Knight of Her Heart (Conquering the Heart)

by Alyssa James

“Aye, I am a powerful conqueror. Your conqueror this eve.” His lips twitched. “But you’ll bear witness that there is nothing ancient about me.”

  Incredibly giddy and girlish and suddenly very daring, she felt her own lips curve upward into a smile. “I may be able to attest to that after closer inspection.”

  His Adam’s apple rose and fell as he swallowed. “You are as bold as you are beautiful. Are you prepared to be conquered by me, my Lady Lisette?”

  “Aye.” The word was only just loud enough to be heard above the wild hammering of her pulse.

  He scooped her up in his arms as though she weighed nothing at all. The fabric of his tunic abraded her skin as she leant her head against his shoulder.

  Rowan held her tight as he walked toward the luxuriously canopied bed. The coverlet had already been folded back. He lowered her gently onto the crisp, white linen. Momentarily, the scene of their wedding night replayed in his mind. He banished it quickly as he took in her lithe, feminine body, bathed in soft candlelight. No spectres of their wedding night would haunt this union.

  His wife had a wonderfully alluring siren’s body that a man could simply drown in. Dainty feet with high insteps, gracefully long legs with firm calves and slender thighs, delicately flared feminine hips, a hand-span waist and the most magnificent breasts he had ever seen. ’Twas a maiden’s body with no sign, yet, that she carried a babe in her womb.

  Sudden, swift regret stabbed at him. Her body would thicken and her breasts would ripen as her body bloomed with another man’s seed. Angry with himself for the thought, he pushed it aside. ’Twas not worthy of him for he had pledged to raise this babe as if it were the fruit from his own loins. He would lay claim to the infant in time. Now everything in him yearned to lay claim to his bride. Lisette was his and would be forever more.

  He removed his tunic slowly, his gaze holding hers. There was such innocent, undisguised hunger in the blue depths of her eyes as she surveyed the naked flesh of his chest, that his arousal swelled larger and harder than he ever remembered. His loins were filled with incendiary heat.

  “You like what you see,” he told her without false modesty.

  “Aye.” She nodded slowly. “You are superb. The embodiment of virility, power and strong masculinity.” A cheeky light entered her eyes. “I concede there is nothing ancient about you, my lord.”

  Vixen!

  The need to possess her and find release as he plunged inside her, burned through his blood.

  Unfastening the laces of his braies, his rod finally sprang free of its confines. It stood at the ready—large, thick and proud—from its nest of black curls. Masculine satisfaction thrummed through his veins when he saw the tide of pink embarrassment wash over her pale skin. Colour swept up from her chest to her forehead as her interest locked on his erection.

  “It enchants me that you still blush like a maiden, even when you have seen a naked man before,” he told her.

  He took a step to stand beside her, then reached down for her hand and guided it to his straining shaft. He sucked in a breath and fought for control as her palm, under his guidance, encircled the length of him. “I am but flesh and blood, and this is the evidence of my need for you. It is the organ that will make us as one, and I promise it will bring us both pleasure.”

  “I fear your body will visit mine with more pain than pleasure.” The dainty tip of her tongue darted out to moisten lips that were still swollen from his kisses. The innocent action made lust pound through him. Did she realise what else she could do with her tongue and her lips to bring him pleasure? If not, he would gladly teach her.

  She lowered her gaze away from his. “The act of coupling...The initial joining has hurt me.”

  “Your body will accommodate mine. There will be no pain if you are ready for my possession,” he promised. “And, I have every intention that you will be ready.”

  Rowan was decidedly lightheaded as every drop of his blood drained to his throbbing manhood. He removed her hand from its grasp on him and dropped to the bed. His knees sank into the luxurious softness of the decadent feather mattress. ’Twas as though he was on a soft cloud with an angel. Now ’twas time to transport them both to a special place in heaven.

