Lord of a Thousand Nights

by Madeline Hunter

  With a hard movement, he pulled her into an urgent kiss and a rough embrace. Cruel fingers imprisoned her head so she could not avoid the mouth bruising her lips, devouring her misgivings, demanding its rights. Arms of steel bowed her body against his so tightly that her hands holding the sheet became small rocks gouging into the flesh and bone pressing against them. There was no request for willing submission in his savage assault. Her body responded with a staggering wave of heat, and her love blazed at the evidence that, whatever drove him, he clearly needed and wanted her.

  He lifted his head and the blood flowed back to her ravished mouth, prickling her tender skin. Through filmy eyes she saw his uncompromising expression. He grasped her cocooned body tighter, with one hand splayed over her bottom so that the hard ridge of his arousal cleaved her belly and stomach. “Aye, this is what the thought of our parting does to me,” he muttered hoarsely, examining her face as if he sought to memorize it. “If I am less than gentle, blame yourself for giving me too much time to dwell on it.”

  “I do not think to blame anyone.”

  “You may think differently before this night ends.” He kissed her again, only slightly less violently. “I will see that you do not quickly forget that you are mine. If another man looks at you, it will be my eyes that you see on his face, and at night in your dreams it will not be some specter who takes you but me. If your holy knight dares to follow you to Carlisle, you will feel this devil's hands on your body while he lures you, and this brigand's breath in your ear while he persuades you.”

  She barely heard him. The storm had absorbed her, and she spun in its center with her body molded to his, dangling against it weightlessly, his strength the only solid connection with the world.

  He lifted her in his arms, and his hot kisses scorched her mouth and neck while the chamber and passageway and solar blurred by. He dropped her on their bed and yanked aside the sheet which she still grasped to her body. Fully dressed, he came down on top of her, pushing her legs apart, settling on her. One rough hand stroked firmly up her thigh in a path that ended at the moisture coating that secret center.

  His arm circled her shoulder and his hand entwined her hair, holding her head so that she faced him directly. She saw his triumph when he discovered her own arousal, but she didn't care. She ached painfully for the fullness of him, and groaned with relief when he thrust inside her with one hard move.

  It was far from gentle. In primitive possession, his body slammed into her again and again while his rage of passion whirled around them. He bent up her legs so he could penetrate more deeply, and his violent thrusts lifted her hips with their strength. He watched her reaction to this bruising claim of rights, and lightning flashed in those dark pools when her response broke loose and their mutual frenzies clashed in battle. She became powerless against a spiritual invasion as the ecstasy began tightening and building and pulling her into him.

  “Aye, Reyna,” he said lowly as the taste of fulfillment quivered and licked through her. “Robert may still hold your heart, and your monk may inspire your mind, but in this you are wholly mine. You will deny me nothing tonight.”

  She knew that he did not just speak of physical things, but she found no will to summon resistance. Acknowledging her love had undermined the fragile walls with which she fearfully protected her heart. Now they wobbled and cracked and fell beneath the onslaught of his intensity.

  In the fevered heat of that larger unity, the aggressive taking became a soul-scorching sharing. She reached to absorb him with all of herself while the turbulent pleasure rose to its frenzied peak. They came to each other in a long ferocious release full of bites and cries and clawing holds, merging in a violent rapture.

  They lay entwined together in exhaustion, bodies sealed with sweat and embraces. She slowly grew aware of the breath in her ear with which he had promised to mark her memory. The sound reminded her of their imminent parting. She closed her eyes and listened to its rhythm, and tried to suppress the sadness that wanted to intrude on the perfection of holding him.

  Chapter NINETEEN

  She caressed his back, and he felt her touch grow alert to the cloth of his tunic. She moved her hand beyond the sheet bunched beneath them and stroked the coverlet.

  Ian rose on his forearms to look down at her. He saw her calculating that he was still clothed, and that the bed had not been used before he flung her on it.

  He experienced a renewed annoyance that she hadn't asked about Eva before accusing him. Most of his wounded anger had been absorbed by their passion, but not all of it. “Maybe I took her on the floor or against the wall.”

  She glanced away with a dismayed expression, and he felt guilty for deliberately hurting her, especially now, after this.

  “That was churlish of me,” he whispered, nuzzling her ear. “I did not call her. She came on her own, to finish the request she had begun in the yard last week. There is a young archer in my company who has befriended her, but he wouldn't touch her because of me.”

  “She asked you for permission to bed another man?”

  “Something like that. I doubt that Eva is concerned with such formalities, but the man thought it prudent. He wants to marry her. Her father has no sons, and they would go to his farm.”

  “She wants to leave?”

  “I said that I had to ask you if you could manage without her.”

  She puckered her brow thoughtfully. “I don't know if I can. She is an excellent needlewoman. And if my husband decided to brutalize a woman on a regular basis, it might be useful to have her here.”

  He looked down at the evidence of his hard use. Finger marks showed where he had gripped her shoulders, and a love bite glowed red on her neck, where it would be visible to the world tomorrow. He gently kissed the spot, knowing that if he could make it permanent, like a brand, he would do so. “I would say that I am sorry, except that I am not.”

