"So, for this hour, forget." He lifted his own cup and drank deeply, his eyes upon her face. In the torchlight, the irises were like pools of dark water. Flames danced on the surface. "Tomorrow is soon enough to worry again." His grin flashed. "'Tis very fine wine."
Lyssa smiled. To show him a spirit of festivity, she drank the cool, intoxicating beverage, feeling it warm her belly and limbs. It tasted of summer and harvest and cool, moonlit nights. "It is very good wine," she said, tasting it again on her lips.
He sat with his legs outstretched before him, lazily crossed at the ankles, his elbows propped on the table behind him, and Lyssa admired the long exposed length of him—the breadth of his chest, the sleek line of his waist and lean hips, the long, long legs. How had she never realized how pleasing it could be to admire a man thus? To simply enjoy the way he fit together? Her tongue loosened with wine, she said suddenly, "I am glad the blizzard trapped you here, Lord Thomas. I have not enjoyed the company of a man much before this." She held up her cup and drank, smiling bemusedly at the realization.
But he seemed not to know how to answer her. The amusement that danced so often upon his face was replaced with a more intent expression. "I am thankful," he said softly. "For else I'd not be sitting here in the dark with the most beautiful lady in all of England."
Her stomach twisted. How she wanted to believe he truly thought her so fair! But he was adept at flattery, and she would do well to remember it. She gave him a wry smile and gestured toward Isobel. "Then, you have not been looking, sir."
"She is beautiful," he said agreeably. "There are many beautiful women at Woodell. But none so lovely as you, my lady."
"You need not flatter me, Lord Thomas. I have no vanity on that level."
"'Tis no flattery." He, too, had drunk a lot of wine, for his words were broader, the accent more noticeable. He shifted to face her, and to her surprise, he lifted one great hand and smoothed it over her hair, so lightly she would barely had known if she had not seen it. "Your hair shines like a lake in a dark forest."
And though she told herself to be unmoved by him, the gesture unsettled her. His skin gave off that rich scent of leaf and earth, and his voice rumbled low out of his chest like the seductive beat of a drum, and she found herself looking at his mouth, so well-cut and beautiful, and she wanted to taste it. Just his mouth, and maybe a little of his tongue. She wanted to put her hands on his broad chest.
But he flattered all this way, and she should not take him seriously. With a light smile, she said, "I do admit vanity over my hair. You may praise it all the day and I will listen."
He laughed, and Lyssa looked at his dark throat, and his long hair tumbling from his face, and his strong, white teeth. Low in her belly, a strange new feeling moved, making her restless, sending a rippling awareness through her hips, then up her spine to the back of her neck.
The music shifted abruptly, saving her. She jumped up and took his hand. "I have been wanting to dance, Thomas. Come."
He did not move. "I will trample you with my big feet."
"I will risk it." She tugged lightly, and it was like pulling at a stubborn bear. His hand engulfed hers, and even if she put all her weight behind the tug, she would not budge him if he did not wish it.
He lifted one dark brow wickedly. "You have been warned." Without letting go of her hand, he rose—and rose and rose, until Lyssa had to tilt her head to look up at him. "You see I am naught but a huge clumsy beast."
"Nay," she said. Never that. Staring up at his beautiful face, Lyssa thought of warriors and sex and laughing. "Nay," she repeated, and drew him into the circle.
He pulled her closer, and Lyssa took a wicked pleasure in the feel of him against her, so broad and strong. A lilting pipe wound round the strings of a psaltery, swelling and eddying around them. Torches flickered, and the drums pounded a heavy undernote.
And they danced. Now they were close, now they were not, and Lyssa liked both—liked feeling him close, and looking at him from a distance. Liked seeing him look back at her with that oddly haunted expression in his eyes.
He danced as well as he managed all things physical; if he were a bird, Lyssa thought, holding his gaze from across the circle, he would be an eagle.
The dance circled them back, face-to-face, and still he stared at her. "You gaze so intently, sir," she said softly.
"I do," he said. "As do you, my lady."
