“No,” she repeated. It was all she could say. “I do not consent.”
“I am sorry.” He reached out to stroke her cheek, soft as a feather. “I won’t hurt you,” he whispered. “I am not him.”
She stood abruptly and turned her back to him. She screwed her eyes shut. I will not cry. I will not cry. A deep, ragged inhalation did nothing to steady her breathing. “I can’t”—her voice cracked—“can’t do this.”
She heard him sigh deeply and then pick something up from the table. There was a scrape of metal. When he came back before her, the wash of tears had cleared enough for her to see what he held out: the unsheathed silver dagger.
“Take it,” he urged quietly, wrapping her cold fingers around the hilt. “Cut me with it. My blood for yours.”
She looked up at him, startled.
“To make things even between us. You are correct, of course. It is neither right nor fair that your wedding night be such as this. To help you accept what must be.” He quickly stripped off his coat, undid his cufflink, and rolled up the shirtsleeve on his unwounded arm. He held out his forearm to her, thick around as a large tree limb, with the tender skin of his inner wrist upward. “Go ahead,” he said. “It’s all right.”
The hilt, heated by his flesh, lay warm in her hand. It felt so good to hold a blade again. Its power and protection flowed up her arm. For a moment, she closed her eyes and visualized the knife slicing across the blue veins snaking up Ravensworth’s arm.
Or sinking into his heart.
Could she do it?
“Don’t worry,” he said. “My training would stop you before you did me any real harm. And I have to warn you, some of the men would truly prefer to use you and send you back to Rotenburg bloody. You might manage to kill me in the night, but the men in the camp are far less charitably inclined to you than am I.”
The image rushed through her. Her wrist turned and her arm rose. Before he could draw breath, she flicked the knife. Like an eagle swooping to prey, it cut the air, zinging by the earl’s head to thwack solidly into the tent’s center wooden pole.
He turned back to her from the still-vibrating blade and cocked a brow. “You have hidden talents, Liebling.”
More condescension. His compliment did nothing for her mood. “I’m sure you thought I did nothing well save embroider a pillow or warble a tune. Men are such idiots. You think violence the answer to everything! Blood for blood! And where does that get us?” She wrapped her arms tight around her sides and paced the narrow tent floor.
He let her pace while he extracted the dagger from the tent post and resheathed it in the scabbard. He dropped it into her satchel with her few other belongings. “Come, Lenora—sit with me.” He sank onto the cot, its frame creaking under his weight, and patted the spot next to him. “You must be exhausted. Did you sleep much at all on the road?”
Truly, her fatigue ate at her, along with her fear and misery. When was the last time she’d slept soundly through the night, undisturbed by nightmares? A lifetime ago, it seemed, back amid the green and peaceful fields of Sherbrooke Abbey.
She dropped down beside him. “I neither slept nor ate much. Mostly, I looked for back roads around towns and for prosperous-looking farms from which to steal something to eat. I’d never stolen anything in my life. I went hungry for a day and a half before I nabbed turnips from a barn. It was either theft or death. That experience of being forced to steal in order to live was actually very enlightening.”
She was rambling, she knew, but too exhausted, too overwrought by circumstances, to stop. While she talked, he rubbed her back in slow circles. It felt so good—a simple, soothing, companionable touch—she couldn’t bring herself to make him stop, even knowing where he planned to take it.
How his touch could feel good to her when she knew his intention, she couldn’t fathom.
Lord, she was tired, so very bone-deep weary, in body and in spirit.
“I’ve been in the same situation myself,” he was saying, “one summer long ago when Becker and I traveled through Austria and Hungary. We thought to abandon our tutors on our Grand Tour and travel as commoners. One night in a Budapest tavern, we were stupid enough to drink too much and make ourselves easy targets for pickpockets, who tossed us into the Danube. I’m afraid my conscience wasn’t as pricked as yours. We were also arrogant enough to believe ourselves justified in restoring some of our wealth after the thievery.”
