by Nancy Morse
Fia’s matings with Victor had been quick, furtive, fumbling affairs — a few stolen, secretive moments in a world where unmarried men and women were not left to their own devices for long. They had been entirely different than whatever had happened with Rowan in Metz, or with Rowan at any other time, for that matter.
Now, he hurried only in that he did not wait overlong before capturing her in a tender yet somehow triumphant kiss, but she soon realized this joining would be unlike anything that had gone before.
Perhaps she imagined it, floating on a cloud of sensation as she was, but she felt sure he touched every inch of her, from her forehead to her toes, in a slow unveiling, until her body thrummed. She swayed, naked and heated before him. His eyelids lowered as he dropped his mouth to kiss her again. As the hilt of his spata dug into her ribs, she belatedly realized he was still wearing all of his clothes.
She fumbled a bit with the buckle of his belt. He helped her but let her set the pace with searching kisses between each layer — tunic, under tunic, boots, braies, socks, everything but the bandage — until they stood kissing again, his toes slightly overlapping hers. Now something firm as the spata but warm and silky pressed against her stomach.
He led her to the bed where the linens were cool on her back, their scent fresh as a new beginning.
Passion carried Fia beyond worry, and Rowan praised her body with voice and touch, opening her for him as naturally as a flower to summer heat. When he rose over her, flushed and powerful, her eyes squeezed inexplicably shut, but he did not hurry, waiting until the gentle pressure of him easing inside her was welcome and exquisite.
She felt she was made more beautiful by his taking of her, deliciously mindless as he rocked inside her. And aroused her. She arched, offering and begging in a language she’d only ever spoken with him, opened her eyes simply for the joy of seeing him.
His languorous, feral smile teased her before he lowered his head toward her nipple. Without thought, she flattened her back and flinched away from him.
He stopped. “Would you rather I not touch you here, with my mouth?” he asked in a casual tone that did nothing to belie the sudden sharpness of his gaze on her face.
“No, uh, I mean…try it again.” She should have worried about what her automatic stiffening, her little gasp of alarm had meant, but Rowan’s hand was cupping her breast, the thumb delicately testing before his lips worshipped with layers of friction, warmth, and wetness, until she could only be in this moment, fingers gripping his thick hair, hips squirming when a hand stole down across her belly to give her such wanton need she could not stop from whimpering and pressing against his hips.
He moved within her again and she spiraled up, up, and he was with her, saying her name with growling, masculine desperation. He curved a hand on her bottom, lifting her slightly, and she braced herself again, startled, but Rowan merely paused.
“No. Please,” she begged as she slid her eager hands from his head to his hips, urging him on, whispering a passionate affirmation as he fitted her more tightly to his urgent thrusts.
She pressed her nose to his chest to breathe him in, desperate to fix herself in this moment with Rowan, her husband, her protector.
“Is this too deep?” he asked with his damnable calm overlaying the rasping of his heated breathing.
“No, it is perfect. Don’t stop,” she said, desperate for it to just keep happening, to continue being perfect.
He accommodated her with a few deliberate strokes then pushed her back and brushed her untamed hair from her face. “Look at me, my only.”
The expression on his face made her eyes tingle with unshed tears. Such naked devotion, yet behind it, a splinter of pity.
“Give me your hands,” he asked.
He kissed each palm. Her fingers twined with his as she searched those eyes that were searching hers right back. He’d noticed her inexplicable flinches, damn him. But she did not want to be coddled.
“I am with you,” she said with a challenge in her voice. “I feel as if we are on the edge of that wonderful place you took me in the forge. Yet you seem determined to tease me all afternoon.”
His slow, promising grin scythed lust through her. “We are on that edge, and no, I will not last all afternoon,” he promised.
They began the climb again as her body threatened to unravel. Her gaze stayed locked on his until her neck arched with a will of its own. Her exhalations turned into desperate cries that became one thin scream when he pushed her over the top. It was like the night at the forge but so much more devastating, with him thick and seeking inside her, shearing her apart yet also the one point her disintegration focused around, his groan of completion a masculine echo of her own sounds from a moment before.
As they spiraled down, she clung to his warmth and heard her name and all sorts of wonderful words whispered against her ear.
She rolled with him and cuddled close against his side. His calloused hand petted her tailbone, soothing her, yet nothing could block the memory of those moments of unease. Intimacy with Rowan had been utterly beautiful, but something had intruded into the beauty. She tightened her hold on her husband as she recognized the intrusions for what they’d been.
Fear.
Anticipation of pain.
She turned her face into his shoulder as she struggled with the knowledge. He gathered her close to him but did not speak, as if he knew she needed to be safe but alone in her thoughts.
In her innocence, or stupidity, she’d thought discomfort had been an unavoidable part of sex for women, the reason wives spoke of it as a duty, a means to an end. She’d been expecting Rowan to bite her sensitive nipple, and his hand to squeeze her hip too hard, hard enough to leave his mark on her. She remembered the startled noises she’d made with Victor and the keen, eager expression her distress evoked on his face.
