“I…uh…”
The confused stammer spurred him to bend and replace his hand with his mouth.
“Let me kiss you as you should be kissed,” he murmured, moving his lips lightly over hers. “Let me touch you.”
She stood so stiff and unmoving, he was sure she would draw back. Then her mouth parted hesitantly, tentatively, and Simon deepened the kiss.
He slid a callused palm under her linen headband to cup her nape. His thumb traced the line of her jaw. Her bones felt so fragile to his touch. Her skin so soft and delicate. Although he knew from watching her ahorse and afoot that she was strong of both body and will, he ached to show her the tenderness she deserved.
Holding her mouth with his, he tugged the headband free and loosed her hair. The feel of it spilling warm and silky over his arm sparked a fire in his veins. The fire grew hotter with each caress, so hot he near savaged her mouth with his before he recalled his purpose. He would show her what could occur between man and woman, he vowed grimly. Bring her to a writhing, sobbing release even if he strangled on his own lust in the process!
He thrust a hand through her hair to anchor her head and used his tongue to invade the inner recesses of her mouth. When she gasped and would have pulled away, he hooked an arm around her waist and drew her tight. Her breasts flattened against his chest. Her hips pressed his loins.
She grasped his forearms, her fingers digging into muscle and sinew. He felt her body tense and cursed himself again for using his strength to curb her when his very intent was to give her pleasure.
He eased his hold at the same moment her tongue met his. Tentatively at first, then with slowly gathering ardor. The taste of her shot like a crossbolt straight through him. All thought of releasing her fled. Widening his stance, he let her explore at will.
The fingers gripping his forearms loosed their fierce hold. Her hands slid up and over his shoulders to lock behind his neck. She was on her toes now, her body taut and quivering against his. The need to have her rose in him, as powerful and insistent as the tide surging below the cliffs. His heart pounded fast and heavy when at last he dragged up his head. The woman in his arms stared at him with flushed cheeks and star-bright eyes.
“By all the saints, lady.” His voice gruff, he stroked her lower lip with his thumb. “Your beauty steals my breath away. How many troubadours have sung songs to this face, this mouth?”
Her flush deepened. “Some few,” she admitted on a husky note.
“There will be more,” he predicted.
Unless she was shut away from all men’s eyes, wife to an Eastern potentate.
Would this emir take her now that she was no longer virgin? Jocelyn seemed confident he would not. Simon wasn’t as certain. With her lands and such a massive stronghold as dowry, she would be a rich prize for any man whether she came to him intact or not. The possibility she might yet be condemned to a life of enforced idleness and isolation ate at Simon worse than the lead-tipped whips that had scored his back.
This woman was too strong for such a life. Too proud. Too filled with the kind of fire that kindled a man’s own. He was most certainly afire as he glanced about the cave.
Centuries of tides washing in and out had worn the floor as smooth as marble. The last had deposited a pile of brownish kelp. Dried now by the sun, it proved soft and springy to the touch when Simon went down on one knee.
Loosening his borrowed sword belt, he let it drop. It clattered down as he drew his tunic over his head and spread the coarse fabric atop the kelp. Then he swiveled on his bent knee to hold out a hand.
“Come, lady. You said you wished to know some small taste of the pleasure a man may give a woman. Let me give it.”
Jocelyn’s whirling head shouted at her to draw back. To put an end to this madness now, while she still could. She’d taken what she wanted from this man. She needed no more of him.
Yet his taste was on her lips and the hard, unyielding feel of him had set her breasts to aching and her belly to quivering. Her clamoring senses overcame her common sense.
Once more, she vowed as she laid her hand in his. Just once more.
Once, she realized when he’d stretched her out atop his tunic, would not be enough. Not anywhere near enough. She was so hungry for him, so eager for his touch. He had but to bring his mouth to hers to start her breathing fast. To lay his rough palm on her ankle, slide up her skirts and stroke the smooth flesh above her garters to have her quivering with eager anticipation.
