Tapestry Lion (The Landers Saga Book 2)

by Nilsen, Karen

  She grinned. “Go ahead.”

  I grasped her arm and wrenched her towards the door, my free hand reaching for the key in my pocket. The spicy heaviness of that damned foreign scent she used filled the air as I dragged her closer. The sleeves of the servant’s dress covered her from shoulder to wrist, but I could still feel her through the thin material, her flesh cool. Sometimes I wondered if she felt that cool all over and what it would take to warm her, but these were rogue thoughts quickly dismissed. She had to leave. Now.

  At the door I paused. I had the key in one hand and Eden in the other and no hand free to open the door. I shook my head at my own thoughtlessness and moved to drop the key back in my pocket for the moment. Eden’s hand shot out of nowhere and seized the key just as my fingers loosened on it.

  “Damn you!” I tried to grab her hand, in the process losing my grip on her shoulder. She was as dodgy as a clawing cat, using the surprise of her sudden move to duck under my arm and jam the key in the lock. She twisted it, the lock clicking. We were now locked in together until I could get that key back. It was regrettable the vixen hadn’t been trained at the sword.

  By the time I got a hold of her shoulders and jerked her around, the key had disappeared. I shook her, both of us out of breath. “Where’s the goddamned key?”

  Her eyes glowed, half-lidded slits under her arched brows, her grin mocking as a mischievous demon‘s. “Where do you think?”

  “I hate games,” I growled. “Give it to me.”

  “Get it yourself, sir. It’s down my bodice.”

  I paused, for a moment completely speechless as my grip tightened on her shoulders. “Give it to me now,” I said finally, “or I’ll shake you till it falls out of your dress.”

  “It’s in my corset. You could shake me till I died, and it wouldn’t come out.”

  I glanced downwards, then half wished I hadn‘t. The bodice was too small for her, and the tops of her breasts were clearly visible. I could feel my face heating like a green boy‘s, and I cursed myself. “You hussy.”

  She laughed softly. “You’re the one who looked.”

  Our gazes locked. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing, my dear?” I asked after a long moment.

  “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

  I ran my thumb down her neck toward her collarbone, and she blinked, then shivered. “You’re frightened?”

  “Should I be?”

  “Such bravado.” I chuckled despite myself, my hands loosening on her shoulders. “You’re too young, Eden.”

  “Then you’re too old, and I don’t believe that.”

  “Thank you,” I replied dryly.

  She touched my jaw, and I almost jumped out of my skin. “You need to shave, sir.”

  “Calling me sir is a poor jest at this point.” I found myself leaning down, found my mouth on the wicked softness of her full lips, found the rage inside had been caged lust all along as she clenched my back and I undid her laces with a practiced tug and a pull. I found the key as well, lodged between her heavy breasts, but at that point, I had no interest in unlocking the door. Just one night--one night is all we need to clear this madness from our blood.

  Chapter Nineteen - Eden

  Mordric’s hands were warm, so warm it felt like his touch turned my clothes to ash. I was almost surprised to see my gown and undergarments intact and laying in a neat pile at my feet, their sudden removal a mystery. He had done something with my laces . . . I swallowed and shut my eyes as he began to touch my bare skin.

  A moan escaped me as his mouth followed his hands. Terror and desire twisted together inside, an uneasy pairing. I moaned again, my fingers taut against his neck, in his hair. I clamped my jaw shut, angry with myself even as my body writhed and then rose to his touch. I had teased the dragon in his lair--what did I expect?

  I was accustomed to having control in the bedchamber. Men were the ones with the impatient hands, the fragile egos, the intense need to prove themselves. Men had no control when it came to a woman like me. That had been my experience. Now I was being laid bare, my carefully positioned shields burned to dust, my experience no use to me. Because I could leash the king’s lapdog courtiers, I had assumed I could somehow trap this hard-bitten wolf of a man.

  His mouth returned to mine, my lips parting for him with a sigh. He chuckled, pinning me against the door as he kissed me, his fingers tousling my hair and making sparks against my scalp. My body was a traitor. My anger at its betrayal outweighed my fear of losing control for an instant, enough for me to reach for his belt.