It was true, and she ought to have conjured a smile over it, but somehow, there was a thickness in her that would not let her. She thought of his chest, broad and covered with dark hair, against her breasts, and knew this was the sort of vision Mary and Isobel indulged in when they thought of him. "Mayhap I see tonight a little of what makes the sport so popular."
His nostrils flared. "What sport do you mean?"
Only then did Lyssa realize she ought not have spoken aloud. Ducking her head, she put her hands behind her back and spun, as the dance required. It made her a little dizzy, and she focused on Thomas, but the world still did not settle. Blindly, she reached for his arm. "I think I have drunk too much wine."
His arm slipped around her shoulders protectively, and he led her from the circle, into the shadows of the orchard. "I'll fetch a cup of water, my lady," he said. "Do not move."
Lyssa settled on a stone bench in the darkness, away from the fires and the noise and the smoke and the smell of food cooking and unbathed peasants sweating into the night. Her dizziness abated, but she was still light-headed. Too much wine. There was a kind of freedom in it. Philip had always watched her carefully to see that she did not consume too many spirits on a feast day, so she never rose with the heavy head that plagued him of a morn.
Her eyes narrowed. Drink plagued him in the dark of their bed, too, for it seemed he could rarely make love to her.
She drew her brows down. When had these thoughts begun to so consume her? With a blush, she remembered her bold words to Thomas while they danced. She feared he would think her willing and randy, like the other women he'd lain with here. He'd think her a skilled and amorous widow.
And she was not.
Except, whenever he came near, she forgot to think of it. Forgot she'd never understood the tittering and laughing. Forgot she had been so miserable a disappointment to her husband that he'd not been able to take any pleasure in bedding her.
When Thomas moved, his body made her think of songs, of wind weaving through the trees, of a wild being loose and running in a virgin forest. When he laughed at some quip she made, her heart swelled with pride. When he came to sit with her, or found her in the hall to ask some simple thing, there was a quiet, warm thrumming in her blood for hours afterward.
She closed her eyes, humiliated. Like all the others, she was smitten with the virile Thomas. He'd bewitched them all.
She heard his footsteps on the path, and sat up primly, smoothing her skirts over her legs, thankful for the darkness that hid the flush in her cheeks.
He ducked under the low hanging branch of a peach tree, holding a cup in his hand. "My lady," he said.
Lyssa drank gratefully of the cool water. "Thank you."
He knelt before her, and once again, Lyssa was glad to not have to look so high up at him. With a gentle delicacy that surprised her, he reached out and smoothed a lock of hair from her face. "You simply grew too hot," he said. "Are you still dizzy?"
In truth, she had not been till he knelt there, so close. His hair, lying loose against his shoulders, looked clean and shiny, and she had a sudden wish to touch it.
And there in the quiet orchard, with none to see or judge, Lyssa simply acted. She reached out and closed her fingers around a fistful of his thick, clean hair. Weighing it against her palm, threading her fingers through it, she inclined her head. "'Tis softer than silk, if I wove it, I would make it into a shift, so I could wear it against my flesh."'
He said nothing, and Lyssa heard too late how the words would sound. But she made no move to call them back, waiting—
&nbs
p; All mirth left his face, and Thomas stared at her, a fierce darkness in his eyes and on his mouth: desire, tightly reigned. She had seen it on other men's faces, when they looked at other women.
Holding her gaze, he plucked her other hand from her lap and lifted it to his head. "Weave as you wish, my lady," he said in a rough voice.
His hands rested on the stone bench on either side of her legs. His thighs brushed her knees. But he was very still, that burning on his face, as Lyssa spread her fingers through his hair, over that broad, well-shaped head.
Ever had she explored the world with her weaver's fingers, and she reveled in the chance to touch him this way, to feel him after so long a time of wishing it. The cool heavy strands slid over her knuckles and wrists, and his scalp was warm, his skull broad.
As if he understood her need, Thomas simply allowed her to explore. His stillness gave her courage to move her hands from his hair to his face, seeing with her fingertips the shape of his brow, and the delicate flesh above his eyes and on his temples. She touched the bold, hawkish nose, and his chin, where tiny prickles of beard poked her palm.
