“’Tis a wonder Glendruids don’t have scales and fins,” Eadith said, watching Meg give herself to the water.
Laughing, Meg moved her hands to make the water swirl.
“Do you need aught else?” Eadith asked.
“No.”
“I’ll leave you to your chanting, then.”
Meg’s mouth curved with amusement at Eadith’s stolid disapproval of Glendruid ways.
“If I’m not back when you need me,” Eadith said, “raise a cry. Your two-legged hound is just down the hall. He’ll fetch me.”
The reminder that Dominic’s squire was always a short distance away made Meg’s mouth flatten. The “small falcon” had been released from the mews, but was hardly free. When Dominic wasn’t with her, Jameson was always within calling distance.
Does my husband really distrust me so much?
The answer was as immediate as it was inevitable.
Aye. Why else hasn’t he made me his wife in truth as well as in name? His body certainly is capable. But until my monthly flux passes, he won’t trust that whatever grows in my womb is his.
Only love would have that kind of trust, and he loves me not.
Slowly Meg’s unhappy thoughts dissolved in the soothing heat and fragrance of the water. She closed her eyes, inhaled the complex, scented herbal steam rising from the water, and began softly chanting the ancient ritual of purification and rebirth. With graceful, rhythmic strokes she washed the old mistakes and regrets from her body, and then smoothed on the scented soap of possibility and renewal.
When Meg was finished, she opened her eyes languidly, feeling both calm and vibrant with energy. The calm vanished when she realized that Dominic was standing very close, watching her with eyes that shone like hammered silver. His heavy, dark mantle was a thick slice of midnight within the candlelit room.
“I—I didn’t know you were here,” she stammered. “How long have you waited?”
“A thousand years,” he said in a strange, husky voice.
Meg’s breath wedged in her throat as her heartbeat went wild. Wary and hopeful at the same time, she looked up at Dominic with luminous emerald eyes. He held out a drying cloth that was as large as a mantle.
And then he smiled and whistled sweetly, the same intricate five-note call she had used to charm the peregrine.
“Fly to me, small falcon.”
Meg smiled almost shyly, hesitated, and then rose from her bath in a graceful motion. Water hastened from her body in silver rivulets while golden bells whispered and sang as they were freed from the water’s muffling embrace.
Dominic’s hands tightened on the cloth as he saw his wife’s body glistening with water and candlelight. Silently he questioned his wisdom in coming to her in the scented intimacy of the bathing room. He thought he had been impatient to ask her to ride hawking with him. Now he realized that he had been impatient to see her, period.
Meg looked very beautiful to him wearing only chains of golden bells and glistening water. Beneath the concealing mantle, his body hardened in a rush that left him aching from his forehead to his heels. It also left him feeling powerful, fully male, eager to take what Church and law decreed was his.
God’s teeth, I’ve never wanted a maid like this! Will she never bleed? Perhaps I should do as Simon suggested and slake my body’s thirst at Marie’s willing well.
Yet even as the thought came, Dominic ruled out taking the leman for his own temporary ease. He needed Meg’s love far more than his body needed relief from its relentless sexual hunger. And he sensed quite certainly that Meg would be angry if he showed the leman any attention. An angry girl wasn’t likely to be a loving one.
Patience.
In the name of God, patience has never been so difficult. What is wrong with me? I’m not a beardless squire to slaver after a girl.
“You look quite fierce to whistle so sweetly,” Meg said uncertainly as she reached for the drying cloth.
Dominic wrapped the cloth around Meg, capturing her arms against her side.
“I feel rather fierce,” he said.
His voice was rough rather than seductive, but he could no more help its aroused huskiness than he could soften the masculine sword that had sprung to readiness at the sight of Meg’s naked body. He knew he should turn and walk from the room, but that, too, was beyond his ability.
Slowly, taking entirely too much pleasure from such a simple thing, Dominic began rubbing Meg dry, beginning with her neck and shoulders.