She wanted him. Ached for him. Yet he played with her, damn him. Gliding his fingertip over her inner thighs. Brushing his thumb against her most sensitive folds. All the while his tongue danced with hers. She was near panting when his mouth moved lower.
With tongue and teeth he explored the underside of her chin. The heated skin at the base of her throat. The slopes of her breasts above the square neckline of her bliaut. Then his busy, clever hand shoved her skirts up higher and found her linen bellyband. He toyed with the tucked ends before raising his head to examine it in some puzzlement.
“You wore this the night you took me to your bed. Is it an Eastern garment?”
“My…” She gulped in several shuddering breaths. “My nurse bound me thus as a child. It… It gives me some measure of protection from the saddle when I ride.”
The soft, sheer linen came nowhere close to the coarse linen trews some ladies of rank wore to shield them while ahorse. Nor did it compare to the cruel iron belts some Western lords were rumored to lock their wives in before departing on crusade. Yet the mere glimpse of the thin linen strip running between Jocelyn’s thighs seemed to stir some primitive urge in Simon.
His jaw tightened. His breath got shorter. With a low grunt, he nudged her thighs apart and ripped away the linen.
“What…?” Racked by sudden, staggering sensations, she arched her back. “What are you doing?”
“Showing you but one of the ways a woman may come to pleasure.”
De Rhys’s mouth came down on hers. Hard. Hot. Shutting off all protest. While his tongue plundered her mouth, his hands roamed her taut body. Was that the roar of the sea in his ears, or his clamoring blood? He couldn’t tell one from the other. Nor did he care. His world, his entire being, had narrowed to the eager, panting woman in his arms.
When he ceased his depredations, Jocelyn almost sobbed with dismay. Her entire body screaming in protest, she opened her eyes to find de Rhys smiling down at her.
“Don’t fear, lady. We’re not done yet.”
She couldn’t fathom what he was about when he shifted and grasped her stockinged calf. Still grinning, he draped it over his shoulder. When he did the same with her other leg, Jocelyn flamed with embarrassment. She tried to free her legs and move away, but he stayed her easily.
“Let me taste you, sweeting.”
“Simon! This…this must be a grievous sin. You must not… Oooooh!”
Her head thrust back against the wool-covered kelp. Her thighs went as taut as bowstrings. The swirling sensation she’d felt low in her belly the night she’d taken him to her bed gripped her again. But tighter this time. Faster. Like the whirling waterspout she’d once witnessed after a violent storm far out to sea, the vortex carried her up and up and up. So high she thought she would scream from the terrifying intensity of it. Then, without warning, it set her spinning in a spiral of dark, searing pleasure.
Her spine arched. Her womb spasmed. She heard herself give a hoarse shout, or thought she did, while the waves of sensation crested, one atop the other. Then slowly, so slowly, the world righted itself again.
Even after the vortex subsided, it took Jocelyn several moments to gather the courage to open her tight-shut lids. The combination of tenderness and triumph she saw in de Rhys’s blue eyes made her smile and lift her hand. Stroking his cheek, she could not but admit the truth.
“That was nothing like I imagined it would be. No wonder my ladies giggle when they whisper of the mindless torture to be had abed.”
Her reluctant admission brought a wicked grin to his lips.
“You’ve tasted but a small portion of that torture. Here, let me stretch out and hold you close while you catch your breath. Then I will show you other ways you may find release.”
More? There was more?
Still awash in the aftermath of those incredible sensations, Jocelyn could not imagine anything that would bring her more pleasure than what she’d just experienced. And yet…
She had but to nestle her head on Simon’s shoulder. Lay her hand atop his taut stomach. Breathe in the mingled scents of leather and horse and healthy male. She wanted more than the eruption of a waterspout. She wanted this man inside her, as he’d been the night she’d brought him to Fortemur.
No! Not like that hurried joining! This time…
This time what?