  Leaning forward, he reached out and splayed his hands over each breast, barely touching them with the pads of his fingers. Lisette’s slender body shifted and her back arched, thrusting her breasts forward to fill his hands. He resisted cupping the mounds. Instead he moved his fingers in circular motions, caressing her smooth, creamy flesh and seeking to titillate her. Her nipples hardened into rosy points and his erection jerked in response. He contrasted the soft touch of finger pads with the rougher texture of the calluses on his hands and drew a whimper of need from her.

  “You like to be touched here,” he husked as the pattern of her breathing grew increasingly unsteady.

  “I...I liked it even more when you...suckled me there,” she told him audaciously.

  He smiled at her brave honesty. “Then suckled you shall be.”

  But he resisted gorging himself on the feast her breasts offered. Instead he calculated every kiss and caress as an assault on her senses. Each touch was designed to bring her the greatest pleasure possible.

  Great tremors shook through her body as he lowered his head. He rejoiced in her response to him knowing instinctively that she shook with the anticipation of their joining, not with fear.

  Prolonging the anticipation, he grazed the underside of each swollen crest with his fingernails. He traced great circles around her breasts and drew each circle smaller and smaller, until he zeroed in on her nipples. Only then did he cup each mound in his large hands and let his tongue flick across first one turgid bud and then the other.

  The laving of his tongue back and forward across her nipples, and the heat of his breath blowing gently on each distended peak, had Lisette squirming. By the time he finally closed his mouth around one areole and drew it sharply and voraciously into his mouth, she cried out in ecstasy, “Oh, dear...dear Lord.”

  ***

  Lisette’s husband sucked her nipple in hard and then released it for a moment while his tongue swirled around the jutting point. The rhythmic sensations shot straight down to a spot deep within the cradle of her womb. The most incredible tremors fluttered through her, like millions of butterflies.

  Divine delight, unlike any she had experienced, engulfed her. Her hands drew fistfuls of the sheet fabric and she clutched on tight. She tried not to thrash about like a feral animal straining on its leash as she enjoyed the scalding heat of his mouth.

  “Let go for me, Lisette. Drift with the current. Don’t fight against it,” he coached.

  “I can’t...I can’t handle this,” she gulped in confusion. Drowning in a sea of sensation, she let go of her grip on the sheets and pulled at his head to urge him up. “It’s...too...much.”

  Rowan resisted her urgings and made a growl of denial against her breast. The vibration from the growl created more shock waves of awareness.

  His large, hot hands, spanned her ribcage and caressed her still-flat abdomen. They outlined the indentation of her waist before trailing over her hip bones. One hand slipped under her buttocks, the other threaded through the blonde thatch of hair that crowned the entrance to her sex.

  She jerked. Never had she been touched there by a man. Part of her brain urged her to withdraw from the touch. Her body disobeyed and proceeded to rebel against all that was decent. Her hips strained forward to press closer against his hand, loving his touch. As his fingers delved through her curls, his thumb found the fleshy nub that lay just beneath them, and pressed against it.

  Lisette’s hips bucked at his intimate contact. Her hands clung to Rowan’s rock-hard shoulders. She tried frantically to anchor herself to something solid as she was buffeted by waves of sharp, sensual pleasure that she couldn’t control and didn’t understand. Her body reached for that mysterious culmination, strained for a completion that she had journeyed toward before.
A journey she had embarked on but had never completed. Nerve endings hummed. Each hungry tug on her nipples by his lips caused a corresponding twinge in her womb.

  Oh, dear Lord, how she wanted to reach the destination she travelled toward.

  Relentlessly, his thumb moved, flicking back and forth over the pleasure point between her legs while his tongue continued the same divine stroking against her nipples. She was caught up and swept along by his thorough knowledge of how to stoke the fires of pleasure in a woman’s body.

  ’Twas too much. The agonised mixture of pleasure and need coursing through her was so acute she thought she might die from it. Her body tensed. Teetering on the edge of some mysterious, frightening abyss, she dug her fingers harder into his shoulders as she held on for dear life. Volcanic heat exploded between her thighs. While her muscles jerked and tensed, molten lava flowed from inside her, moistening the area between her legs. She barely had time to register her surprise at the alien sensation when her internal muscles spasmed sharply. Then she spiralled toward the stars. Nothing else in the world existed for several long moments except the amazing awareness of physical pleasure pulsing through her. Pleasure he had brought her.