“Is something wrong with the keep?” she asked anxiously.
“No.” Dominic took a corner of the cloth and dried the hollow in Meg’s throat where drops of water had collected. “Just with the keep’s lord.”
“What is it?”
“I came here in a fever to take you hawking. I fear I will leave in a greater fever.”
“Hawking?”
Meg was so excited at the prospect that she danced in place, making golden bells chime.
“Oh, aye, Dominic! Let’s go hawking! Send Eadith to dress me and I’ll be ready before you know it!”
He smiled at the pleasure animating Meg’s face. The smile became somewhat dark as his hands rubbed down the elegant length of her back. Even with cloth separating him from her skin, he could feel the smooth resilience of her flesh.
And he could remember what it had been like to touch her naked skin.
“We don’t need Eadith just yet,” Dominic said. “I’ll tend you.”
“But it will be quicker if Eadith dresses me.”
“Are you in that much of a fever to go hawking?”
“Aye. John rarely let me go, for all that I helped train many of the falcons.”
A distant reverberation of thunder made the air tremble with low sounds. Meg cast a worried look at the long slit of the window. More cloud than blue sky showed.
“Hurry,” Meg said. “A storm threatens.”
“Indeed. It has already overtaken me.”
Dominic’s fingers stretched, circled her buttocks, and flexed deeply. Meg gave a startled cry as heat shot through her body, weakening her knees.
“So,” he whispered. “It is the same for you.”
“W-what?”
“Lying with me at night as we once did, breathing my breath, sharing my warmth…You have sunk through my skin to the marrow of my bones. You are a fire in me, Meg.”
She started to answer, but his hands flexed again, sending lightning strokes of heat through her body. As she moaned, she saw the blaze in his eyes and knew that he was right; somewhere in the long nights they had lain chastely together heat had begun to burn deeply within her.
“And I have become a fire in you,” Dominic said, savoring the moan he had drawn from Meg’s throat. “We will burn together. We will burn….”
“Dominic,” she whispered.
Before Meg could say another word, his mouth covered hers and his tongue sought hers in an intimate duel that lasted until she was breathless, leaning heavily against him, lost to the kiss. She had never known anything like the pleasure Dominic gave her. She had no defenses against it. Nor had she any defense against the Glendruid hope that burned as fiercely as desire within her.
Surely love is possible. Surely…
After a time Meg began to struggle against the embrace. Reluctantly Dominic lifted his head and looked down at Meg’s flushed cheeks. Her breath was rapid and her nipples stood like small pebbles against the soft cloth.
“Why do you fight me?” he asked in a deep voice.
“Not you. The cloth. I want to stroke your hair, but I’m trapped like a fish in a net.”
The sight of Meg’s hard nipples so intrigued Dominic that it took a moment for him to realize that he had indeed wrapped her so tightly in the drying cloth that her arms were imprisoned at her sides.
“Do you want to pet me like Black Tom?” he asked. “Head to heels and back again? Will you run your cheek all over me as well, the way you do with him?”
The thought
of it shortened Meg’s breath.
“Would you like that?” she whispered.
“Aye,” Dominic said in a low voice. “Every morning when I watch you pet that cat from bailey to gardens and back again, I think what it would be like to have your hands on me in the same way.”
Thunder rumbled beyond the open shutters. Wind gusted, bringing the scent of rain and new leaves and freshly opened flowers.
Meg barely noticed the building storm. The quicksilver blaze of Dominic’s eyes consumed her. The sensual depth of his voice caressed her like sunlight. Whether he loved her or not, there was no doubt that she held his whole attention right now.
Perhaps he could, if only for the moment, forget the cold calculations of dynasty and sons. Perhaps she could help him forget those things. Perhaps she could burn so brightly that he would be the moth and she the flame.
And then he would succumb to her, wanting only her, forgetting everything else.
“Do you purr?” Meg asked with a catch in her voice.
“Never yet. But with you, I think I might.”
