by Nicole Locke
‘What is it?’ she said. ‘Do you hear someone?’
He wished there was someone to have stopped him before... But he’d wanted to for so long. Eldric looked at his massive hands. One hand spanned her entire waist. He picked up her tunic, showed her the tear, readying for her to realise.
‘Eldric?’
‘This...this is what I’m like. In battle, it’s... But here with you, I haven’t been careful. You’ve told me the secrets of your life and I haven’t been gentle. I haven’t been—’
She swung up and slapped her hand against his mouth. The sound echoed in the room.
Very slowly she eased her hand away. He didn’t like the uneasiness in her eyes.
‘I need to explain,’ he said.
‘You’ve seen my back.’
He didn’t want to think about those scars and the pain she’d endured.
‘Cressida, if you only knew what was in my heart, the ache I have for you because you suffered any pain. I could hurt you. Like him. I could hurt you and—’
‘I have other scars,’ she said.
He waited. Something more important was happening here. ‘More harm he did to you?’ he said. This wasn’t about him. If she needed him in some way, he’d be there. ‘What are you trying to tell me?’
Her eyes widened. ‘No, not...he never...or allowed others. These...injuries I caused myself.’
Only a bit of the wrath in his heart eased. Her father was to blame and he would get his due. For now, the woman before him captivated as she, still clutching her arm across her body, pointed to her opposite arm.
‘This is when my arrow slipped. Over here, I was carving a bow and it splintered, puncturing a hole. I couldn’t do anything for weeks.’
She bowed her head, a white-blonde curl slipping over her shoulder. ‘You should know I’ve got callouses on my fingers and along my legs. I think I fell from more trees than—’
She was beautiful and the more she described herself, the more he wanted her. The more he knew he didn’t deserve her. ‘Cressida, we can—’
‘Look at me, Eldric. I’m sturdy. My back doesn’t hurt. You won’t hurt me.’
‘Sturdy.’
‘I’m not some maiden who wears a yellow gown and—’
The description was too specific. It was a memory of his, one he hadn’t shared. One she knew right down to the dress.
He pulled up, clenched his fists. ‘You watched me, Cressida. You did see me with women. Then you know my brutish ways. My inability to—’
‘No! I couldn’t. I saw beforehand and I’d know... I always turned away. I could watch others. But never you.’
‘Others? My God, the pictures you put in my mind.’ He shook his head. ‘Why, Cressida?’
‘Because you’re...you. I’m the one who watched you. I couldn’t bear that, though. It hurt me to see you change in front of them. I don’t want you to change for me. You’re not brutish. Not to me, not ever. If we need to talk about causing injury, I’ve hurt you more than once. What makes you think you could truly harm me?’
* * *
He canted his head, the brown locks tumbled along his shoulder. ‘You’re proud of your body. You should be.’
She nodded. He did understand. Of course he did. She didn’t want him to hold back. She was a warrior, too. She loved his size and strength. Wanted it.
Although that brought her to who she was. Her scars, the strength, the training, the fact she didn’t own a dress.
‘Not since I was training has it failed me,’ she said. ‘I am strong and can lift far more than my weight. I can climb trees and am small enough to reach branches others can’t, but I can’t wear dresses, not without feeling clumsy. I can’t be—’
‘You think because you’re sturdy I wouldn’t want you. Or because you are built like this, strong for a man like me, I wouldn’t want you.’
He was right, but it wasn’t all she meant. ‘You make it sound contradictory.’
‘Isn’t it? Are we not just contradictions?’
‘Can it...can we be both?’
‘It could, but it’s not. If you truly want me despite my size, then what makes you think I wouldn’t want you despite your scars? Or maybe I want you because of them. Because they show your bravery. Your endurance.’
‘Most men wouldn’t like the fact I climb trees.’
A quirk to his lips, a dubious question to his eyes. ‘You are a formidable foe, but I’m not kissing your lips, I’m not aching to taste your breasts, begging to part your thighs, only because you climb trees.’
She shouldn’t be shocked. She shouldn’t. She’d seen men piss, defecate, throw snot out of their nose. She’d seen them shove their hands down their pants to fondle themselves in all sorts of matters. She had even seen sex.
But Eldric’s words sent a hot spike right through her centre.
He knew it, too. His smile and the heat in his eyes increased, making the shot of need acute through her. ‘It’s because you’re you.’
‘Me?’ She looked down.
‘You.’ The colour of her hair, the softness of her skin. The way she looked at him with that mixture of vulnerability and strength. Eldric tried to keep his control, lost it. ‘I must kiss you again.’
So he did. He did. Ever careful she was under him, but losing that carefulness all the same. Noting the changes in her with each kiss he deepened.
Down the column of her neck, down between her breasts he had yet to touch, taste. So he did. Kisses, darting of his tongue.
She gasped. ‘Eldric.’
He lifted his head. ‘How did we get here? How? I want more of you.’ He licked across her nipple, bright red and swollen.
She arched under him. So he did it on the other one and she clawed his shoulders.
