She was not close enough. With a shout that conveyed his desperation, Nicholas pulled her down on top of him, reveling in the press of her firm mounds into his chest and the bright locks that flowed about them. Their passion exploded in a flurry of heat and wonder. He kissed her like one gone mad, knowing that he was mad, but uncaring. His tongue thrust frantically into her mouth, while his hands roamed over her shoulders, her back, the soft curve of her buttocks.
It was not enough. Muttering his need, he rolled her beneath him and pushed his swollen member against her, damning the braies that lay between them. He slid a hand down along the curve of her waist to her hip and along one slender thigh, then upward to where her legs joined. Anticipation seized him, and his fingers trembled as they trailed through the curls that covered her. He breathed deeper and delved lower, cupping her in his hand, and when she surged up against him, he shuddered.
The next thing he knew, he was on his back again, and Gillian was lying atop him, tugging at his hose. He let her remove them, along with his boots and braies, because he had long waited for her to attend him. And she suffered not under the task, but fumbled in her eagerness, sending a rush of blood to his groin. Her lovely face was flushed, and her lips parted to take in low, shallow breaths as her palms shd up his legs, reaching for him.
Nicholas thought he would explode in her hand when it closed around him. He clenched his teeth while her fingers explored his nether reaches until he bucked, unable to stand any more. Sweating and panting, he rolled again, but this time only onto his side. Then he and his bride faced one another, neither one beneath the other, neither one surrendering.
With swift impatience, he drew one of her knees high up over his thigh, glorying in its texture as it slid against his skin. Then he guided his tarse to her ready opening. Smooth, hot and wet, she closed around the tip, and he trembled at the ecstasy that flooded through him. He wanted… he needed to be deep inside her. Grasping her buttocks in one hand, he pulled her to him, even as he thrust past her barrier to bury himself to the root.
Gillian screamed and tried to pull away, but he held her fast, struggling to remain still as she pummeled his chest with her fists. “Would you rend me asunder?” she cried. Seeing the tears that pooled in her shining eyes, he drew her head down against his chest, whispering into the thick mass of fiery hair that flowed over his knuckles.
“Hush, we are not done yet.”
“Damn you, I am done! You h-hurt me!” The broken admission smote Nicholas to the core. How often had he planned to give her pain? Yet now that he had accomplished that goal, Nicholas felt no triumph, only shared agony, as if he took her suffering into himself.
“Shh…” he whispered, before capturing her mouth to rekindle the passion that had raged so wildly and well between them. Wary at first, she remained stiff and unyielding, but then her tongue met his and her arms wrapped around him in a fierce grip that tested his patience.
His hand roved down her back and over her smooth thigh, then moved between them. She liked that, for he felt the gentle sway of her hips, reaching for him. He made a low sound of delight, and she echoed it, twining her fingers into his hair. Slowly Nicholas eased himself out and in fully again, and when she did not balk, he doubled the pace. But still he stroked her, for suddenly it was imperative that her pleasure equal his own.
She deserved no less.
The heat between them grew, driving Nicholas like a demon to thrust deeper, and he cursed the awkward position. His body screamed to move atop her, but he denied himself. And, as if to keep him there, she wound her leg around him, her calf tight against his buttocks.
He kissed her all the more fiercely, and the mouth that had so often spoken to him in anger whispered his name against his lips. It would never sound the same again to his ears. “What do you to me?” she asked, but he could not answer. He was beyond words, beyond thought, beyond anything but the rhythm of their mating.
Then, suddenly, she stiffened, clutching his hair in a fist. “Nick!” she cried, in a husky voice that inflamed his senses. Gasping, she tightened around him, milking his seed with her pleasure. And as he poured himself into her, Nicholas felt as if she, in turn, were filling up all the empty places in his soul. Or had she done that already?
Trembling in the aftermath of something that made a mockery of all his trysts with lemans and slave girls and noblewomen, Nicholas pressed his face against his wife’s hair and, exhausted, slept.