The question bedeviled Jocelyn as she turned and buried her face in the warm skin of his neck. What did she want of him? And what could she give him in return for what he’d just given her?
It was blind instinct that had her easing out of his arms. Some deep, female need that brought her up on her knees. Without stopping to question the urge, Jocelyn straddled his thighs.
His lids flew up. A startled question leaped into his eyes. “Do you know what…?”
She stilled his questions the same way he’d stilled hers, by laying a finger on his mouth.
“You’ve shown me how a man may pleasure a woman. Now…” She slicked her tongue across her lower lip. “Now I would return the favor.”
She had to smile at his confounded expression.
“What? Do you think me so dull of wit? So ignorant because I am—” She stopped, breathed deeply and corrected herself. “Because I was a maid? When my ladies talk among themselves, I listen.”
“But…”
He made as if to rise. She planted a firm hand on his chest.
“Say me no buts, de Rhys. Lie still and let me return some measure of what you’ve given me.”
The urge that grabbed Jocelyn by the throat went against everything her castle priest preached most earnestly. No man should lie with a woman not his wife. No woman should think lustful thoughts, even about her lord and husband. God forbid they should indulge in unbridled passions. The one purpose, the sole purpose, of concourse between man and wife was to produce a quiverful of children. All else was sin in the eyes of the Lord.
And yet… And yet…
How could this be sin? How could she ache in every part of her as she did for this man? How could she bend to take him in her mouth, without so much as a fleeting care for her immortal soul?
“Ahhhhh.”
The groan ripped loose from deep inside Simon. His entire body rigid, he drew in a long, ragged breath before thrusting her away from him. He turned to his side, but not before she’d gotten her first taste of a man.
When he turned back to her, his chest heaved and he glared at her almost angrily. “I’m sorry, Lady Jocelyn. I did not intend to spill myself like that.”
“Did you not?” Surprised, she swiped her tongue along her lips. “That was my intention.”
The frank admission took everything Simon thought he knew about women and turned it upside down. The well-born ladies of his acquaintance were wont to play the tease, promising with sideways glances and pretty pouts what they had no intention of delivering. Women of the lower orders tended to be more forthright in their sexual desires. But even with them a man must needs exert himself to understand their confusing and often contradictory signals.
This one played no games at all. She spoke her mind and suited deed to thought. She was also brave and strong and true to her word. And well above the touch of a lowborn knight such as he.
That thought sat heavy on Simon’s heart as he pushed himself to a sitting position. “You are a woman such as I’ve never known before.”
Lips red and swollen from his kisses turned up at the corners. “Oh, so? And have you known many women?”
His brains might still be addled from what she’d done to him, but he retained enough sense to sidestep that particular bear pit.
“No more than my share, milady.”
She gave a disbelieving huff and reached for her shift. When it fluttered down to settle around her hips, she cocked her head and regarded him with a curious look.
“So tell me, Simon de Rhys. Why would one who rises so readily and takes such pleasure of a woman give himself to the Church?”
His first thought was to shrug aside the question. But she’d shared her secrets with him. He could do no less with her. Still, he had to force himself to tell her what he’d told no other soul, save the saintly Bishop of Clairvaux.
“I did not give myself.”
The memory of his last meeting with his gaunt, wasted father rose in his mind. Gervase de Rhys’s lips had twisted when he’d laid eyes on the youngest of his sons who didn’t bear the label of bastard. There were plenty enough of those, Simon knew. More than his unrepentant sire could count.
Unrepentant, that is, until sickness had laid him low. As his flesh had withered and death had drawn closer with each rattling breath, his sire had felt the weight of his many transgressions pressing on him like an anvil. He’d confessed those sins to a priest, or so he’d said. Done penance and been given absolution. That gave assurance he wouldn’t burn forever in the fires of hell, but so black was his past that he must needs take extraordinary measures to lessen his time in purgatory.