  “Nor am I.”

  He lay still a moment, grateful that she neither regretted nor resented what he had forced.

  He slid off the bed and stripped off his clothes, then went to the hearth where a bucket of water warmed for morning washing. Wetting a rag, he returned and eased next to her, pressing the cloth to the marks he had made.

  He moved lower to bring the warm compress between her thighs. In his mind he heard the echo of Morvan's words, spoken in this room: Hell, Ian, didn't Elizabeth teach you anything?

  Aye, she had taught him much, but while he waited for Reyna tonight, those lessons and his years perfecting them had been forgotten. He had become a callow youth again, consumed by desperate needs and raw hurts, and all of them had become centered on Reyna. The notion that he shared any part of her with another man had maddened him. He had entered her chamber full of furious, mindless emotions, and her own anger and passion had pushed him over the edge.

  Then, seeing what was in him, she had simply opened herself to absorb it.

  He stroked the cloth over her body, watching the skin below his hand, burning the memories into his head. Unnameable things still churned inside him, quelled but not killed by their passion, unsettling him with their power. The idea of leaving her saddened him in a surprising way, shading his heart with the foreboding and pain a child might feel when separated from his mother. Perhaps it would have been better to have avoided her tonight and never demanded that she cross those boundaries. The cost might be very high, especially if she ever withdrew again.

  He turned his head and their gazes met. Her face looked very young and sweet, but her eyes carried a woman's knowing.

  “Is your father who sought to make you a priest still alive?” She asked the question as if she had never spoken it before, but her gaze contained a challenge.

  Aye, it would have its cost. This was Reyna. She would never be so stupid as to have the giving go only one way.

  “He is not alive.”

  He braced himself for the next question, and the next, and began to taste the loss of her after they had all been asked and
answered. And so he almost groaned with relief when she chose to follow a connected path instead of the main one.

  “Did he die when you were still a youth?”

  “He died when I was nineteen, just after I was dubbed, right before I went to court. He had arranged to send me to a kinsman there.” It was the truth, although incomplete.

  “Your kinsman served the king?”

  “He was a minor functionary. He took me into his household.” None of it lies, not really.

  “You lived with him the whole time there?”

  Aye, one question would lead to another, and he saw where these were going. She merely followed her thoughts while she constructed forms of substance inside the deep but indefinable knowledge that they had of each other.

  He couldn't deny her without losing what he had just fought to regain, but he sickened a little at the judgment awaiting. “The plague came not long after I arrived. My kinsman was away, and died of it. The household moved to one of his wife's manors in Sussex until the death passed.”

  He paused, wondering if he could leave it there. Probably not. Alone with Christiana in Carlisle, she might learn about this lesser sin. “I stayed with his wife for two years, living off tournament winnings mostly.”

  “And then you left for France?”

  “I lived alone for a year after that before seeking my fortune in France.”

  She immediately found the gaps. “Why? Did you fall out with your kinswoman?” When he didn't answer, her eyebrows rose and he watched the pieces fall into place. “The woman you told me about that day— the trade with Morvan—it was your kinsman's wife?”

  “Aye.” He was relieved that she didn't look more shocked.

  “She must have been much older than either you or Morvan.”

  “She was my kinsman's second wife, and much younger than he. Still, almost old enough to be my mother.”

  “Did you love her?”

  She wanted him to say that he had been mad with love. Elizabeth had not been blood kin, but she had been related through marriage. While such liaisons were not unheard of, they were not acceptable. Claiming he had been besotted would make this more palatable, but he found that he could not lie to her.

  “I loved her much as I could, which wasn't much. Less than I should. More than she wanted.”

  “Why did it end?”

  Because I ceased being faithful, which was all that she ever demanded of her lovers. Because I knew she loved someone else and I resented it, even though I would never have known what to do with that love if it came to me. Because we had healed each other's worst pain, and it was time to live the lives left to us.

  “Elizabeth had much of the mother about her, and it was tempting to stay forever at the comfort of her breast. But as with a mother, there also came a time to leave.”

  “I think that I can understand that. It was something like that with Robert and me.”

  Of all the reactions he had expected, the last had been this calm understanding. She surprised him yet more when she added, “I am glad she was there if you needed her friendship.”

  She reached up for the edge of the bed coverings and pushed them down and then drew them back over their bodies. “What with the hunt and all, you must be very tired. You have a long ride facing you. Sleep, Ian. I will wake you at dawn.”

  “You should be tired too.”

  “I find that I am not. In a few hours I must rouse the servants to prepare for our departure. I do not think I will sleep.”

  “Nor will I, then. I learned long ago how to take my rest in a saddle. I do not plan to waste these hours with dreams when the best dream lies beside me.” He pushed the bedclothes back down, exposing her body, and rose up on his arm to look at her. “Besides, who knows when I will have the chance to give you another lesson?”

  He kissed her, memorizing the softness of her lips and the sharp edge of her teeth and the velvet depths of her mouth. Gathering her hands, he pressed them above her head so she was stretched out completely vulnerable to him. He did not want her embracing him or doing anything to speed his own response. He would make her mad and desperate and begging, and maybe the sound of her cries would sustain him for the next days and weeks.

