Stealing Heaven

by Madeline Hunter

  “I told you in the garden that I understood that.”

  “I know what you said, but I think that you really believe it will be otherwise.”

  Maybe he did. Eventually. Ultimately. In the least he counted on her not minding as much when he defeated her. “I do not believe that.”

  “I wonder.” She kept her gaze to the fire even though her sight appeared inward. “I also do not want any love talk. If we do this, it is for our simple pleasure. If we pretend it is more than that, being true to both our duties and each other will become impos—difficult and painful.”

  Impossible, she had almost said. He did not respond to this demand, but let his silence speak his agreement. If she did not want to speak of love, he could accept that. He would accept anything right now. He knew, however, that the pretense they would live was not the one she avoided, but the one she insisted upon.

  Her expression hardened a bit. “I also do not want anyone to know about this. I will come to you here, after my women are asleep. I do not want your men laughing about the Welsh whore. I am notorious because other English knights did not show chivalric concern for a lady’s reputation because she was Welsh, and I will not be made a fool again.”

  Someday he would ask her to explain that part of the episode with Edward, but not tonight. He did not doubt that her being Welsh had made a difference. Edward was no saint, but there were no songs about his English ladies. “As you wish, although it is not unusual for betrothed couples to sleep together.”

  “We are not betrothed. I do not come to you as a bride, nor will I ever.”

  He decided that was also a topic for another day. “Then we will be discreet.”

  “There is one more thing. You must withdraw before you finish, so that I do not get with child.”

  “I cannot do that. It was my intention in the lodge, but… With another woman, it would be possible, but not with you.”

  Her expression fell with… what? Disappointment? Relief? “Then it cannot be any way at all. I will not risk that.”

  He couldn’t believe his ears. He had waited all night, days, weeks, and when she finally came to him she dangled paradise in front of him only to snatch it away.

  She turned away without looking at him, and aimed for the door. She actually was leaving.

  The hell she was.

  He reached the door at the same moment she began opening it. Pressing his hand flat against it, he forced it closed again.

  She stayed with her back to him, her body almost filling the small space between his skin and the door. The closeness of her spring scent, of her soft warmth, made his blood flow hot and fast.

  “I think that you could do what I ask,” she said, resentfully. “In Scotland—”

  “I am not an old Scot. And I cannot do it because in truth I do not want to do it, and that is all that will matter when the moment comes. If I only experienced the simple pleasure that you demand, I’m sure I could. But when I am inside you, careful thoughts disappear from my head. I will not make a promise that I already know I will not keep.”

  “Then, as I said, this cannot happen at all.” She began to yank the door open again.

  He slammed it closed once more, and kept his hand on it while his other arm circled her waist.

  “I cannot let you leave, Nesta. You must know that.” He kissed her shoulder, tasting the skin along the gown’s edge. “We will leave it in heaven’s hands. If you are not meant to bear my child, you will not.”

  She twisted in his hold, her eyes flashing with anger. “An easy bargain for a man to make.”

  Very easy, because he wanted her to bear his son, but he was not allowed to speak of that, or of the other things he wanted.

  He pulled her closer until his body pressed her back and bottom. His demanding embrace startled her. She braced her hands against the door to keep from being imprisoned against him.

  He swept her hair aside so his mouth could reach her neck. The rapid pulse under his lips beat its hot rhythm into his blood, and it quickened more when he closed his mouth on it more aggressively. Resistance left on her gasps until her neck grew pliant to his assault. “You say that we will only know brief truces and simple pleasures, Nesta. So be it. But during these truces expect no quarter. My possession of you will be whole until the finish. I will not withdraw.”

  “You are mad. You speak of daring fate.” Her voice sounded wonderfully breathless.

  “We have been daring fate since the night we met.” He pulled her hips closer yet, so that his arousal nestled against the small of her back. Her bottom rose slightly in response. “Now, stop speaking of terms and conditions, and give yourself to me, Nesta. It is why you came here.”

  She looked over her shoulder with eyes sparkling with passion. A few fires of rebellion still flickered, but as she looked at him a soft yielding washed away those tiny flames. She started to turn toward him.

  “Nay, stay there.”

  She arched an eyebrow. He could tell that she expected him to take her at once. His body yelled for him to. “Not yet. You bargain for simple, brief pleasure for a reason, but I’ll be damned if there will be anything simple and quick about tonight.”

  Still holding her hips to him, he reached around and plucked loose the tie of her gown’s lacing. He pulled the crossing threads out row by row, and her breath quickened as each level slid free. She was naked beneath the gown, and her hips began a subtle, erotic flexing that showed how anticipation was affecting her.

  She looked down between her braced arms at what he was doing. “You are making long work of that, Marcus.”

  Her impatience pleased him, and he only went slower in response. The sides of the gown began separating, releasing her breasts. He felt their swells half peeking through the gap above his hand. His movements brushed against them as he pulled the lacing out, and each time Nesta tensed. Her hands pressed the door harder.

  He stopped with the lacings at her waist. He pulled the two sides of the gown aside so her breasts were completely naked. He angled his head so he could see the sides of their pale, full shapes rising erotically out of the garment. Nesta’s eyes were closed and her face flushed. Deep breaths escaped through her parted lips.