Dominic’s hands shifted from Meg’s hips to her back. He hooked his thumbs in the drying cloth and began slowly dragging it down her torso.
“What about you?” he asked in a husky voice as the high curves of her breasts were gradually revealed. “Do you purr at a man’s touch?”
Meg couldn’t answer. The expression on Dominic’s face as he looked at her breasts made it impossible for her to think, much less to answer questions. He was watching her as though he had never seen anything as beautiful. The intensity of his eyes was a caress.
Soft, glittering sensations rippled through Meg as her breasts tightened on a swiftly indrawn breath.
“You are more beautiful than any spring buds,” Dominic said in a low voice.
Thunder rumbled and the wind freshened, sending a quick draft through the room, making candle flames bend and tremble. Meg shivered from the opposite sensations of coolness and heat. Her nipples gathered into hard crowns that were as pink as her tongue.
“Are you cold?” Dominic asked.
“Aye. That is, nay.” Meg made a breathless sound that was neither laugh nor word. “I don’t know. I can’t think when you look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m a Turkish sweet of unknown flavor.”
Dominic’s mouth shifted into a sensual smile that sent more heat through Meg.
“Are you?” he asked.
“W-what?”
“Sweet.”
Before Meg could answer, Dominic bent his head to taste her. His tongue darted out and licked the peak of one breast as delicately as a cat.
“Dominic.”
He made a low sound that was rather like a purr and licked her again.
“Sweet but not cloying,” he said. “You taste like spring itself.”
The end of his tongue tested Meg’s nipple, circled it, and then slowly drew the tip of her breast into his mouth for a thorough tasting.
Heat cascaded through Meg, loosening her body as though she lay in a meadow caressed by the summer sun. The changing texture and pressure of Dominic’s unexpected caress made her dizzy with delight. Pleasure gathered and burst softly deep inside her, drawing a low moan from the back of her throat.
The sound acted on Dominic like a whip laid across naked skin. His whole body tightened as he drew Meg more heavily into his mouth. The caress changed from teasing to intense as he shaped her breast to the urgent demands of passion. A ragged cry and the pressure of her nails against his biceps only added more heat to the desire that was rapidly burning through his usually indomitable self-control.
Dominic’s hand caressed down Meg’s naked back to her waist. With an impatience he could barely reign in, he slid his fingers beneath the drying cloth. A long finger traced her spine to the cleft of her bottom. He knew he should stop there, satisfying himself with the startled cry of discovery and desire he drew from Meg when he cupped the flare of her hip in his hand and squeezed carefully.
Yet even as Dominic told himself to withdraw until he could slow the hammering of his blood, his hand returned to the small of her back. There he delicately teased the sensitive hollow and savored the heat rising from her skin.
When Meg murmured and sighed with pleasure, Dominic traced her spine from nape to base once again, but this time he couldn’t resist following the line of her body until his fingertips again found the warm cleft dividing her hips. He followed it slowly on down, dragging a shivering cry of surprise from her.
The cloth fell from Meg’s hips to the floor. The cool air of the room made an intense contrast to the heat expanding through her in shimmering waves with each tug of Dominic’s mouth on her sensitized breast, each gliding foray of his fingertips down her back to the alluring cleft where passionate embers smoldered on the edge of flame.
Then his long fingers sought more deeply, discovered, parted, penetrated her satin warmth as lightly as fire itself. The sensations that burst through Meg made her cling to Dominic for balance while everything else in the room was drawn into a dizzying spiral of invisible flames.
“My lord,” Meg whispered. “What are you doing to me?”
Reluctantly Dominic released her breast, but not the silky, secret heat he had barely touched.
“I’m discovering you,” he said in a husky voice.
As Dominic spoke, he probed lightly again, and again was rewarded by Meg’s broken breath and a moisture that owed nothing to her recent bathing ritual.
“I can barely stand,” she whispered.
“Then hold on to me.”
