“Blushing like a maiden,” he chided, his naked thigh brushing against her bed-warmed skin.
“I am a maiden,” she reminded him. “Time changes much, but not that.”
“No, but I’ll change it.” He drew her down, to lie in his arms. Johanna remembered the heady thrill of his bare skin, but his body was so different now than it had been when they’d been young. He’d been soft and hairless as a babe, now every muscle was hard and a dusting of hair shadowed his chest. There was a touch of gray in it, as in his beard, and she covered her mouth with her hands to stifle her laughter.
“What?” he laughed with her, looking down at himself. “I haven’t gotten fat from your fine northern cooking, have I?”
It took only the touch of his lips on hers to silence the laughter in her throat. It was too serious, his arms around her, his skin hot against hers in the cold of the tower room, and too bright and real. His kisses turned to soft bites, down her jaw, to her throat, her collarbones. His fingers trailed over her back, and she felt the pressure of them, if nothing else. It was enough. Her cleft grew slick and hot. She remembered that too, that feeling of aching incompleteness. If she had given in to him then, what would her life be like now?
It seemed churlish to sully the moment with regret. The world, already spinning, seemed to cant even more as his mouth roved over her breasts. He cupped one in his palm, a broken groan spilling from his lips before they closed over her nipple. She moaned at the feeling, familiar and strange, just as every time he had touched her in the past. Her head reeled, and she looked about the room, the oddest feeling of displacement coming over her. It was her bed, she slept in it every night, but it seemed a foreign landscape with him in it.
“Relax,” he murmured, raising his head and circling with one finger the wet flesh his mouth left untended.
“This doesn’t seem real,” she confessed.
He stroked the backs of his fingers along the side of her breast, down her ribs, and she shivered. “Do you remember the night I came to you here? When I bribed someone to distract your nurse, so I could come inside and bar the door?”
She blushed hot at the memory. “Of course I remember. It was the night before you left.”
Gently, he urged her to turn over, so that she lay with her back against his chest, just as that night when he’d surprised her by kissing her awake in her very bed. He did not shudder or flinch away when his skin touched the mass of scars on her back. He kissed her shoulder, then her neck, and whispered, “Pretend it is still that night. Do you remember what we did?”
His arm draped over her waist, he slid his hand over her stomach, down to the curls between her thighs. She held her breath as one fingertip probed the crevice there, then slipped between her folds. The contrasts of her own flesh shocked her, the dry, soft skin and hair of her mound, the smooth, slick mouth of her cleft, strangely like her scars in that respect. She buried her face in the pillow, because she couldn’t bear the sudden shyness. He rolled his fingertip over the pearl there, his breath calm and even while hers sounded thin and frightened to her own ears.
“That’s better,” he said, nipping at her shoulder. “Now show me how.”
Uncertain, she brought her hand down to join his. Though he’d done a fine job on his own fifteen years ago, she guided him to just the right place, pushed with just enough pressure. His manhood pressed against her backside, and he ground against her as she rocked her hips in time with the stroking of his finger. Closing her eyes, she gave over to the sensations that had not changed, despite the scars, despite the years. She groped behind her, between them, to close her fingers over his hard, rigid flesh. She hadn’t been so bold the last time, but now she’d need no coaxing to touch him. His mouth was on her everywhere, sucking at the back of her neck, down her shoulder, all the while his fingers working over her aching flesh, until her body tightened and her breath rasped from her throat, eager at the promise of release. He stopped, only for a second, to take up the work with his thumb, and slid one finger inside of her untried cunny. She gasped at the intrusion, and the way he curled that finger, stroking along her walls deftly. Though she remembered feeling a loss of control before, she’d never felt the desire to yield to it the way she did now. Her entire being focused on one desire, to climax as he held her sex in his hand and buried his mouth against her neck. When she did, it was with a ragged cry, almost of surprise, and she felt the heat and the wet intensify tenfold.
