insults had been flung at her in the past, but his words struck. Slivers, cracks—she had no more defences. Now Darkness was bashing her against the rocks. The happiness she’d felt in his arms just moments before taken by his words, by his cold gaze. The eddying grey gone.
‘Who’s watching?’
‘As if I would tell you. As if it matters. On the way, we travel separately. We’ll find other women...for the men, perhaps. Then you can travel with them. What transpired in this room will not happen again.’
She hadn’t expected it to happen at all. But she’d fallen asleep on the bench next to him; she’d seen him hold Grace. She thought she could trust him. But he proved he was just like all the others. He might not be physically leaving her as her parents did, but she felt his withdrawal all the same.
But for Vernon, Helewise, Gabriel and Grace, she could endure his disdain.
‘So we’re to leave without knowing the dangers,’ she said, needed anger framing each word. ‘Without knowing where we’re going.’
‘Do I know all of your secrets?’ he asked.
No. And now he never would. Her defences reforming, she knew what she had to do.
‘That’s what I thought.’ He flipped the satchel’s cover closed, and bound it.
‘We’ll go,’ she said. Eventually he’d tire of them. Maybe outside Paris was where their future lay. ‘Not because you order it, but because it’s what we decide to do. It’s what is best for my family.’
‘I don’t think you understand,’ he said, a gleam of icy amusement in his eyes. ‘You’d do well to remember that the day before I took you, I slashed the throat of a servant and raised the bloodied blade to Grace’s mother. Then my men buried one corpse in unhallowed ground and the other was left in her derelict home to rot. All so that absolutely no one could trace their deaths to me.’
Bile rose in her throat.
‘Understand this, thief, you will travel where I travel. Now and always. When it comes to the protection of my daughter, you don’t have a choice.’
* * *
Ruined. That’s what he was now, destroyed. Reynold slung the satchel over his shoulders and took the stairs two at a time.
He hadn’t been long in his Paris location. He could never stay in France for any length of time with his family residence so close. Most of the men had been with him since England. They knew what to do to close his home. He didn’t. Not this time. Years travelling undercover from one location to another and this was different.
He’d killed the night he took Grace and...worse...he’d raised his blade to the mother of his child. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t killed her. It didn’t matter if she was in pain and begged him, if his hand trembled and there was a chance he wouldn’t have done it. He’d still raised the knife. He was still a monster.
And he had confessed it all to Aliette.
She was a light in the sky that had been forever dark. Warmth when all he felt was cold. Of course he kept flying towards her. When she offered him her kisses despite what was written in blood in his past, despite what he might have done that night, he felt...forgiveness. It was as though she saw him. Truly saw him.
He thought she understood all his toil, his hardships. All the sin he’d committed because he must. Of course, he knelt before her. He would have prayed to her if she’d asked. Crawled however far she desired.
But she hadn’t understood at all. She hadn’t forgiven or known the sacrifices he made and why. Because the moment Louve appeared to announce Eude’s death, the moment when all his warnings of danger were truth, she told him she’d stay behind.
She hadn’t accepted him, not if her first reaction was to throw him away. Maudlin. A fool, but he’d given her every bit of his stained soul. And she simply discarded it. Worse, she thought he’d leave her.
He loved her.
All for naught and he could do no other action than keep her. The fact was, she’d been in the household for weeks. She’d been caring for Grace and seen leaving his household. If there were spies, and there were always spies, his enemies would be aware of her and his daughter. For his daughter’s safety, he’d keep Aliette and the family she chose over him.
He swept across the courtyard and down the staircase to the hidden exit. Eude was killed near the front of his house. He wouldn’t risk anyone knowing they’d left. As for the horses, new ones would have to be purchased and the old left behind.
He was all too aware this was a fool’s endeavour and it was already too late. If Eude was dead, then someone knew about him. Which brother had ordered the killing, which parent, or had someone else been added to the game?
There was too much conjecture. Eude had carried no messages. It had been weeks since he’d sent him to Scotland. He knew Malcolm of Clan Colquhoun had the Jewel of Kings. He did not know if he had the dagger with scrollwork and two rubies which was essential for his game.
For now, they needed another place to hide. One that would be near and easy to travel to. There was only one he’d never used because he wanted to call it a true home one day. The town of Troyes was small and there would be no anonymity there, but it was accessible by the Seine. Travelling by boat was detectable, but also easy to defend.
Unlike his body and soul. Bitterly, he thought of Odysseus. A tale of a man suffering great obstacles to return to his cherished wife who waited for him. Such a fantastical tale of a love that would not die and nothing he’d ever experienced or witnessed. His parents hated each other.
When he first read it, he was engrossed in Odysseus’s adventures and dismissed Penelope and the marriage bed. But as he grew older and more isolated, the bed made from a living tree began to plague him. To the point he believed if he had the book made, if he simply owned the story, the love between a husband and wife wouldn’t taunt him so.
But though the book travelled with him, he never read the copy he’d commissioned. Of course it was the thief who first opened it. All to mock him with because, in these brief weeks, he began to envision Aliette was the wife at the end of his long journey.
False beliefs and feelings if she could believe he could abandon her as her parents did. Because to think that meant she didn’t believe in him. She wasn’t Penelope waiting years without faltering. He wasn’t as significant to her as she was to him.
Yanking off the mattress, he propped it against the far wall. Gripping the bed rail, he pulled the sturdy frame to the opposing corner.
The hatch to the secret passageway was almost undetectable, but he knew it was underneath.
The stolen moments reading with Aliette could never be his future. He must rip out whatever hold she had on his body and heart. He must rip apart the wings he kept repairing to reach her.
Prying the lever under the first nail, he worked it free and carefully did the same to the rest of the boards. When most of them escaped this way a few men had to repair the flooring and return the room as it was. Their exit in the open would be a distraction, a target, but necessary. If this Paris location was to be used again, he didn’t want his family knowing about the underground passage.
‘Hiding more secrets from me, my friend,’ Louve said from behind him. ‘And an escape route at that? What if I desired to ride away undetected from you?’
‘Which is precisely why I didn’t tell you,’ Reynold replied, unsurprised that Louve had snuck up on him. The man was unnaturally quiet. ‘I despise paying my men and them not performing their duties. Now help me with these nails.’
* * *
‘Can we trust him, child?’ Vernon stated. ‘I can’t see the man, look him in the eye and tell myself.’
‘None of us can,’ Helewise said. ‘He hasn’t been still since we arrived.’
‘I like Baldr.’ Gabriel sneezed.
The man who had twisted her arm and Gabriel’s cold had worsened. This did not bode well. None of this did.
‘We can’t trust him.’ She out of everyone knew this to be true.
‘But you do,’ Gabriel said. ‘Else, why would we be here? And you’ve been gone a long time with him. We missed you.’
‘You know that I missed you all very much.’ Aliette bent just a bit, wanting to gather him to her, but knew better. He still shied away from contact, but how to explain something as complex as Reynold to a child?
She had trusted Reynold, or at least was beginning to. Day after day, she kept walking further into the dark with him until she could almost see him clearly. He longed for Grace, read to her. Firm with his men, but never unfair. He truly could abandon them, but didn’t. She suspected that he did it to protect them, but... He held to his secrets.