She let his words sink in, along with the relaxing press and release of his gentle backrub. “I made a vow last week,” she said, “that if I survived to return home, I’d work with my friend Lady Beatrice on the prison reform and antipoverty measures she is so passionate about. Not only Germany, but England as well, needs change for the better to help the people.”
“I made a vow that I would fight a revolution for the people. Thought to save them all from their oppression. Beware of your vows, lady.” He grinned. “Mine landed me in the midst of a revolution.”
She turned her head to look at him sitting beside her on the cot and rubbing her back companionably. He didn’t strike one as a man intent on rape. He was calm, pleasant, polite. Did that make what he planned better or worse? He had none of Kurt’s malice, none of that perverse man’s sick pleasure in humiliating another in his power. But did Ravensworth’s teasing tone change the fact that he intended to bed her against her will?
She couldn’t fight him; he was easily twice her bulk. But nor could she simply allow him to bed her.
He gave her a sad smile, as if reading her thoughts. “I know, lady. Life is not fair.” He pushed up to stand, and the cot heaved. “Let me pour you more wine.”
She accepted more of the ice wine. Why not? Perhaps it would help. Then he turned from her and began to disrobe matter-of-factly. His coat was already off and one cuff undone; he started in on his vest and shirt.
“What are you doing?” she sputtered, startled into splashing drops of wine across her boy’s trousers.
He looked at her over his shoulder, a smile again dimpling his cheek. “Preparing for bed. I’m afraid the tent leaves little space for privacy. It seems only fair that I should be exposed to you, laid bare to your inspection.”
“I have no need for any inspection, I assure you!” She licked wine off her fingers.
He finished unbuttoning the front of his shirt. “Germany has taken so much from you; I will not claim any right to privacy.”
His logic seemed twisted somehow, but her exhaustion and the wine coupled to offer some appeal to his argument. The distraction of that emerging male flesh worked its effects as well as he shrugged out of the shirt.
So he stripped himself for her inspection to abase his dignity before her?
In the dim light of moonshine filtering in through the tent walls and from a single candle on the table, the planes of his body were a dark muscled mass of strength and will. She sat on the bed, sipping her wine and looking at him, caught in such queer dread and confusion that she knew not what to think.
Except that he was beautiful. Dark, fierce, angled planes of a chiseled face. A hard, massive body of corded muscle. A skull near shorn of hair, highlighting the bulging slope of shoulder into neck. A clean white bandage wrapping his upper arm. A lightly furred chest of dark hair angling downward across a tight abdomen.
When he was down to trousers and bare feet, he sat beside her on the narrow bed and brushed a loose strand of hair from her cheek. “Just feel, lady,” he whispered in her ear. “Let yourself feel.”
It was too easy. She would not give in to this man. She kept her gaze directed straight ahead. “No,” she said. “I don’t want this. You are not my husband, and I do not give you leave to bed me.”
“I know,” he said soothingly. “I know. You are most cruelly importuned by this fool of a knight who insists he must bed you as his cherished bride. Yet you have no choice but to give in. You cannot fight him. He is surrounded by his loyal men. Circumstances force you to allow him his wicked way with y
ou. Perhaps it would be best if you just lay very, very still and let him kiss his way across your most delightful person.”
She knew not whether to laugh or cry. “You are a beast.”
“My precious bride, there is a beast within all of us. Mine will not hurt you.”
“You will. You do.” Her fists curled on her lap, and her breath caught on a sob.
“Nein, never,” he whispered.
He shifted over and picked her up to lay her carefully onto her stomach on the bed. Her braid caught under her. He pulled it free and began to unplait it, fanning the hair free to hang over the side. His long fingers rubbed circles against her neck and through her hair against her scalp.
“Relax,” he said. “You must have been living on horseback to travel so far in a week. It’s hard on the back, when you’re not accustomed to it—even if you hadn’t been healing from that blackguard’s lashing.”