  Usually I unbuckled belts one-handed, but my fingers trembled so much that I needed both hands. He paused and let me do my work, motionless as I touched him. After I almost ripped his shirt, he finally moved, raising steady hands to undo his cuffs as if he were alone and preparing for bed. I backed against the door as he finished, staring at him. He seemed roused as I, yet he moved with his usual calm deliberation. It was almost inhuman how he refused to be hurried, especially under these particular circumstances. Icy prickles went down my spine as I dug my nails into the door behind me. I closed my eyes, my heart drumming in my ears.

  His thumb brushed my jaw as his hand curled around the back of my neck. “You said you weren’t frightened.”

  “Frightened?” I swallowed, my eyes still closed.

  He chuckled deep in his throat. “You made this bed, my dear--now go lie in it.”

  My eyes flew open. “And if I don’t?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve seen horses buck at the starting line before. Some eventually grow out of it.”

  Yet again, the fear inside shifted to anger. “You’re not nearly as detached as you pretend.”

  “Aren’t I?” His face was a mask.

  “We’ve been playing this game for months. That night in the coach, the way you look at me, those combs you bought me . . . loyal retainer, indeed . . .”

  His hand slid from my neck down my back to my hip in one smooth motion, so smooth I jumped. “Is this a game to you?”

  “Everything between a man and a woman is a game,” I stammered, trying to ignore the feel of his hand as it slipped lower.

  “So jaded for the nursery,” he mocked. “Here’s to your games. May you outgrow them soon.”

  “But what . . .” He yanked me to him, his hand digging into my flesh. I was on the verge of angry protest when his mouth swallowed my words. My nails clawed him, his teeth marked me. When he lightly bit my nipples, I cried out, and he clapped his hand to my mouth. I struggled against the painful pleasure of him, my knees so weak I dropped down and took him in my mouth as retaliation. His hands fisted in my hair, and I thought I had him at last when he groaned. But then he grabbed my shoulders and lifted me against him, kissing me once before he shoved me toward the bed.

  “Sir . . .”

  “Never call me sir, not here.” He pushed me down against the cushions and shackled my wrists with one hand, his other hand wandering.

  “Let me touch you, for God’s sake,” I begged. I arched against the rough warmth of his palm, cursing my body’s response to him. Somewhere inside, a lone vagabond fiddle began to play, quietly at first, following the tightening spiral of my pleasure.

  “Not yet.” He lightly ran his hand over my nether hair, the same hand that had likely killed scores of men. His fingers found the slippery heat of my loins, his touch so gentle it was torturous.

  “I’m ready. Please . . .” I managed.

  “You’re far from ready. Now look at me.”

  “Why?” Why wouldn’t he take me, damn him? I didn’t want to climax like this, with him watching, calmly seeing me weak and undone before him.

  “Look at me, damn it. I want to see your eyes,” he ordered, in much the same tone I imagined he had ordered troops twenty years ago, not a tone to be disobeyed wantonly. So I opened my eyes. He still leaned over me, the skin drawn tight across the plains and crags of his face, his eyes intent gleams as he stared at me. I couldn’t help but meet
his stare, drown in it like any hapless prey. He overwhelmed me. The pleasure peaked for an instant, the vagabond fiddle playing inside my head hitting a high note, and I drew breath with a moan.

  “That’s right,” he whispered, his fingers pausing for one unbearable moment. “You’re beautiful.”

  “Beautiful when you’re torturing me?”

  “Yes.” He smiled faintly. “Especially then. You shouldn’t have provoked me. Why did you come here? Why here, when you could have waited until I was back in Cormalen?”

  “I wanted to catch you off your guard.” His hand stopped moving for another unbearable moment. “Mordric, please . . .”