‘But for that time in Swaffham, I’ve never worn a dress. I know the best of wood for arrows, at what sharpness each arrowhead could be—’
‘Cressida, my mouth has been along the curve of your shoulder, my tongue tracing the plumpness of your breasts.’ She was beautiful like this. Flushed, her hair cascading outwards. Her lips swollen from their kisses.
He trailed his fingertips along her collarbone, down between her breasts, around her navel and back up. Revelled in the feel of her hands doing the same, her palm increasing with heat and every swipe along his stomach sending lust hard and fast through him. And still she talked!
‘Are you doubting this?’
‘I can’t believe. I can’t.’ Her words like a pant broke him. Eldric grabbed her hand and pressed it between his legs.
Cressida was shocked out of her next words. Eldric had been so gentle with her. Every question asking her if she wanted him, every reassurance she gave him in return only emboldening her. His touch sending so much pleasure, bringing more want, but this...
‘If you tell me any more of your accomplishments,’ Eldric growled, ‘how you carve your arrows, or climb your trees, I swear I’ll spill in my braies. If you move one finger now, that’s how close I am. All the scars on your body don’t, could never—’
She curled all her fingers and he threw his head back. He kept her hand pressed hard against him and she felt the sear of one pulsing throb. She’d never felt anything more wonderous in all her days.
‘Did you?’ she whispered.
He sunk his chin to his chest, his eyes promising retribution. ‘Think me finished yet?’
He felt harder than before. ‘There’s more?’
‘Cressida, your curiosity, your beauty may be the death of me yet. Mine all the worse. For I want to ask and not ask. How much do you know? How much did you watch?’
Never him, but with the look in his eyes... ‘I think... I think I should have watched more.’
‘There are those images in my head again.’ He gripped her wrists, clamped them together and brought them
over her head. It stretched her body out as he eased her back to the makeshift bedding. His gaze swept to her bared breasts.
‘You’re beautiful. Perfect. I know some of this feels sudden. Some of it feels inevitable. And you want a man like me?’
‘Yes, always.’
‘Words we exchange while I ache, while I want to taste the tips of your breasts again, feel and see your response to my touch.’
‘I don’t know where they’re coming from. I’ve never done anything of this before. It’s not as if I trained—’
Growling, he lifted her bound wrists, pressed them back down again. ‘I tied your hands like this. Did you know what that did to me?’
No, she didn’t.
‘Captured, made my prisoner, yet I couldn’t stray from you. You compelled me. I was a prisoner of yours, did you not realise that?’
‘You left the room.’
‘And returned. Left and returned again. Always you felt familiar. This dance we’ve been playing, I’ve been aware of it since last winter. Wanting you for months and you want to train—it’d kill me!’
He sunk his head into her neck. ‘How could I not know who you were?’
She felt his hot breath, the tenderness of his kisses. She arched her back to brush her breasts against the coarse hairs on his chest.
He hissed, pulled up. ‘But you knew. You knew all this time who I was,’ he said. ‘You...you placed an arrow on my bed that night in Swaffham. Why?’
She curled her fingers around his own. He eased his grip until she could link her hands in his.
His kisses, his touch, his words. It was if all the turbulence between tumbled out at once. All of it true, all of it confusing—none of it would make sense until she told him the truth.
‘It was my very best arrow, Eldric.’
The most perfect arrow she had ever created. She had made it years before and could never part with it. She did that night. She might not have been able to complete the dance...to...complete the promise he made with those dark blue eyes of his. But she had wanted him to remember her. Thought he wouldn’t.
They held only fingertips, danced with others, she left when the music put her close enough to a darkened hallway. She turned one more time and disappeared—only to realise she couldn’t exit down that hall. So instead, she’d raced to his room, the abundance of bedding pushed to the floor leaving the starkness of his pillows almost like a target, and it was with those errant thoughts that she’d placed that particular arrow on the pale linen.
His eyes widening, taking in everything all at once. Down to her hands, up to the arch of her brow as if he was looking for answers.
‘It was not a threat?’ he whispered.
‘My best one, one I had spent more time carving than I did with any others, that I carried for more time than that,’ she said. ‘It was meant as a token. I wanted you to remember me. Remember that dance. To think of me as—’
Brows drawn in, he kissed her tenderly. Shared his breath. Hers. Kissed her again. ‘I didn’t know it was you who did that.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘But I knew and it was a memory for me, too. Something I stole for me, out of everything in my life. You were for me.’
‘Cressida.’
Eldric released her hands. His touch could no longer be gentle. He needed to feel her everywhere, touch her in all ways at once. He wanted to kiss and taste and consume. The arrow on his bed. She did that for him. He didn’t understand, his mind couldn’t comprehend, but everything else in him felt it. Felt her.
He hoisted himself up, just enough to shove down his breeches, his braies. ‘Tomorrow. We talk.’
She clenched her nails into his shoulders as he rolled the rest of her clothes off to throw them to the side. Until she was utterly, stunningly naked beneath him. Her skin could not be real. A bruise, another scar. Her pale breasts perfectly round to fit in his palm, the tips begging to be pinched. And then, the swoop of her waist before the flare of her hips, and then...between, where the palest of hair, like starlight, hid the treasure he knew was underneath.