There she halted, wanting to touch that generous, beautiful mouth, to learn the shape of his lips as she had learned the span of his face. Hesitant, she only looked at him, her fingertips hovering close to the curve of his lower lip.
Ever so slightly, he shifted closer, his thumbs grazing the outside of her thighs. "You move me, my lady," he said in a hushed voice, and Lyssa felt the movements of his mouth around the words with a quiver of pleasure. Still she dared not move, but could not force herself to take her hands away.
At last he moved. His mouth was sober as he reached for the fillet of gold around her brow and set it carefully aside, then cupped his hands around her head, his fingers rubbing against her scalp. The strange thrumming in her belly jolted at his touch, but she made no move to stop him; instead, lent courage by the way he touched her, she let her fingers drift over his mouth.
He captured the tip of her finger in his mouth and suckled. At the sudden heat and wet of that dark place, a wild bolt of arousal went through her breasts and belly, and shot down her thighs. A soft sound escaped her throat.
"I would that you were not so high born a lady," he said quietly.
Startled back to the moment, Lyssa snatched her hand away. "This is most unseemly."
"Aye," he said in that rumbling voice. His eyes on her face, he captured her hand again, and carried it back to his mouth. "But I find in me no wish to be seemly, my lady."
And he gave his full attention to her hand, unfolding her fingers to expose the inner heart of her palm, where he planted a lingering, erotic kiss. "Your senses all begin and end with your hands," he said, and opened his mouth over the small rise below her index finger, suckling gently, then more firmly, and moving on to the next. And the next.
A haze of need overtook her. Each slide of his tongue over her palm, each sharp nibble he planted, and the movements of his mouth, sent rippling echoes to her throat, to her lips, to the tips of her breasts and along her inner thighs. A violent shiver rose up her spine when he again sucked her finger into his mouth, and she pulled her hand from him, ashamed that her breath had become some heated animal sound, and her body was quivering.
"I am no match for your skills of seduction, Lord Thomas," she said sharply. "Please do not tease me thus."
"I do not tease, my lady," he said, "only prepare."
Then his big hands were cupping her head, and he rose up, drawing her to him. Lowering his great head to hers, he kissed her.
At the press of his full, sensual mouth against hers, Lyssa felt her head spin wildly, as if he cast some spell over her, and for a long moment, she was immobile, focused only upon the taste of him, the feel of his hands clasped gently around her ears and jaw.
Now he would know that she had no talent for such things, and would leave her to her threads and looms, she thought with despair, her hands tight in her lap.
He raised his head, and Lyssa felt oddly bereft that he had learned so soon that she—
"What think you?" he asked, and brushed his lips over hers again, the lightest brush that sent a prickling awareness through her. "I think our mouths well met."
Without even knowing she would, Lyssa lifted her face a little, and put her hands on his shoulders to brace herself as he kissed her again. In no hurry, his lips swept and brushed, and Lyssa moved closer, wanting—
More.
As if he heard the thought, his strong arms circled her body, and she found herself gently gathered into his lap. Alarmed, Lyssa made a faint sound, and her body tensed.
But he simply wrapped her close to him, his powerful arms a loose engulfment, his body strong and warm, his hands gentle. He lowered his great head, and closed his beautiful eyes, and put his mouth on hers.
Faintly Lyssa heard the mournful sound of pipes and a voice raised in a ballad, but here in this quiet grove there was only the sound of their breath, and the pounding of her heart in her ears. Wordlessly, she lifted her mouth and kissed him back.
She let herself forget she was not skilled, that she had failed to please even an old man, and gave herself up to the wonder of him, to the pleasure of his lips and the feel of his arms around her and the brush of his hair against her cheek as they moved.
Against her mouth, he said, "Your lips are like rose petals, like velvet and wine."
Lyssa, light-headed, opened one tightly clutched hand and put it on his face, wishing he would—
He bent his head close. And this time, there was more. Oh, very much more.