  He caressed her slowly, watching his tan hand move around the swells of her small feminine form, doing nothing to arouse her beyond a languid pleasure. Her breasts filled and nipples hardened anyway. He smiled at her quick response, but he would not be distracted.

  “You are so lovely, Reyna. There is always this faint blush on your skin, and it is soft and moist, as if it is covered with invisible dew.” Her breath caught when he lowered his head and first kissed and then licked the valley between her beckoning breasts.

  She arched invitingly, but he rose away so he could caress and memorize the shapely lines of her legs. Her creamy thighs quivered and tensed when he moved higher to the scent and moisture already waiting at their top. He touched gently, testing to see if she was too bruised for more, glad for the evidence she was not when her body trembled elegantly in response.

  She frowned when he drew his hand away.

  “Not yet, Reyna. This is punishment for calling me a whoreson and bastard again. I warned you not to do that.” Actually, that passionate invective had been music to his ears. He ran his finger over her lower lip, drawing the moisture from her quick breaths, studying the filmy desire in her eyes. He felt an inexplicable flattery that this woman wanted him at all, let alone so badly and so quickly.

  He drew a line down her chin to her chest and then circled, circled, circled up the rise of one pretty breast. She squirmed and groaned, and he flattened his palm to gently graze her tight nipple. “Is this what you want, Reyna?”

  She tried to wrench her hands free of his hold.

  “Is it?”

  “Aye, damn you.”

  “Another curse? This could take until dawn.” He teased her with his fingertips, lightly rubbing the pink tip, and she jerked at her arms again.

  “Let me go, you whoreson, and we'll see who cries enough first.”

  “Keep that up and we may not depart until noon.” He lowered his lips to her other tip. “You are so soft, like velvet. The first time I kissed you, I almost forgot all sense of duty.” He licked and sucked slowly, lost in the delicious taste and feel of her, wonderfully alert to the abandoned cries and moves that his tongue and hand drew out of her.

  Her hips rocked slowly while he made love to her breasts, and he let their rhythm of desire tantalize his own tight hunger. He savored each impassioned reaction, storing away its memory like a precious possession.

  He released her hands and eased her over on her stomach. Hovering above her he slowly kissed down her spine, then turned to watch her body while he caressed the back of her legs and thighs. She half buried her face in her arms to smother her surprised gasps. When his gaze and hand moved higher, the soft hills of her buttocks tightened to his touch and her back arched in reaction. She looked incredibly erotic like this, and he bent to kiss the small of her back while his fingers followed the shadowed cleft.

  Her muffled cry almost undid him. The storm, quelled but not sated, erupted again. She parted her legs for more, and her hips rose when his finger found the tight passage and stroked its hot depths. She lifted her head and looked back at him with wary eyes. “Are you going to—”

  He pictured her hips rising to him and a piercing heat shook him. But he doubted he could maintain much control if he took her that way, and anything less than gentleness would be unforgivable this time.

  He turned her on her back. “Another time, Reyna, and you will like it, I promise you. But tonight I want your face against mine and your arms around me.”

  She made to embrace him, but he slipped from her arms and trailed hot kisses down her silken length. One other memory and possession he would not deny himself. He lifted her legs over his shoulders and kissed her inner thighs. A new fever entered her eyes. Her body seemed to know what he was going to do, even if her
mind did not.

  He caressed her intimately, finding the spots that drove her mad, and she moved in responses out of her control. He turned his kisses higher, seeking her passion's center. She cried his name and he glanced up at her wild, shocked expression.

  “I am going to do it, Reyna. If you do not like it, I will stop.”

  She stiffened like a board when his mouth replaced his fingers, but the pleasure immediately demolished her resistance. “Aye,” she whispered, and then the affirmation became a cry repeated over and over, and the sound of her breathless chant and the throes of her passion pushed him into a glowing oblivion.

  When he rose up over her, she grabbed at him, pulling him to her, lifting her legs in an embrace, trying to bind their desperation together. “What do you want, Reyna?” He barely possessed sense anymore, but he wanted to hear her say it. Needed to hear her say it.

  Her fingers clawed at his shoulders. She looked up and blinked away the obscuring passion.

  “What do you want?” he repeated.

  A fierce light flashed in her eyes. “You. All of you. Deep inside me and all through me.”

  Searing hunger streaked through him with a dangerous force. If he followed his blood, it would be like before. Rolling over in their embrace, he brought her above him. “Then take what you want. As much or as little as you need.”

  She moved to absorb him deeply, bending to caress and kiss his chest, drawing his spirit to her as surely as he had forced hers to him. She made love beautifully and hungrily, and his chaotic emotions swirled beneath her urgent aggression. Her cries started again, and she began to demand more. He grasped her hips and responded with his own thrusts, impatient now for the completion that he had delayed, trying to contain the complex needs so they wouldn't overwhelm him this time.

  She groaned at his movement and buried her face in his neck. “Harder,” she whispered shakily. “Deep inside me and all through me.”

  “I will hurt you. You are sore.”

  “Nay, my love. If we must separate I want to feel you for days. Weeks. Forever.”