‘Eldric,’ she said.
‘Quiet, Archer, while I take in your beauty. While I try to remember why I need to go slow. That you’ve never lain with a man, that I out of all the men in all the lands you travelled am the one you chose. And I need...need my control.’
‘Yes, but you’re so messy.’
He clenched his eyes tight, looked to the right. ‘Cressida, the images you give me. You’ll undo me!’
‘Tell me.’
He blew out a held breath. ‘Not if you want this over before it’s begun. I’m trying not to be messy. But my hands, my very body...you’re shattering any control when I already warned you!’
‘I meant... It’s our clothes. They are...’ her breath hitched as her eyes swept over his body in curiosity, in need ‘...everywhere. If someone attacked, we couldn’t...’
Eldric swiped his large calloused hands down her legs. ‘Cressida, your choice of words don’t compare to how you appear to me. You’re perfect. Exquisite. I can’t think of anything. But before you say one more word of attacks or escaping, you should know I have no intention of you finding your clothes again.’
Startled wide pale blue crystal eyes darkened in the light of the room, in light of her desire. Utterly vulnerable, exposed to each other and still she gave him a look that drew him towards her. No fear. No hesitation. Another slip in his control.
He adored and exulted in her hands gliding along his shoulders, around his sides and down his back. Hands that mimicked his own movements. Ones he wanted her to repeat.
‘No more talking, especially about interruptions.’
* * *
Her Eldric. His hands, his kisses, his touch, gliding, caressing as if what he did couldn’t be enough.
Days ago, this didn’t exist. They didn’t exist. She wasn’t sure they did now; it didn’t seem possible. Eldric knew about her, her family, her darkest secrets they had shared, and now she wanted only to stop watching, to stop hiding in dark corners, to feel.
To be with this man, who granted her everything. A press of his lips against her collarbone, a nip of his teeth and swipe of his tongue above her right breast. A soft sound was ripped past her lips, a sound that echoed how much more she wanted.
Eldric jerked, stopped his kisses, his caresses, his harsh exhale sweeping across her entire body, just like the shudder that rippled across his.
He yanked himself up, denying any of his touch, and the chill of the room washed across her overheated skin, against the dampness between her thighs.
Eldric’s gaze drew down and his growl turned feral. With one hand, he reverently parted her folds.
‘Oh,’ she gasped.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You like this. Do you know how many times I dreamed of you like this? How I wished we had this moment before? We only touched fingertips, Cressida. But that brief touch. The feel of your skin. I knew, I wanted you to be like this.’
A widening of his fingers. Cressida looked down her body, up to his, the feeling tightening inside her. She wanted more.
His gaze locked with hers as he slowly circled around and again. His touch tender, gentle despite the look in his eyes as he lowered his head, kissed along her collarbone, down the middle of her chest. His body lowering, she felt the hair of his legs against hers, the heavy weight of his hip against her upper thigh.
And that one hand, tenderly sliding fingers through swelling heat. His mouth now hovering above her breasts. Strumming his tongue across her nipples until she couldn’t be still any more.
In great greedy handfuls, she rubbed her calloused palms across his form. Threaded her fingers through the sparse hair of his chest. Felt the fall of his brown locks against her shoulders, the side of her neck.
Her hips, her hips now arching to his touch. Begging. Needing more
.
She laced her fingers through the length of his hair and pushed it back, all the more to see and not just feel what he was doing to her. A quick glance up, his mouth curving into a smile, his eyes gazing with a wickedness she had only dreamed of, but could never quite perfect. Not like now, the blue almost all gone, leaving only dark intent.
Another slip and he lowered that much more. A welcome heavy weight that anchored her as the circles at her core became tighter, the thrumming at her nipples became less soothing.
She no longer could caress him, instead her hands clenched into his shoulders. He only growled his approval.
‘Eldric,’ she warned.
He switched to her other breast. ‘Cressida, let go. Let go. It’ll be easier when I—’
‘Oh!’ she gasped. His touch firm, more intent than the dark in his eyes. So much more, until she shattered.
The pounding of her heart easing, her breath slowing until she only heard Eldric’s thrumming heart, his harsh breaths against the side of her head.
He held himself aloft. The look in his eyes one of deep ache and his kiss utterly tender.
‘What was that?’ she whispered.
‘There’s more.’
She put her hand on his face. ‘There couldn’t be.’
He groaned. ‘Please tell me you jest.’
‘A bit.’ She kissed him under his jaw and he shivered, swept her hands along the damp expanse of his arms and he groaned.
‘Cressida.’ Her name like a request. The tightening of his fist in her hair, the rolling of his hips, the plea.
There never was a question for her. When it came to him, she just wanted.
She pressed closer. Felt the hard, slick strength of his desire against her thighs. ‘Please, Eldric. I’m sturdy.’
‘That word!’ On a half-chuckle, half-groan, he cupped her beneath him, his eyes fierce with some emotion she couldn’t name.
She could only name her own. And as he waited, poised above her while she shook, while she needed, she told him. Each word of want between each kiss she peppered along every plane of skin she could reach. More words of trust in every swipe of her hands and fingertips.