  Reaching around her, he slowly skimmed his fingers along the bottom of one breast. A low sigh of affirmation breathed out of her, and her hips pressed against him more deliberately.

  He continued circling her breast with his slow caress, and her sighs grew anxious. Finally, he barely brushed the tip with his fingers. A deep tremor accompanied her sharp intake of breath.

  “Is that how you want it, Nesta? Or harder?”

  “Like that,” she whispered dazedly. “Just like that.”

  He gently rubbed again, and the tip swelled harder against his fingers. She arched into it, so that her hold on the door became more for balance than bracing.

  He teased at her, and his own arousal turned hotter and harder with every sound and movement he drew from her. As the simple pleasure pushed her toward abandon, her begging and astonished cries flowed quietly into his head.

  Keeping his hand to her, he began raising her skirt with the other.

  She realized what he was doing. “Aye,” she whispered.

  He stepped back, easing her legs with him until her upper body angled more severely toward the door. Pulling the skirt high, he draped it over her lower back so that her bottom and legs were exposed.

  She appeared unbearably erotic like that, braced against the planks with her naked bottom waiting for him. He caressed down her buttock to her inner thigh, and felt the thick moisture that revealed just how ready she was.

  “Part your legs.”

  She did so. He slid his phallus between her thighs, but did not enter her. “Close them now. And turn your head sideways. I want to see your face.”

  She obeyed the latter command first, so he saw her expression when her thighs closed on his hardness and when he altered his stance until he pressed up against her hot, moist folds. The
sensation of velvet softness, and the way he could feel the vague throbbing of her need, almost undid him.

  He reached around to caress both her breasts. A low throaty cry purred out of her and her face became an image of beautiful sensual rapture.

  He played at her breasts lightly, and she reacted to each touch. Her hips moved in stronger rhythms as she sought relief from the pleasurable torture, and each flex of her body created an erotic caress where she held him. Soon his senses absorbed nothing but the sight and sounds and feel of her. Her lovely, low exclamations of pleasure sang around them, luring him to bliss.

  His body ached with an insistent demand that he make the small move that would join them. He almost succumbed, but a part of him wanted this tantalizing pleasure to continue forever. Instead he separated from her and turned her to face him.

  She sank against the wall and looked at him with confusion as she blinked to clear her head. Only their heavy breaths broke the utter silence. She appeared so beautifully sensual with her naked breasts visible through the open gown and her hair disheveled and her eyes glazed by the delirium of desire.

  Her gaze lowered from his face to his chest. Pushing away from the wall, she placed both hands near his neck and felt her way across his shoulders.

  “When I was a young girl, I dreamed of a knight like you.” Her caress descended deliciously as she lined his chest with her warm, soft palms. “Tall, with broad shoulders and a lean strength. Carved hard and confident. He even had golden hair, although his mouth was sweet and bowed, and not harsh like yours.”

  She trailed a finger down his chest to his stomach. “He would play the lute for me, and sing poems to my beauty, and be pure in heart and body. He dared great deeds to impress me, and won every time.” She smiled at the memory as she watched her fingers slide lower and then move teasingly up his phallus. “Such are the foolish ideas on which girls are raised.”

  He gritted his teeth as her fingertips stroked him. Hooking his finger through the lacings of her gown, he pulled out the next level. “Boys too. I dreamed of being such a knight. Only I did not sing poems, and I was not so pure.”

  “Did you win the hand of a lady?”

  The lacing snaked down another level. “Of course.”

  “Someone like me?”

  “Actually, she was mild and biddable.”

  She laughed. It sounded so lovely, and made her look so fresh and beautiful. She might have suddenly become once again the girl she spoke of.

  He slid the gown off her shoulders, and it dropped to hang around her hips. He took her breasts in his hands. “Of course, I was just a boy then and knew nothing of passion. I had not yet learned how dull a mild and biddable woman could be.”

  Dipping his head, he flicked his tongue on the tips of her breasts while he pushed the gown down her hips. It dropped to her feet, leaving her naked. The pleasure from his tongue hampered her balance, and she staggered and grasped his shoulders.

  He straightened and pulled her into his support, embracing her tightly and completely, holding her hips and shoulders so that all of her adhered to him and her breasts pressed his chest and the moisture of her arousal wet his thighs.

  She met him in a furious kiss, the first kiss of the night. He lost himself in the tumultuous joining. He claimed her mouth with hard possession while he embraced her tremors and listened to her gasps. He caressed her nakedness firmly, finding the little dip at the small of her back and then the soft swells of her bottom.

  Her muffled moan entered their kiss and she arched her bottom, asking for more. Her grasping hold tightened on his back when he traced down her cleft. Her kiss turned biting and demanding as he explored the depths where her thighs joined. She broke the kiss completely when he slid his touch higher to stroke the hidden, soft valley where his phallus had recently nestled. Hanging on him, she pressed her face to his shoulder as the pleasure trembled through her.

  He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed.

  She stretched out and pulled him down on her and the broken kiss resumed, only hotter and deeper. She spread her legs and bent her knees to accept him.