He brushed aside the fingers that gripped his cock and rose above her, settling between her legs, limp and splayed in the aftermath of her pleasure. The gentle slide of his fingertips over and in her flesh had drawn a new, desperate awareness from her. She lifted her eyes to his, saw the care and the passion in them. He really did want her, no matter her appearance. And then she knew, with a joy so keen that her heart felt as though it might never beat again, that when he looked at her, he did not see the monstrous scars and the youth lost. He saw the beautiful girl he had loved, perhaps had never stopped loving, all those long years ago.
She did not look away from him as he guided himself to her. She lifted her hips, rubbing against him, coating him in her wetness. When he slipped inside, she took a sharp breath at the suddenness of it. One moment, they stood on the edge of the familiar, and then they’d stepped off, easy as breathing. He sank into her, and it seemed endless. When finally his body rested against hers, and she felt she might expire from the exquisite pressure of him filling her, he slowly withdrew, and the pleasure was just as torturous. He pulled out completely, while her inner muscles grasped at him of their own accord. A soft “oh” of surprise and awe escaped her, and she wrapped her arms around his shoulder and held him tight as he once again pressed into her.
“Johanna,” he whispered against her ear, when he was buried deep. She turned her head and kissed him, sucking his tongue between her lips. When she released him, he leaned up on one elbow and kissed her forehead. “I love you.”
He moved against her, retreat and advance set in a primal repetition. He reached below her knee and drew her leg up, gliding his hand down her thigh as she tucked her calf against his back. He filled her with impossibly long strokes, drawing cold and hot shivers from her as he butted against the mouth of her womb. His earlier slowness gave over to a forceful intensity, every thrust grinding against the pleasurable knot at her opening. They strained together, their breath becoming one unified sound in the quiet of the room. Other, smaller noises pricked her ear, the brush of skin against skin, the wet, greedy suction of her body as he plunged inside. They awakened her other senses to the taste of salt on his skin and the way the firelight sharpened the lines of muscle in his arms. It overwhelmed her, bringing unexpected tears to her eyes. She clung to him, involuntary gasps and moans bursting from her as her muscles tightened and she strained up to capture him. A moment before her own release curled her toes into the feather bed, he went still over her, his entire body clenched around her. It was the throb of him as he spilled his seed that pushed her over the break, and her high-pitched howl wrenched the last of her strength away. She fell back, and he toppled down beside her, breathing hard.
“I shouldn’t have,” he rasped, breathing heavy. “If you get a child from this…and then this all ends badly…”
“It is too late for that worry, now.” She could barely summon the energy to speak, let alone have a care for some far off possibility.
He sighed and pulled her to lie with her head on his shoulder. “What were you laughing at, before?”
It took a moment, but then she remembered, and giggled anew.
“Please. Johanna, naked men do not like to be laughed at.” But he could not help himself.
She tried to maintain her composure. “I’m not sure I should say, but…I was laughing at you. You have gray hairs on your chest. And in your beard.”
“I do?” he looked down, combing his fingers over the short, crisp hairs. “Two! Three, at most.”
She pulled the bedclothes up hig
her to ward away the chill. “We are not young anymore, Philipe. I had my thirty-second birthday last month.”
“Oh, yes, you’re practically a crone, and I a wizened old man of…well, I suppose thirty-three next week.” Philipe stroked her back idly, fingertips tracing the lines of her scars. “I am sorry to get you so…entangled in all this.”
She lifted the hand that lay on his chest and laced their fingers together. “If I had married you back then, I would still be entangled in this. If your father had declared you a traitor, and I was at the palace, would I be alive now?”
“Yes. I wouldn’t have left you behind.” It had not been her intent to insult him, and she was sorry for it now, when she heard the bewilderment in his voice.
“I love you,” he said, his voice thick. “I know I don’t deserve your trust but…please believe that I have never stopped loving you.”