  Ultimate Pleasure.

  “Lisette.”

  Rowan’s voice, hoarse and urgent with his need, had her opening her eyes. His features were blurred through her tears.

  “I...” she began, then gulped in huge breaths of air to fill her starving lungs. She was overcome with the entire range of amazing physical sensations he had created within her, She simply couldn’t stop the tears. A strange, heavy lethargy weighted her limbs. “I thought I was dying.” She shook her head, still totally amazed at what had transpired. “But, ’twas a beautiful death. I didn’t think I could survive the pure pleasure of it.”

  “My beautiful wife, there is so much more bliss to be had.” He kissed her slowly, a gentle smile curving his lips. “It will be my very great pleasure to introduce you to the many pathways that lead to heaven.”

  She scrubbed at her tears with the backs of her hands and when she looked at him with clearer vision, his face was softer than she’d seen it. His expression was tender as he leaned over her. The kisses he bestowed to her damp cheeks were worshipful. The caring, almost-reverent touch of his lips to hers was the sweetest, most profoundly moving experience she had known.

  Was this the same man who was ruthless on the battlefield? It humbled her that her fierce warrior husband could be so gentle with her in their bed.

  She shifted her hips and came in direct contact with the heavy rigidity of his erection. The slightest contact caused a pause in the rough cadence of his breathing.

  “Oh,” she whispered.

  He smiled at her with pained humour. “Oh, indeed.”

  Lisette knew real anxiety. According to Rosie, the peasant had been an extraordinarily large man, but her husband was just as well endowed. Previous penetration had burned and nearly rent her in two each time she took him—and she had been in control. She had inched down slowly and cautiously each time. Now her husband was about to thrust into her and she would be completely unable to control the swiftness of his invasion.

  “Your pleasure has brought its own contentment to me, however my physical fulfilment is yet to be had, my lady wife,” he affirmed.

  ***

  Rowan saw Lisette’s nervousness. He glanced his mouth across her honeyed lips in an attempt to both reassure her and to re-ignite her need. Her lips clung to his with such appreciation and veneration that the sweetness of her emotion pierced at his very soul. She was bewitching. Intoxicating.

  He had never known such a responsive lover. That her climax had been her first, was beyond doubt. The dazed wonder and joyous rapture on her beautiful countenance, had made him feel all-powerful. More powerful than when he had ridden Stormbringer at Agincourt and chased down the last of the French knights who were intent on fleeing the muddy battle ground.

  Her reactions to his touch made him wild with longing. Her orgasm had been so frantic and so fierce it had nearly tipped him over the edge. It took every ounce of his control to contain himself when all his primitive, carnal instincts made him want to slam into her and take her hard and fast.

  “Slowly, Rowan,” she urged, as though she could read his body’s impatient longing.

  Much to his surprise, his fingers trembled slightly when he moved one hand down to her still-swollen cleft. He intended to arouse her again to fever pitch, to ensure she was ready for their joining. He found the bud of nerve endings with his forefinger and thumb and tugged at it gently but insistently, bringing it to its own taut erection.

  “Rowan.” She shuddered with need as she rasped his name.

  The musky scent of her arousal hung in the air between them like a bewitching aphrodisiac. His fingers delved and became slick with her moisture. He badly wanted to taste her essence and feast on her core until she bucked against him. Her feminine dew promised to be more intoxicating than the finest mulled wine. But his more intimate exploration of her would have to wait. The crippling agony of his erection would be denied no longer. It pulsated and throbbed in demand of immediate release.

  Smoothing his hands down the insides of her thighs, he urged her legs wider apart. There was no resistance from her as he separated the fleshy folds which guarded her passage but her body stiffened at the nudging touch of the tip of his shaft against the opening to her womb.

  “Relax, Lisette. ’Twill be good,” he urged as he rained encouraging, comforting kisses on the flesh of her neck and collar bone.