Her boy’s shirt was easy enough for him to unbutton from behind. He got it undone and eased it down her back and arms while she lay belly down. She kept her eyes tightly shut. The earl’s weight shifted off the bed. The sound of a bottle being unstopped preceded a waft of scent from over by the trunk—rosemary, with a hint of patchouli?
“Allow me to rub some oil into your back, Liebling. It will help with the final healing. Your skin is still somewhat bruised and must be tender.”
“Scented massage oil?” she said. “A rather exotic item for a soldier on campaign, isn’t it?”
“One shouldn’t give up all of life’s little luxuries.”
“Do you and the men take turns trading massages?”
He snorted. “That would be quite the sight. A fine reputation we’d garner, as fierce revolutionaries.” He poured oil into his palms and warmed it before sliding those huge hands up and down her tense back.
When he moved onto her shoulders, she had to bite her cheek against the sigh threatening to escape. Knots of tension etched deep into her muscles began to loosen and melt under the rhythmic pressure of his hands.
“It was my mother who packed this bottle for me,” the earl continued, “back at Ravenhold in England. She made it herself, using rosemary from the kitchen gardens. She told me it’s good for your skin, especially after bathing. I admit I quite like it.”
He worked his way slowly down her spine, gently kneading the muscles on either side with long, slow strokes, down to the curve of her buttocks and around to her hips, reaching just under the waistband of her breeches. He kissed each of her remaining bruises, then licked his lips. “You taste delicious, Liebling,” he said. He turned around on the cot, pulled off her boots and stockings, and spent an equal time on her feet, ankles, and calves. By the time he rubbed the last scented and slippery circles across the pads of her toes, she’d allowed herself a fleeting thought about whether marriage might even be worth it.
“Would you do this to a wife every night?” she asked.
He bent over to kiss her cheek. “It would be my greatest honor and pleasure, lady. Do you enjoy the feel of it?”
“You do seem to have a certain skill at massage,” she admitted, looking up at him over her shoulder.
“Roll over, then,” he prompted her, with a wicked grin, “and I’ll show you more of my talents.”
She swallowed. “Ravensworth—”
He widened his eyes innocently. “I’m only half done with my services. Surely you won’t stop me now?”
He stood to blow out the candle before she could think how to compose a reply to that impossible question.
“Do you like music, lady?” His new query came accompanied by the sound of him stripping off his trousers and smalls.
“Music? Yes, of course.” She wondered for a bewildered moment if he were proposing musical accompaniment to his forced seduction.
“You didn’t want me to sing earlier. Someday I will have to sing and play my lute for you.”
“Why do you play the lute?” she asked, realizing distraction was his aim.
“You needn’t sound so incredulous,” he said, without offense. “Why shouldn’t I? And German Lieder are beautiful. Not so beautiful as you, of course, but very stirring nonetheless.”
Ignoring his compliment, she fished about for an answer to his question. “Surely singing is not the typical pastime of a gentleman warrior. And nobody plays the lute anymore.”
“I play the lute; I like it.” He padded back to the cot, sounding amused. “Nor is knife throwing the typical pastime of a lady,” he said as an afterthought.
In the dark of the tent, he climbed into the cot and pulled them both under the linen sheets and soft woolen blankets. The narrowness of the mattress left no room to move away from him. She considered leaping up, trying to run, fighting him—but to what end? His size and strength far outmatched hers, and the camp housed almost fifty soldiers, all loyal to him.
The moment was his.
Damn him.
He lay on his side behind her, one arm slipped beneath the pillow cushioning her head, his other arm brushing her hair off her face and twirling circles on her oil-slick shoulder.
His bare flesh pressed against hers; he was completely without clothing, while she was still in her breeches. Heat radiated off his body, but it did nothing to stop the trembling that shook her frame.
He reached behind him to the floor and came back a moment later with the bottle of scented oil. He poured it into his hands and then cupped her breasts.