  His fingers starting stroking me again, but not in the same place. Now he was touching me everywhere but where I needed him to touch me. When I curved against him, he moved his hand away, chuckling. “You’re like a cat in heat.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “I think there’s somewhere else you’d rather I go first.” He suddenly let go of my wrists and braced his hands on either side of my waist. Before I could breathe or speak, he plunged into me. I cried out at the feel of him, my arms and legs clutched around his body. The fiddle playing inside reached a painfully high note, then settled into a building pulse.

  “So, did I catch you off your guard?” I gasped as he moved above me and in me, his own breathing harsh and uneven now.

  “Eden, shut up.” He caught my mouth in a rough kiss. “Now, keep your legs high.”

  “Wha . . . oh God.” I bit his lip and tasted blood.

  “Vixen,” he muttered and pressed his mouth down on mine, swallowing my moans as the fiddle climbed from note to note, each higher and louder than the last until I could bear it no longer. He never stopped, pinning me in place as he took his damned sweet time. He was no gentleman, and he let his full weight overwhelm me, sucking away my cries, my very breath until my head floated somewhere far above in the vaults of the ceiling. The dwindling pinpoint of my concentration was entirely on him as he filled me and consumed me. The whole of me could no longer bear it, and I smothered my last cry against his shoulder, thinking he would release me then. But he only chuckled, his hold on me tightening.

  “You thought that was the end?”

  “Mordric,” I gasped, the only word I was capable of uttering. I combed my hand through his hair and brought his ear to my lips as if I wanted to whisper a secret. Instead I nibbled on his ear lobes, first one, then the other. A low groan escaped him then, and he gripped me close as he hastened the rhythm between us.

  My consciousness suddenly splintered into a thousand shards as the fiddle broke on a note so high I could not hear it but only feel it shatter me. It was then, in the cool folds of the embassy’s best linen, that I finally screamed, losing myself so completely to his will that I doubted I would ever find me again.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  I turned over on my stomach, my eyes still closed as I stretched. The linen of the sheets was so fine it felt like silk against my bare skin, warm where the late-morning sun pooled in the creases of the duvet. All my muscles ached, the way I imagined a soldier’s muscles ached on the morn after a battle. My mind began to drift lazily to sleep again as I settled into the feather bed, my arms clasped around a pillow.

  A sudden slap to my rump jerked me awake. “Eden, get up,” Mordric said.

  I stretched again. “Why?”

  “It’s after ten.”

  I squinted at him. The gap in the drapes silhouetted him with sunlight, the white of his shirt blinding, his hair glowing silver, his hard edges softened for an instant. “When did you get up?”

  “At dawn, lazy cat. Now get up before I drag you.”

  I turned on my side. “We were both up at dawn, sir.”

  “Yes, and I stayed up.”

  “God, why?”

  “I had work to do.”

  I stifled a bark of laughter in my pillow. After the night we had passed, only Mordric would return to his letters and treaties as if nothing had happened. “Instead of me getting up, perhaps you should be lying down.”

  “Eden, you need to get up and eat something. Your ship leaves this evening.”

  “My ship?” I rolled over and sat up, the covers slipping from my breasts and midriff. “I haven’t bought passage on any ship.”

  “I secured passage for you.” His eyes traveled over me as if he owned me.

  I clutched the blanket to my chest. “No, I refuse to go. Not tonight.”

  “You disobeyed me when you came.” His voice grew smoother, a warning sign. “Don’t compound it.”

  “You have interesting punishments for disobedience, sir.”

  “I need you back at court. I’ll be here at least another month.”

  I picked at the duvet. “You told me once that it was good to have me at court, but that you didn’t require me there, that you could handle it all yourself if need be. What‘s changed?”

  “You’ll not lure me into an argument over what I said six months ago.” He leaned against the bedpost, his arms crossed. “I have long experience with women’s tricky memories, Eden.”

  “Ah, well, perhaps you didn’t mean it. You were nursing a bottle of whiskey at the time.”

  I could feel the weight of his glare as I deliberately gazed at the bed canopy overhead. “You’re safer in Cormalen, wench,” he said finally.

  “You sent me here with naught but Randel to guard me little over three months ago, and now it’s not safe?”