  “Rowan,” she said urgently, “it has always hurt me initially.”

  Her body was still taut as a drawn long-bow. When he searched her face he saw trepidation. Her teeth worried at her lower lip and her anxiety was palpable.

  “You have truly taken no pleasure in the act of joining before?” he asked with a frown.

  She shook her head.

  “Then, previously, you have not been properly prepared.”

  He moved his hips away so his shaft pulled back from her opening. Lightly, his fingers teased around her entry. She was still creamy from her previous climax—more than ready for him.

  “I...I do want you as my lover, Rowan,” she whispered. “I want you deep inside me.”

  “Your body is weeping for me. ’Tis time to be my wife.”

  She nodded her trust.

  Rowan wasted no further time. He angled her hips with his hands. Positioned at the portal that was entry to a passage bound for heaven, he took a deep, steadying breath and regarded the beauty that lay beneath him. There was an almost brave tilt to her chin. She expected pain as she raised her pelvis up to meet his, but he would ensure she knew only joy. He registered that her willingness to join with him as an equal participant was a sign of her spirit. She was not a woman who would submit weakly to her conqueror, but one who would meet the conquest head on.

  The thought excited him beyond belief, making his entire body surge toward her.

  Slowly, with a low moan that came from the depths of his soul, he inched into the exquisite, moist heat of her tight passage. He savoured each quiver of her flesh around him as she accommodated the invasion of his thickness and length. Her soft passage was incredible. ’Twas as though he had found his way home.

  Entering her sheath so carefully was the sweetest torture he’d ever endured. Even though she was no maiden, she was tight, and he was a large man. He knew he distended her to her physical limits to take him fully and he watched her carefully for any sign of pain.

  “Rowan,” she breathed as she gripped his shoulders.”’Tis unbelievably beautiful.”

  Tears streamed down her cheeks and he kissed their saltiness.

  While he was inching further in, her soft hands ran across the breadth of his slightly sweat-dampened shoulders. He stilled as she touched the first of his scars.

  She frowned but there was no revulsion in her expression. “Does it hurt you when I touch you thus?”


  “Nay,” he rasped. In truth her touch was like a healing balm. He needed the caresses of his wife—needed her to connect with him as a person while their bodies were joined. ’Twas vital to his healing that they give and receive of each other. Only this would take away the taint of what had gone before when he had been used as a nameless body for a stranger’s pleasure.

  Her hands traced the indentation of his spine and smoothed over the round muscles of his buttocks. When her questing hands reached his muscled thighs, he could contain himself no longer.

  With a groan that signalled his loss of control, he thrust forward and buried himself fully. Wholly impaled, she gasped. Her body shuddered against him as he drew his length back, nearly all the way out of her sheath. He hovered in pained agony on the border of pleasure. Determinedly, he leashed himself. More than anything, he wanted to bring Lisette to her peak. Deliberately, he denied his craving to pump into her frantically. Instead, he established a long, slow deep rhythm that tested him to the very edge of his endurance.

  Lisette’s inexperienced, initial attempts to match his rhythm and rise to meet him thrust for thrust were clumsy. Yet they inflamed his ardour more than he would have thought possible. When she eventually found the right rhythm and her movements were in perfect counterpoint with his, her body became an extension of his. She moved with such faultless timing that storm clouds of passion gathered between them. The air charged with electricity. Blood thundered. Lightning sparked in his head. The storm raged on and on, buffeting him and threatening to shatter his control.

  “Rowan...” she begged him on a half-sob.

  He felt the slide of smooth calves upward along the outside of his thighs. She clutched his waist with her legs and tilted her hips. Then she arched hungrily toward him, creating a greater angle so he was able to thrust even deeper into her womb.

  “I want...,” she panted, “I need...more.”

  “More,” he agreed, almost mindless with fervent need.

  Her calves urged his body into a more rapid tempo and he immediately and gratefully obliged. He pumped harder and faster and she met him thrust for thrust. The new, driving rhythm extended the swelling pleasure with each plunge into her depths.