“I am.”
Dominic smiled despite the hammer blows of desire that were shaking him, breaking his breath as surely as hers.
“So you are,” he said. “I can feel your delicate talons.”
Belatedly Meg realized she was indeed clinging to Dominic with fingernails as well as hands.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
His low, masculine laugh sent more heat snaking through her body.
“Hurt?” Dominic asked. “Nay. I like the feel of your hunger rising to fly with mine. Go ahead, small falcon. Test your strength against me. And I…”
His hand glided from her hip to the hollow of her throat. As he watched Meg with smoky gray eyes, his fingertip traced the center of her body from breastbone to navel to the cloud of red hair that concealed the same cleft he had stalked from the other side.
“…I shall test your softness,” Dominic whispered.
Unerringly his fingertip parted the lush thicket, discovered the hidden bud and circled it slowly before going on to the sleek petals that had begun to fill with desire. He drew his fingertips slowly over Meg, probing softly, insistently, but her gate was too well defended from front.
“Open for me,” he said hoarsely.
“What?”
“Give me the freedom of your warm keep.”
Before Meg’s mind understood Dominic’s request, her body did. Her legs shifted, allowing him a greater intimacy. She was rewarded by a gliding caress that made fire splinter through her.
She knew then that she had wanted this since her wedding night, when she had first felt the hard warmth of Dominic’s hand sliding up beneath her dress.
“More,” Dominic said hoarsely, watching Meg through narrowed eyes. “You are still closed against me.”
She shifted again, then gasped at the slow penetration of his fingertip. When she would have closed her legs once more, she found she couldn’t. He had thrust his thigh between hers, holding her legs apart. Her eyes opened, startled.
Dominic was watching her with eyes of silver fire.
“I should not do this,” he said hoarsely.
“What?” she whispered.
“This.”
He circled Meg’s sleek sheath. The shivering cry he drew from her made his head spin with passion.
“So tightly held against me,” Dominic breathed, “yet you we
ar your desire like a perfume.”
“’Tis only—my bath.”
“’Tis your passion, Meg. There is no perfume like it.”
She would have said more, but he was between her legs again and she couldn’t breathe for the rings of pleasure expanding through her body, crowding out all else but a delicious, pulsing heat.
“Dominic, I fear I cannot stand much longer.”
Without a word he lifted Meg and seated her on the trestle table. The cool, smooth wood was another kind of caress, one that served to focus the heat of her own body and that of the man who was standing in front of her, his face drawn with passion. Beneath his concealing mantle he worked at his clothing. Then he swirled his mantle over both of them.
“Wrap your legs around my waist,” Dominic said.
His voice was hoarse, urgent, and even while he spoke he was drawing Meg’s legs around his body.
“Yes, like that,” he said. “Now come closer. Closer, Meg. Closer…yes, a bit more…”
Meg’s breath came in swift and hard as she realized that it wasn’t Dominic’s hand caressing between her legs. Her fingers dug into his arms as she felt something broad and smooth and solid probe the edges of her softness.
“Dominic?”
He shuddered heavily as he nudged the sultry sheath, felt the liquid heat of her response, and knew that he must be held hotly, deeply, tightly. Now.
“Hold on to me, small falcon. Soon we will fly.”
“The devil take you, squire,” Eadith said loudly from the hallway. “If I want to speak to my mistress, I will!”
The drapery whipped aside as the handmaiden entered the bathing room. “Cook wants to know if—Oh!”
Though Dominic’s mantle covered both himself and Meg, the circumstances left little doubt as to what Eadith had interrupted. The shock on her face would have been amusing to Dominic if he hadn’t been ready to throttle her on the spot.
“Beg your pardon, Lord Dominic, lady,” Eadith muttered as she withdrew hastily.
Dominic sent a barrage of searing Turkish oaths after the handmaiden while Meg struggled to disentangle from her husband. At first he wouldn’t permit it. Then, with a final oath, he released her.
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