Nicholas awoke in a tangle of arms and legs and luxurious red locks. For a long moment, he drifted, caught up in dreams of a passion beyond imagining, and he rubbed a long silken strand between his fingers. Was he enjoying the hospitality of some emir’s harem? He sniffed the air, but detected no incense, only a fresh, alluring fragrance that was oddly familiar. Gillian’s—along with the lingering scent of their mating!
The memory made him sit up abruptly, and he surged from the bed angrily. His wife lay sprawled upon his sheets, her virgin’s blood staining them red, her mouth curved into a soft smile of contentment. Like some mythical goddess of old, she had enslaved him with his own greedy lusts, and Nicholas hated himself for it.
Without bothering to don his clothes, he flung open the door and called loudly for a bath. He wanted her scent and her blood off him. After using the chamber pot, he moved to the window and stared out, brooding over the night’s misdeed.
Had he really taken her on his side, so that she would feel his equal? Faith, the wine had dulled his wits! Only a fool catered to a woman’s whims, and this one was his enemy! Her voice, low and seductive, broke into his thoughts, as if his agitation had awakened her.
“You are beautiful, Nicholas de Laci, and yet you seem not to know it,” she whispered. He stiffened, having expected anything but that husky compliment.’ He did not turn, not wanting her to see the swift response of his body. Her power over him.
“I give it no thought,” he replied testily. “My mind is occupied with vengeance. That is what concerns me!” Gaining some measure of control over himself once more, he stalked to the bed and stood over her.
She was lying completely naked, the most shameless of nuns, the most tempting of wives. He forced his gaze away from the body that called to him, only to have it caught in her flaming hair, tousled from sleep, and her creamy shoulders, flawless but for a scattering of freckles. Suddenly those small flecks seemed incredibly erotic, and as he stared at them, Nicholas felt himself surge to life once more.
Damn her! She had no hold over him. He shuddered with the force of his need, and the denial that raged against it. Abruptly it all melded together. By his faith, he would show her his mastery! Without a word, Nicholas gripped her ankles and pulled her to him. Ignoring her gasp of surprise, he spread her thighs and thrust himself deep within her.
It was like entering heaven. Leaning back his head, he closed his eyes as he let white-hot pleasure wash over him. Never before had he known such bliss. His fingers dug into her hips as he withdrew, only to sheathe himself fully once more.
“Nicholas.” Her breathy whisper drew his attention, and he looked down at her. Her wary gaze brought him triumph, and he drew back and drove deeper, harder, as if he could hammer away whatever bound him to her. She flinched once, but then lifted up to greet him with a soft moan. An answering sound rose from somewhere deep inside him, and he was undone yet again.
“Nick.” Her throaty, urgent call, reserved only for him, made him frantic, and he moved faster, reaching for what he experienced only with her. “Touch me…like you did last night.”
Why should he? He cared only for his own pleasure, and yet, as if of their own accord, his hands slid around her thighs, his thumbs meeting and pressing there, where he knew she wanted them most. She cried out, arching off the bed in sudden climax, and he bucked against her frantically.
Through the heat of passion, Nicholas heard the opening of the door behind him, followed by a loud gasp, but he neither stopped nor slowed his pace. He pumped into her, and as soon as th
e door closed again, he threw his head back, a primal noise leaving his throat as his seed planted itself in her body. She was his. Now and always.
His long, pulsing climax was followed by small tremors that continued for so long that Nicholas fought the urge to collapse upon her. Although he could barely stand, he lingered at the edge of the bed, her legs still wrapped around him. When he finally withdrew from her body, he was trembling, his knees weak, and he turned away abruptly, unwilling to let her see how shaken he was by what they had done.
This was not mere sex. He had been to the East, and had tasted exotic arts never to be had in Britain, but this… This was beyond his experience.
Gillian watched him bathe, and the tingling returned to her body, heating her skin and driving her heartbeat until she wanted to go to him and slide her hands along his gleaming muscles. But that would not be enough. Not now that she knew what could follow. In truth, Gillian did not think she could touch her husband without feeding her growing appetite for him.