He’d sought every indulgence, promised what little he still owned to the Church. He’d promised, as well, his fifth—and last surviving—legitimate son. Simon had ignored his earnest pleas to make good on that oath until the Bishop of Clairvaux had said gently, sorrowfully, that the oath bound him as much as his sire.
The fact that the bishop was Europe’s most vocal and passionate advocate of the Second Crusade only added to his persuasiveness. It was Simon’s duty, he’d argued, as it was that of all men of true belief, to ensure the infidels didn’t recapture the most holy sites in Christendom.
Simon couldn’t tell this woman of the agony of conscience the bishop’s words had roused in him. Or how close he’d come to telling his black-hearted sire he could burn in hell. Instead, he boiled the matter down to its nub.
“My father took sick. His physicians told him he would not last the year. So he pledged me, his youngest son, to the Knights Templar as penance for his many sins.”
“As penance?” Jocelyn’s brown eyes widened. “Surely the Church would not hold you to such a vow!”
“I hold myself.”
“You cannot. You must not. You are too much a man to…” Flushing, she broke off and began again. “Listen to me, Simon. My grandfather fought alongside the one who is now Grand Master of Templars on more than one occasion. By all accounts, Bertrand de Tremelay is a wise and learned man. He’ll understand that this vow is not of your making.”
“It doesn’t matter who made it. My father’s soul hangs in the balance.”
She sat back on her heels, frowning. “Do you truly wish to give your life to the Church?”
“I gave my word.”
“Hmm.”
Her frown deepened. Lips pursed, she regarded him with troubled eyes. “You must know this is folly. You’re placing honor before reason.”
“Honor is all I have.”
A look of impatience crossed her face. “Why is it that some men put such stock in the notion that a vow once given may never be broken, while others forswear themselves whenever it’s convenient?”
“I’m not such a one,” Simon said stiffly.
“No?” She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice. “Wait until you’ve spent more time in the East. You’ll see how often Christian turns against Christian and kings align themselves with their sworn enemies in order to protect their lands and fiefs.”
“It’s no different in the West.” It shamed him to admit the kind of seed he’d sprung from, but her comment drew a reluctant truth fr
om him. “My father is such a one. Always grasping, always ready to forswear his oath and switch allegiances when it suited him. That’s not my way.”
She regarded him for long moments. “No,” she said at last, “I can see it is not. Well then, Simon de Rhys, you’ve held to your end of our bargain. I will hold to mine. You will leave Fortemur on the morrow fully armed, with my grandsire’s warhorse to carry you into battle.”
“He’s a gift worthy of a king, lady. Worth far more than what you paid for me.”
She arched a brow. “What are you saying? A horse is not a fair trade for my maidenhead?”
“No, of course not. But—”
She cut him off with a dismissive wave of one hand. “The deed is done, the bargain struck. Now…” She drew in a long breath. “Now we’d best return to the keep.”
He got to his feet and dressed in his borrowed clothing while she gathered hers. When he’d belted on his sword, he reached down to help her up. She put her hand in his and rose. They stood for a moment, each gazing into the other’s eyes.
He needed one final taste of her to carry with him, Simon decided. One touch of his mouth to hers. The memory of it must needs last him the rest of his life.
He bent and brushed his lips over hers. When he raised his head again, he had to work to keep his voice steady.
“I will pray that God keeps you safe, lady.”
“And I you, Simon.”
She drew her hands from his and led the way out of the cave. He followed her up the treacherous path, braced to catch her if she slipped or stumbled. Their mounts waited patiently in the shade of the cypress. Her smaller, swifter barb was near obscured by Avenger’s muscled bulk. The warhorse, in turn, was dwarfed by Fortemur’s walls.
The massive fortress dominated the view from the cliffs. Within shouting distance, as Jocelyn had said, but worlds away from the sparkling cave that was her own special place. And Simon’s now. He knew the hour or so they’d passed there would remain emblazoned in his heart for all the years to come.
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