  “If I’d realized the extent of Merius’s trouble at the time, I never would have sent you then.”

  “Perhaps I can help you now.”

  “You’d help me best by returning to Cormalen.”

  Naked, I rose from the warmth of sheets, shivering a little as I walked on my knees across the bed. I knelt behind him, the bedpost between us as my arms glided over his shoulders. “Mordric,” I whispered, my lips against his ear. He had washed and shaved this morning, the scent of sandalwood crisp in the air. “What could one more night hurt?”

  He was silent for a moment, his breath the only movement. “It takes a week to sail here, nine or ten days to sail back, if the prevailing winds hold,” he said finally. “As it is, you’ll be away from court too long. You need to leave tonight, Eden. There might not be decent passage tomorrow.”

  “Brutally sensible, as always.” Taking encouragement from his failure to move or shrug me away, I tightened my hold on him, my hands moving down his chest as I leaned against his back. He was so warm, a veritable furnace in this chilly room.

  “There’s never been anyone else to be sensible. Someone has to be.”

  “Sensible wouldn’t have beaten Toscar on the practice floor. Sensible wouldn’t have gotten drunk and kissed me in the carriage. And you wonder where Merius gets his rashness.”

  “What you call rash is merely your failure to understand my motives. I can’t let Toscar beat me--Jazmene likes him in his place, and I’m the only one who can put him there when it comes to swordplay.”

  “But I thought he was her . . .”

  “He is. That’s why it entertains her to see him bested on occasion. She’s the queen, and he’s her servant, no matter what they do between the sheets. He’s liable to forget that fact, and sometimes she likes to remind him. Which is why she orders us to duel whenever I come to this court.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I’ve been observing people in power longer than you’ve been alive.” He grabbed my hand as it crept lower. “You’re cold,” he said abruptly. I sank back on my haunches as he stood and went around the bed. It was then I noticed my clothes on the bench at the foot of the bed in a neatly folded pile.

  “Have the maids been in here?” I demanded.

  “Hell no. There are spies in this embassy. If someone saw you here . . .”

  “So who folded my clothes?”

  The oddest expression crossed his usually stony face. He almost looked . . . embarrassed? No, not him . . . He cleared his
throat. “I did.”

  “You folded my clothes?” I was careful not to grin too widely.

  “I hate a mess,” he growled. “Here, put these on.” He shoved the maid’s gown and my underclothes at me.

  He went over to the window and glanced out as I slowly pulled on my shift. When I stood to tighten my laces (the maid‘s gown I had managed to steal had been made for a girl, not a woman), he silently came over and took the laces between his fingers, his face impassive as he threaded them and then tugged them tight. It was almost as if he were testing himself to see if he could withstand my numerous charms. Laughing inside, I lightly trailed my fingertips over the outside of his wrists and hands.

  “You shouldn‘t tease men like you do,” he said evenly, making me gasp as he jerked the laces through the last set of holes, “It’s going to get you into trouble.”

  “I should hope so.”

  He shook his head as he tied the laces. “I’ll not make you my mistress, Eden.”

  “Why not?”

  “It would be wrong.”

  “Why the sudden reformation? You’ve had mistresses before.”

  “Those women were different.”

  “How? They were courtesans like me.”

  His hands, quick as striking cobras, landed on my shoulders. “Just because the prince has given you a few jewels to warm his bed doesn’t make you a courtesan like them.” His grip hurt, and I swallowed.

  “What does then?”

  “There are two kinds of courtesans. Some are shallow women who throw away their honor for jewels and secure positions, whores with a fancy name. The other kind are highly educated, experts at intrigue, the unconventional women who lead the best salons.”

  “Sir, why did you have those women for mistresses?”

  “What women?”

  “The silly ones who only wanted jewels.”

  “Why do you play with that horse-faced prince?”

  “To irk you.”

  “As I irked Arilea with the vapid women I picked for mistresses. It was an insult to her, me tumbling them.”

  “But she’s been dead for a decade.”

  He shrugged. “It became a habit, those women. Arilea soured marriage for me, and I didn’t want entanglements.”