Never in all her life, especially her cloistered years at the nunnery, had she imagined such desire. What had happened between them was nothing at all like Master Freemantle’s crude groping, but then, the burgher was not young and strong and beautiful…
He was not Nicholas.
Gillian was not so foolish as to believe that anyone but her husband could transform her into such a wanton creature. Although she craved him more fiercely than any whore, their union was perfectly legal, approved by the Church itself.
She nearly laughed aloud at the irony. Of all the odd turns her life had taken, this was truly the strangest. To be married, against her will, to a man who despised the very blood that flowed through her veins, only to find pleasures beyond imagining in his bed.
And that was not all. The heaviness in her chest was gone, lifted by the naked desire she had seen burning in his eyes. When Nicholas could no longer deny it, the ache that had plagued her had fled. Now her heart was filled with something else entirely.
But that was not necessarily an improvement. Although she knew nothing of such things, Gillian sensed that more than simple lust had fueled her passion. Along with the pleasure to be had in their merging bodies, Gillian had experienced a deeper, even more powerful bonding.
She had the sinking feeling that she had fallen in love with her beautiful, terrible husband.
Gillian let out a heavy breath that was more than a sigh. What a fool she had been to think she could live with such a man without being affected by him, to believe that his fiendish behavior would act as a barrier to her emotions. Her feelings had lain dormant for so long that she had thought them dead, believed herself safe from Cupid’s arrows, when in truth she had been starved for human contact, a target of the simplest sort.
Oh, she had lived with others before, most recently a house full of nuns, but none of them had touched her heart. Only he could have managed such a feat, with his ravings and his demands and his boorish behavior… and sudden gentleness so unexpected that it transfixed her, a brief glimpse into the pain he endured daily and the ecstatic expression on his face when he entered her body.
All these things, the good and the ill, had woven themselves around her senses until she was lost. Her mind called it folly, but her body and her soul were enraptured.
Unfortunately, her husband obviously was not similarly affected, she thought as he shot her a look from his water that bespoke his contempt. Gillian forced herself to meet his glare evenly, but when he glanced away, she shivered. Hatred still burned in him, along with passion, and Gillian knew it would never die. To expect anything else from him was hopeless.
Damn, but she had wanted no part of this! She had only wanted to endure him, not to embrace him. Too late, her inner voice screamed. You cannot go back. Slowly Gillian lifted her chin. Well, maybe not. Perhaps she was already immersed too deeply to ever extricate herself, but she could still save herself from drowning.
She did not have to let him know.
If Nicholas de Laci ever divined her true feelings, Gillian knew, she would be lost, a puppet to his whims, and he would, at last, possess the means to defeat her.
Chapter Twelve
Gillian watched as her husband dressed swiftly and silently and stalked to the door. He halted there for a moment, turning to fix her with eyes no longer smoky with desire, but harsh and sharp. “Get yourself up and washed, wife, for you have duties to perform. I have not forgotten them, nor have I been sufficiently distracted to forgo them!”
Then he thrust wide the portal, only to stumble on the threshold. Pulling the blanket over her head, Gillian heard her husband’s black oath, followed by his shout. “Edith! Why do you waylay me? Get yourself gone!”
“I beg your pardon, my lord!” the servant replied, without a trace of real contrition. “My, but you do look well this morning. Very well indeed.” Gillian smiled in spite of herself, for she could imagine Nicholas’s reaction to Edith’s comment.
“What the devil do you want?”
“I would assist your lady with her bath,” Edith answered mildly. Nicholas snorted, as if the thoughtfulness pained him.
“Very well, but heed me well, wife,” he called toward the bed. “Once properly dressed, I will expect you to attend me!” The fierceness of his words was lost, upended by the bustling sounds of Edith as she rushed in, cackling like a happy hen.
“Well, my lady. ‘Twas not so bad now, was it?” she asked.
Although she blushed scarlet, Gillian peeked out from the covers and laughed, the memory of the soul-stirring pleasure her husband had given her still clinging to her body.
Edith laughed, too, and clapped her hands with delight. “Now, then, you must get yourself into the tub before the water turns cold, and I shall put fresh linens on your bed. If I did not think Lord Nicholas might object, I would hang the sheets out for all to see.”