Had he ever asked her if she was well, even during that first nearly unbearable coupling? Had he ever said her name, even in the moment of his climax? The only word she remembered was spoken when he mounted her with a dry thrust. Each and every time he’d said, “Mine.” Though he’d complimented and paid court to her endlessly when they were with others, their few stolen private moments had been for him. Enjoyment for him, while she endured. Their purpose, after all, had been to make a child.
It didn’t mean he would have ever hurt her again or that he hadn’t loved her or they wouldn’t have found pleasure together, eventually. He’d died, and she would never know, and the thought that that might have been a blessing lanced her heart for a moment.
No.
Rowan had said he thought of Victor as two people. She would remember the one man she’d known, his courtship and the heady desperation of young love, and let the memories lie there, undisturbed, among the other remembrances of a happy youth.
Now she was in a marriage in which there was no room for her first love. Her present and future were right here beneath her cheek, safe and vastly male. She snuggled still closer to her husband with a sigh that stirred the intoxicating scents of the forge, sweat, and sex.
“Fia the Beautiful,” he said into her hair. “Fia the Passionate. And the best one, the very best one, Fia, the woman I love.”
A smile surprised her when it sneaked onto her face, and a bit of the bravado that had earned her the Defiant moniker swelled. She slid a leg across him to straddle his waist, pleased when his brows rose. “I am Fia, wife of Rowan, who is the most loved man in the kingdom of Lothair.”
He caressed from her knees to her ribs, then let his grip settle gently at her waist. “If I have earned the love I sought for so long, I should be labeled Rowan, the luckiest man alive.” He spoke it as a joke, but a foundation of sincerity showed in the fire in his eyes.
“You have it, my only husband.” She leaned down to kiss him while still watching him, trying to show him what she could not say, and they were quickly entangled again. This time, no ghosts from the past interfered.
Rowan he
ld her fused against his side as a thin layer of sweat cooled on his skin. She’d just looked at him very intently and said, “I do love you, Rowan, more than I ever thought I could. More than you can imagine.”
Before he could fashion a reply, she’d been asleep. He tried to gather the jumbled impressions of the afternoon in his sex-sated brain. First, he now knew without a doubt she’d never achieved ecstasy with Victor. He’d have felt smug about that except for the second thing he was sure of.
Victor had hurt her. Not enough for her to be afraid of sex, as such, but enough that she’d anticipated pain. Enough that she’d recognized the difference in what she’d just shared with him.
He wished he could have five minutes alone in a room with that whoreson to tell him what he’d done to her and to clout him in the face, possibly not in that order.
Even more, he wished he could promise Fia out loud he would not hurt her. But he knew they would never speak of the particulars.
He’d been so attuned to her, he’d felt the memories of Victor steal over her, recognized the defiance when he’d tried to be too careful, known the instant in the quiet aftermath she realized the truth of Victor’s nature, then finally, her light burst through that darkness to say, “I am Fia, wife of Rowan….”
His arms tightened around her. They were two made one. He had won her. She was safe, and Victor could never hurt her again.
Chapter Twenty-One
Rowan woke when she slipped from the bed, her skin tawny in the peachy light of late afternoon. Though it had only been an hour, maybe two, since their second joining, he wanted her again.
He resigned himself to restraint. They would leave for Alda in the morning, and she’d not thank him for two days on horseback after being ridden by him with the vigor he felt building.
She dug in the small bag she’d brought then scurried back to bed with something hidden in her fist. An endearing flush spread on her face and chest when she saw him watching her. He held an arm out to welcome her back to bed. Shyness drove her legs under the covers. She pressed against him. Well, if there was one thing better than looking at his wife’s limber body, it was feeling her hide it from him down the entire length of his.
“What are you sneaking back to bed with? A dagger to rip out my heart?”
“No,” she said, still shy.
She laid the red glass disc on his chest, in the valley between the muscular flats. He didn’t know quite what he thought of welcoming the memory of her dead father into their marital bed, so he kept quiet.
“I want you to have this,” she said thoughtfully.
He brushed his fingers over hers where they had been petting his chest. “You should keep it, my love. It is all you have of him.”
She smiled sadly. “I never knew what it meant, though, the message. But you do. I’ve run you in circles and made you walk through fire, in a way.”
“I would do much more to claim you.” He planted a searing kiss on her palm, couldn’t resist touching there with his tongue to taste her sweetness and salt.
“I know. And that is why.”
“That is why what?” he asked, distracted by nibbling on each finger as he silently swore his lips would go no farther than her wrist.
“That is why you must keep it. So you always know that I know what you did for me, that you were always there to save me if I needed it.” She removed her hand so she could caress his jawbone, down to the squarish chin, over his parted lips. “You saved me until I was ready to stop being afraid.”
“Oh, Fia. My only,” he murmured as he rolled her beneath him, the red glass forgotten on the linens, a silent witness to the burning flames of love long denied.
Much later, he whispered against her temple, “There are times when a man needs to be saved, too. ‘We go in circles in the night and are consumed by fire.’ Yes, I wandered and burned, always drawn back to you. Until you saved me, too, my only. Until you.”