  Body shredding from hunger and mind splitting with pleasure, he pushed up and knelt so he could see her. Her dark tresses fanned out over the bed. Her breasts rose and fell gently from her frantic breathing. Closer to his knees, her shapely thighs angled and rose to reveal dark shadows.

  She watched him look at her, with the subtle movements of her body speaking her impatience. While he looked she took her breasts in her own hands and gently squeezed their nipples.

  It was unbelievably carnal, and gave his arousal a new edge. He touched the inviting softness spread open to him and watched her delirium build until every sound she made, every movement, was that of a woman unhinged by pleasure and begging for completion.

  Her primal sensuality completely unleashed his own. He slid down so he could kiss her inner thighs, then turned his mouth to the flesh that his fingers caressed.

  Her breath caught and her movements stilled, and in that instant he knew she had never done this before. His discovery gave him just enough control to make it slow and careful as he tantalized her into acceptance.

  The pleasure peeled her apprehension away. He used his tongue to intensify the pleasure and she turned wild. Her cries filled the chamber and joined the pulse of his existence. He felt the pleasure make her tense as the intensity turned excruciating for them both. Her cries came faster and louder until her scream of release rang off the stones.

  Barely controlling his own passion, he rose up and slid into her. She lifted her knees to absorb him until he penetrated as deeply as possible.

  He withdrew and reentered slowly several times, luxuriating so much in the sensation of feeling her again that his consciousness began shattering. Then it was his turn for madness and he succumbed gladly. He thrust again and again, hard and furious, as all the waiting and wanting of the last days found expression in this claiming of her.

  Despite her recent climax, she joined him. Her body rocked in rhythm to his, and her lips at his ear whispered for him to make it harder, hotter, deeper. Her urgent pleas swam in his head and destroyed his last restraints. She groaned in contentment as he took her harder yet, and her joyful cries accompanied the rise of his passion to its violent, soul-splitting peak.

  For a few moments he knew nothing but a saturating peace. It created a spaceless place in which there was no strife, no anger, no death. She was with him there. Not physically, but essentially and completely.

  The alluring void began slowly filling. He became aware of her body beneath his and of her heaving breaths on his shoulder. Her arms still grasped his body in a desperate embrace. He rolled to her side and pulled her into the curve of his body and drifted into a daze still suffused with the perfection.

  He did not know how long they lay there. It might have been a few moments or half the night.

  Finally, Nesta eased out of his arms. “I must go. It will not do to fall asleep here.”

  He caught her arm. He was in no mood to consider what would and would not do. “I will wake you well before dawn.”

  “Mark—”

  He pulled her down beside him. “When you come to me, you will not leave my bed so quickly. That is one of my terms.”

  Her sigh said he was impossible, but she did not argue. She relaxed back into their embrace.

  “You called me Mark,” he said.

  “Did I? Perhaps hearing David use it so much made it slip out.”

  “I was called that as a boy, but not since becoming lord. My sister still uses it, as sisters will. David does too, but I think it is deliberate. I think that he likes to remind me that I was not always so important, and that he knew me when I was hotheaded and reckless.”

  “You dislike the name, then. I will be careful and try not to use it again.”

  She turned into him, snuggling closer, her eyes shut in sleepy contentment. He combed his fingers through her luxurious hair while her
breath warmed his neck and shoulder.

  “There is no need to be careful. You may call me Mark if you want.”

  She opened one eye and glanced at him, as if she found that interesting. He couldn’t imagine why she would.

  He nuzzled her ear. “The knight of your girlhood dreams had a bowed mouth?”

  She nodded. “An angel’s mouth.”

  “What were you thinking of? A mouth like that is stupid on a man. I saw such a face once, and the man who owned it walked around looking like a half-wit. A mouth like mine is much better, even if it is harsh.”

  “After tonight, I am bound to say that your mouth is perfect.”

  “If it gave you pleasure, I am glad. I also think you have not known that intimacy with anyone else.”

  “Does that make you glad, too?”

  “Aye.”

  Her lids lowered, as if she contemplated how to respond. “In truth, I have known very few of tonight’s intimacies with anyone else.”

  He almost asked if she meant the acts or the heights their passion had reached, but that would touch on the kind of talk she did not want.

  He looked down at her breasts and kissed one, then the other. “Let us see how perfect my mouth is. I wonder if I can make you cry for me again if I do nothing but use my lips and tongue.”

  He could.

  Chapter 17

  Her days were betrayals of her nights, and her nights of her days.

  Every afternoon she swore she would not go to him, and every night after her women fell asleep she found herself slipping into his chamber.

  It was reckless and dangerous and she knew that it did not speak well for her judgment. She was not a silly girl, and she should be able to resist the allure of a handsome man and the pleasure he offered.

  Still she went, drawn by the sparkling emotions she experienced in that chamber, tempted by the sweet lightness her heart would know for a few hours. The days and their duties did not exist in his arms. For three glorious nights she explored forbidden passion with the man charged with destroying all she had lived for these last few years.

  If they had just shared simple pleasure, as she had demanded, she might have stayed in her own bed.