As Gillian rose and crossed to the tub, she shook her head at the folly of such a notion. Nicholas had been reluctant to admit his desire even to her; she knew he would not approve of announcing it publicly. With a sigh at her husband’s perversity, she slipped into the water he had only recently vacated. The knowledge of that tenancy made her draw in a quick breath, for the memory of him lingered, warm and compelling. Sinking down into the remnants of his heat, Gillian leaned back, content to listen to Edith babble.
“I knew you would have a fine time of it, my lady, for you are a beautiful young woman with strong passions. Now you must bind him to you every night—or day,” Edith added with a chuckle. “And more than just his body will come round to you. You shall see!”
Smiling at the idea of Nicholas “coming round” to anything, Gillian leisurely washed herself with the scented soap Edith provided. As her hands moved over her skin, she dreamily wished that he was bathing her, and the image of her hard husband leaning over her captured her imagination. Surely his feelings for her did not matter, as long as they could reach such heights together…
“It does my heart good to see the two of you reconciled at last. And it will not be long now before we see a new de Laci at Belvry!” It took a moment for Edith’s words to sink into Gillian’s thoughts, but when they did, she nearly dropped the soap. A baby! Gillian placed a palm against her stomach and realized that the prediction might well be true.
Joy swept through her, even more potent than the emotions that her husband induced. A child. A family of her own, finally, just as she had dreamed! It seemed too good to be true, and Gillian glanced over at Edith’s back, wondering about her chances. “How many…times do you think would… assure a baby?”
“Sometimes it takes only once, my lady, but to be sure, you must bed often and well!” Edith replied.
Blushing brightly, Gillian smiled. She had no difficulty with that plan, for she was eager once more for Nicholas’s touch, for the openmouthed kisses that seared her soul, and for his body, hard and strong and beautiful.
Now, if only she could get her recalcitrant husband to agree…
Gillian sat in the great hall kicking her heels all morning, her duties coming to naught because the man she was to wait upon was not there. Bored and angry, she tried not to fume, even though, as the morning wore on, she began to feel as if she were some prize brood mare on display.
The tale of exactly what Osborn had interrupted this morning in the great chamber had spread, as news will, and Gillian received more than her share of happy smiles, sly winks and speculations upon a future heir. She told herself that the people of Belvry meant well, but she would rather be working in the garden, away from prying eyes, than waiting on a bench like some young page.
It was maddening, but every time she felt her temper stretch to the breaking point, Gillian recalled the look in her husband’s eyes as he had taken her maidenhead. Then, when the fiend could have reveled in his triumph, she had seen no gloating. Instead, Nicholas had bared his tortured and needy soul in that moment, and let her see the bliss that he knew in their joining.
Gillian held the image close until at last he arrived, just in time for the midday meal. She rose when she saw him, though she wondered whether a proper slave ought not to prostrate herself. Gillian’s lips quirked at the thought, for she had no intention of doing that. Let Nicholas content himself with her presence!
In truth, he did seem satisfied, turning toward her immediately and striding across the hall on long, strong legs that made Gillian’s heart beat apace. She remembered the way those thick thighs had felt beneath her fingertips, and the curly, dark hair that covered so much of his body. She remembered him naked and aroused, and she sucked in a deep breath.
Nicholas seemed to be no less affected than she. He kept his head bent, his eyes hooded, but she could see his hands clenching at his sides when he stopped before her. Silence reigned for a moment before he spoke. “I would wash my hands, wife!” he snapped.
Gillian’s chin came up. It was the duty of the servants to present bowls of water to the diners, but, gritting her teeth, she fetched one for her husband and stood while he took his time with the ritual cleansing. Her anger returned, only to fade away again, slowly but surely, as she watched those long, capable fingers, recalling how they had felt against her skin and just where they had touched her. She choked back a strangled sigh, and he lifted his head. Their gazes met, held and ignited, until Gillian felt as if she were engulfed in flames.
Maiden Bride Page 15