“I’m sorry,” he said as they set out for the short walk through frosty grass the next morning, dawn barely washing the thatch of the tiny cottage that had never held two happier inhabitants.
“For what?” she asked dreamily, her hand curled possessively around his bicep.
“I meant to not take you the third time, last night, and then this morning had gotten started before I was fully awake. I hope the saddle is not too uncomfortable for you.”
“Are you blushing?” She grinned up at him.
He said something unintelligible under his breath.
“I’m sure you noticed I was a willing partner.” She stroked his arm. “In fact, you might give me a tiny bit of credit for being more awake than you when the cock began to crow this morning. So to speak.”
He burst into startled laughter. “Are you suggesting you woke up my rooster?”
“Perhaps,” she said primly. “We will be camped with your family tonight, and I thought that waiting until the next night seemed like a very long time.”
Burdened with both their bags as he was, he couldn’t hold her as he’d like, but he turned for one last thorough claiming of lips already swollen from kissing before the long drought of their return journey to Alda.
As they made camp that night, Rochelle stood back, watching with approval as her son and his new wife settled to their tasks, bringing water, starting a fire, setting out the food they had, and pointedly spreading their blankets with the edges touching.
Patrice shifted from foot to foot, sullen and not meant for outdoor living. Though she’d managed to hold her tongue for four straight days, her stoic silence spoke entire sermons about her opinion of the madness she’d been forced to witness. Rochelle sighed and went to David where he tended the horses.
“Patrice may appreciate her country life a bit more after this,” she said.
“Until her squalling niece or nephew arrives to terrorize us all,” he replied dryly.
“At least Rowan and Fia will be happy,” she said.
“I think so,” he agreed. “Tonight will be hell for them, though. Remember?” He lifted her chin to brush his lips over hers.
She sighed. “Yes, well, we may be in worse shape than them. We haven’t had a moment of privacy for nearly a week.”
“You have my word I’ll make up for the lack the moment we catch sight of our bed.”
“I know,” she said breathlessly. “That is the only thing sustaining me.”
Rowan thought nothing would sustain him by the time the sky lightened with the first gray of dawn. His erection pressed tenaciously against the seam of Fia’s bottom where it had ridden since she’d turned on her side an hour ago. Before that it had simply stood there, pointed skyward though yearning for the woman to its right.
He was damned. All those nights from Paris, when she’d been within reach but he could not touch her…. Now he was touching her but he could not take her, could not delve into that wet heat.
His slow, shaky exhalation roused her enough to turn her head. And, saints preserve him, her buttocks pressed back into him.
“Don’t move.” His whisper did not hide the begging tone.
Her hand moved, creeping spider-like under the blankets until she gripped his thigh.
“Fia, please. You don’t know how much I want you. I can’t —”
“Yes, I do,” she answered simply. Her eyes flashed as she looked beseechingly over her shoulder at him, and he was powerless but to act like the rutting bridegroom he was.
“Be silent,” he warned as he rose far enough to squat next to her and gather her, blankets and all, in his arms. He tiptoed around dry branches as he went unerringly to the odd tree he’d noticed when taking a piss last night, the tree he’d been thinking about for hours, broken when it had been just a sapling by wind or a passing animal, its wide trunk now growing at a lovely broad curve.
He laid his wife there. At first her hands gripped the narrow bed but, when he straddled the tree, she understood his carnal intentions and
peeled away coverings so she could find the hem of her under tunic.
He grasped her behind her knees to steady her and sank into her, paused with his forehead pressed to her shoulder.
“I need you. Saints preserve me, it’s like breathing.” He pulled out, then pressed in again. “Ah.”
“I know,” she whispered.
He rode her well and it took only brief moments until their harsh breathing echoed through the trees around them. She pressed her mouth against his chest to muffle her moans as she convulsed against him, bringing him with her in a fast, desperate climax.
When he pulled back to look at her, feeling slightly sheepish and a little worried at how hard he’d used her, the glow of her face reassured him. Eyes closed, a smile of pure feminine fulfillment, nostrils flared as she caught her breath. He brushed a lock of glorious hair off her brow.
“I’ve chosen a very clever husband,” she said with a wanton purr.
“Indeed?”
Her lids lifted and the dark gaze peered up at him inquisitively. “Is it often done on trees?”
“Never that I’ve heard of.”
“Should anyone ever ask, I highly recommend it. This tree especially.” She patted the bark affectionately.
He snorted with a barely contained laugh. “Perhaps I should post a sign at the roadside.”
“So we can find it again?” she asked hopefully.
He helped her straighten her clothing before attending to his own. As he gathered the discarded blankets, he noticed her looking at him with a tender half-smile.
“What is it?”
“When you found me in Paris, I thought I’d never be happy again. I certainly never thought I’d feel joy.” She reached for his hand and pressed it between her breasts. “Yet my heart has threatened to burst with happiness so many times since you asked me to marry you. It seems like it may be a permanent condition.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Fia’s heart did threaten to burst most days. The people of Alda welcomed her while allowing her to adjust to her role before expecting much of her in any wider capacity.