She leaned up and kissed him, letting her mouth linger against his for another, then another. She might lose him, in the morning, in a day, in a week. She would savor each moment until they were safe.
Chapter Eleven
Philipe dressed quietly, hoping he would accidentally wake Johanna, and dreading it all the same. If she woke, he would have to tell her goodbye and walk away, knowing he might not return to her. If she did not wake, he left without the chance to kiss her one last time, and tell her that he loved her.
It would be easier if he did not have to go at all, but a messenger had come, rousing both of them from sleep a few hours before. The two armies would face each other at dawn, and if a parlay did not prove successful, they would fight. A parlay. What a farce. His father had told him years before that a king must always appear to respect the rules, so that he would not be suspected of tyranny. Appear to, that was the trick of it. His father was no more like to reach an accord with a traitor than he was to sprout wings and fly.
Despite the many details he was certain would need attending, he’d delayed his departure to make love to Johanna again. Only when she slept, and he could be certain she slept soundly, had he risen to leave.
He pulled on the borrowed tunic. It would go well with the borrowed armor that awaited him below. Johanna still slept. Years ago, he had woken her to say goodbye to him. It hadn’t turned out well. Perhaps this time, just the once, he could leave her without distress. He leaned over the bed to kiss her cheek, and pulled the blankets over her shoulders before he left.
Johanna woke to the rowdy squawk of a blue jay. It took only a moment for disappointment and a frantic feeling to claw at her from the inside. It was well past dawn. Philipe had gone.
“Damn you! Damn you, damn you!” Her tears obscured her vision as she tried to dress herself. That, with her haste and impatience, caused dressing to take twice as long, as usual with her clumsy fingers. By the time she was presentable, her chest heaved with panicked sobs, and she ran blindly through the empty courtyard. If she went to a stable and found a horse, it would only take more time, and she could not diverge from her path. She ran down the broken road, heedless of the danger. She stumbled once and caught herself; the glassy edges of the stones scored her palms. It did not slow her.
Beyond the gates, when she was winded and her heart thundered in her chest, she halted. A young squire exited one of the tents. Thousands of them stretched across the valley, but he was the only soul she had seen so far. “When did they ride out?”
“Hours ago, my lady.” The lad shrank from her in terror, and she released him, shame burning in her cheeks.
She pressed on, sometimes at a run, sometimes wearily staggering. Finally, recognizing her folly, she sat down beside the long camp road and waited. After the heat of her exhausted body faded, the cold crept into her skin, then her bones, and she rose to trudge back toward Hazelhurn. The outcome of the battle would be clear eventually, but she could not run to it and force it to move in her favor.
She had taken only a few steps when the first rumble of horse hooves shook the ground. She turned slowly, knowing she would see either the banners of friendly houses or the knights of the king’s army. She was not ready to find out which. When she lifted her eyes, her strength left her. The gleaming white armor of the king’s guard seemed colder than the snow all around them. She dared not take a step, or she would fall.
One knight drew up before her, his somber expression driving arrows of grief through her heart. “Are you the lady Johanna?”
She nodded mutely. He would not show her mercy, so she did not bother to ask. The fate of a traitor did not affect himself alone.
The knight got down from his horse and she took a step back, a cry more shrill than the blue jay’s ringing from her throat. Be brave, she thought of her old nurse admonishing her whenever she’d had to change Johanna’s bandages or salve her burns. Be brave, and it will be over in but a wink.
The other knights began to climb from their saddles as well. She had never seen an execution before. Father had never let them attend when justice had to be meted out for the Northern provinces. She wondered how many men it took to lop off a head.
Then, they all dropped to one knee, heads bent low. “Your Majesty,” the first knight said.
“I…” was all she managed, before more men arrived. Soon, they clogged the roadway, all of them hale, with no sign of battle upon a one. “What happened today?”
“The king…King Albart, died, Your Majesty. Four days ago. We received the message but an hour before dawn. There was no battle.”