There were lips parting, and tongues lightly fencing, then retreating to rejoin and meet and dance.
And there was in her a seed germinating and growing, low in her belly, spreading with each silken, slow slide of his tongue against hers, with each new thrust of him inside her mouth. Once he caught the very tip of her tongue in his own mouth and sucked on it lightly, and Lyssa heard a pained sound escape her throat.
She claimed him in return, letting free all she'd ever thought or dreamed or heard about kissing. He made it easy to touch him. She slid her hands around his neck and let her thumbs rest against his earlobes, and the position put her breasts hard against his chest. He gripped her waist to hold her, and Lyssa kissed him back, boldly, sliding and dancing with him as he had done with her. When her breasts ached, she moved her torso against him, as abandoned as some wild fey creature from the forest. It seemed to please him, for his fingers dug hard into her back, and his mouth grew fiercely possessive, and in joy, Lyssa moved again.
And then she felt his organ stiff against her thigh, and knew her sinuous movements rubbed against that, too. Even she knew it was a thing men liked.
But as if she had been overtaken by that fey forest creature, Lyssa did not halt, even then, only let her senses be intoxicated by the sensual feast that was Thomas. That mouth and chest, those pleased and hungry sounds he made, the smell of his flesh and hair, the heady taste of his tongue.
It was like falling adrift in the colors of her weaving.
A dark, low groan escaped him and his arms tightened until Lyssa could barely breathe. With a cry, he broke free abruptly, his breath heavy as he stared down at her with a wild darkness in his eyes. Lyssa saw the shine of their kiss on his lower lip, and she moved a little, her head in the crook of his arm.
She wanted to keep kissing him. All night. All the day. Forever. "Thomas," she said quietly.
He made a sound of frustration, and lifted her into a tight embrace, his brow pressed close into her neck. Lyssa closed her eyes and breathed the smell of him into her, deep into her lungs so when she exhaled some other time, there might still be some hint of Thomas there.
"I have not the strength to put you away from me," he said raggedly. "Before I overstep my bounds, I beg you to move yourself from me."
And only then did Lyssa feel the faint tremor of restraint in his powerful arms. Only then did she come to her senses and realize what had tran
spired between them.
It was given to women to be virtuous, and Lyssa knew her duty now. She let Lord Thomas go, feeling his arms fall away as she stood without looking at him. Where his body had been she felt cold.
He stayed where he was, his head bowed away from her, so she could only see the edge of his jaw and a fall of thick black hair. His fisted hands rested on his thighs. Roughly, he said, "Forgive me, my lady."
Lyssa looked at him helplessly, knowing there was no future here, not for either of them. She had her duty to her king and her estates, and Thomas had his own troubles to solve.
And yet, even now, her palms tingled with the need to touch him, and her thighs were soft with want. Clenching her hands together tightly in front of her, she strove for a light voice. "'Tis no crime to kiss drunkenly on a feast day, sir. I warrant the bailey is filled with such kisses."
At that, he raised his head, and she saw a flash of pride pass over the noble features. "Am I then a drunken amusement?"
Lyssa could not bear his gaze. "We are ill-matched, sir. I am not one of your village—"
"Whores?" he supplied dangerously. He got to his feet, and Lyssa felt anger and pride come off him in waves.
She lifted her chin. "Not whores. I was going to say village loves." But she had been afraid he would think she meant he loved her.
His mouth did not soften. "Ah."
"We will speak not of this on the morrow, sir."
"Aye," he agreed harshly. "Twill be no difficult feat, since I have decided to leave Woodell with the dawn. Twas that I brought you here to say."
She swallowed, a swift pain cutting through her. "'Tis not so grave a breach that you must leave us."
"'I agreed to stay till you had guards enough to man the castle walls. Now you have them, and I must go now to seek freemen to work my fields."
"Very well. You must do as you must." She turned quickly, afraid if she did not leave him, she would fling herself against him and beg him to stay. "Ask the steward for what you require."
"I am grateful, my lady, for your shelter and good nature," he said formally.
Heart Of A Knight Page 10