“Because…Philipe is…king now.” She swallowed, a dizzy wave sweeping over her. This was an outcome she certainly had not given much thought to. In a detached sort of way, she’d always known that Philipe would one day be king, and that by marrying him she would one day be queen. But it had seemed impossible that it should ever happen.
The knight still had not looked up at her. A pity, for he could have helped her when she inevitably fainted. “King Albart never named a new heir, after denouncing Philipe as a traitor. By law, he must inherit. There was no fighting to be done.”
“Make way for the king!” a far-off voice called, and Johanna felt as though her first act as queen might be, regrettably, to vomit in front of a few of her husband’s knights.
The crowd clustered on the road parted, and Philipe and Wilhelm, both looking immensely relieved, rode up. Philipe swung down from the saddle and made his way to her, but she’d already closed most of the gap. She dropped to her knees before him. “Your Majesty.”
He gripped her wrist and pulled her up gently, enfolding her in his arms. Only then did she feel his trembling. She pressed her lips to his neck, the barrier of her veil between them. “I am sorry about your father.”
His arms tightened around her, and she knew he did not speak for fear of displaying too much emotion before his men.
“You didn’t let me say goodbye,” she whispered, and he drew his head up from atop hers, to look down at her with red-rimmed eyes.
“I didn’t want to say goodbye. Not yet.”
“Your Majesty,” Wilhelm said beside them. He held the reins to Philipe’s horse, and handed them over when Philipe released one arm from around her to take them.
On the ride back up to the castle, Johanna looped her arms around Philipe’s waist and leaned her head against his shoulder. He explained the details of the morning, how the parlay had turned to the planning of a royal funeral, and the need for him to return to the palace as quickly as possible.
“You’ll come with me?” he asked her, his voice tight.
She had an overwhelming urge to knock him off the horse, but doubted that was correct etiquette for a queen. “Why wouldn’t I? I’m your wife.”
“I worried…” he grimaced as he looked into the trees. “I worried maybe you married me…because you pitied me. Because you thought I would die.”
“You…” She might push him from the horse, etiquette be damned. “You thought I married you out of pity? Me, with the scars and the home in a burned-out tower?”
“Don’t be angry! You don’t know what it’s like, being a prince. It’s difficult, always wondering what people’s motivations are.” He faced ahead, his back rigid as the shaft of an arrow.
“It will be more difficult, being a king,” she reminded him, blowing at his ear.
He ducked his head. “Stop it, now. I want to be cross with you.”
“And I want you to be cross with me. It means you’re not dead.” She closed her eyes and sighed happily. “I feel, Philipe, that surviving this is not the tragedy you believe it is.”
Though he laughed, he was still shaken. Not by the battle that hadn’t taken place, she was certain, but by the enormity of his new responsibility. Perhaps he’d never seriously considered his future, either.
“You will be a fine king,” she told him, tightening her arms around him.
He reached for one of her hands, and stroked the backs of her fingers with his thumb. “And a fine husband. I never want to hurt you, Johanna. That was why I didn’t wake you this morning. I never want to be the reason for your tears.”
She pulled her hand back to swipe furtively at her eyes. “And tears of happiness?”
“Oh, well, of course, those are fine,” he said, looking over his shoulder to smile at her. It gave her the urge to knock him from the horse for an entirely different reason. “I think,” he continued, “we can expect many, many of those.”
Johanna looked over her shoulder, at her brother, whose long-suffering face broke into a reluctant smile. Her arms around her husband, she looked up to the ruined towers of Hazelhurn, and for a fleeting instant saw them as they had been on that day he’d first told her he loved her, fifteen years before.
Epilogue
The winter snow drifted outside the palace windows, in no particular hurry to reach the ground. The night sky, like a wash of ink, seemed neither dark nor threatening from the gentle glow of the sitting room. Philipe stroked the line of silk-covered buttons down the back of his wife’s dress. The wine-colored gown reminded him that his glass was empty, and he lifted it expectantly.
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