The breath whooshed from her at his intimate touch. “Ravensworth, stop!” The sensation was overpowering as he set up a rhythm of firm slow strokes across the sensitive peaks of her breasts—spikes of pleasure warring with her resistance and fear. She tried to scramble away from his touch, but his length lined her back with immovable force and his arms ringed her.
“Hush, Lenora, I won’t hurt you. And you must call me Wolfram. Please, I am Wolfram, your husband. It is only me. You mustn’t fear me, not ever. You are so beautiful. You feel so wonderful, so precious, here in my arms.” He whispered the wicked words in her ear, licking and nibbling at the whorls there as he flicked at her nipples and rolled their slippery tips between his fingers.
She knew not what to say, what to do, how to process the sensations of his slick exploration of her body.
When he slid one large hand down her belly on a trail of oil, down into the front of her breeches, a whimper escaped her—or maybe it was a moan.
He shimmied the breeches down her hips, pushed them off her legs. More oil drizzled onto her flesh, across her buttocks and belly. The air around them was warm from his body and redolent with the scents of the oil and their flesh. Their bodies were slick with the oil.
He slid a hand over her hip, sliding across her inner thigh into the folds of her mound. Her hips arched in helpless reflex at his touch, and she had to bite her lip against the sound.
Definitely a moan.
Her stupid traitorous body. She didn’t want to give in to him, give in to this. Perhaps he was right, that under other circumstances they might have met and happily courted. They could have had a wedding night. But not like this, on a battlefield, against her will. “I can’t do this!” she said, on a sob. “You take too much!”
“I know,” he whispered again in her ear. “The world is cruel, and women often suffer because of it.”
“You make it worse, with this sham marriage and seduction!”
“I understand. In your place, I’d feel the same. No one wants their choices taken away from them.”
“Then stop, you oaf!”
“I cannot.” His voice sounded heavy with genuine regret. “It must be this way, lady.”
Another moan escaped her as his long fingers leisurely explored her most secret parts, her despair and pleasure twining together into she knew not what. She had no framework, no prior experience, to grant her understanding of tonight.
This moment was not of Kurt, she knew—not his hellish schemes of pain and humiliation and fear. But Ravensworth—Wolfram
—controlled the play all the same, and her will made no difference. She could not, would not, consent to having her choices taken away like this.
He seemed to read her thoughts. “I know, Liebling, you are right. Lovemaking should never be by force. I’ll spend a lifetime atoning for tonight, however you deem fit to will it.”
He shifted against her, sliding his free arm under her shoulders, hugging her from behind with one hand across her breast and the other playing with the slickness between her thighs. She felt him from behind—that hard part of him. He was long, thick, insistent. The smooth head of him nudged into her oiled folds from behind. But he didn’t enter her. He seemed content to play about the entrance to her sheath instead of thrusting home, as she imagined must be his desire. Just above, his fingers played leisurely at the focus of her pleasure. He circled her flesh there—there—with slick firm pressure. His other hand toyed with her nipples.
He seemed in no hurry at all. His warmth was everywhere around her, the hard length of his massive frame pressed against her back, his shaft stroking shallowly between her legs, his muscle-roped arms hugging her from behind. All the while, he purred at her ear, sucked gently on her earlobe, and whispered the most shocking nonsense praising her beauty and slick heat.
Despite her resistance, her pleasure grew. When it got too much—the tantalizing pleasure swirling across her flesh and through her loins—she tried to pull away sharply, on a spike of fear and anger. “No, this is not fair. You take advantage. I did not agree.”
But he tightened his arms. There was no escape. “Liebling, we do it together.”
“Then mount me and have done! You don’t need to touch me like this, to try to get me to . . .” One did not talk of such things, but she had some sense of what he was after. She’d touched her own body in bed at night, under the covers, enough to know something of how this strange intensity worked. That he wanted to wring a response out of her as a way of bending her to his will. “Forcing pleasure on my body does not mean I’ve consented to this sham marriage. I don’t want this!”
“I will not take your maidenhead without giving you pleasure in return.” She heard the stubbornness in his voice, grasped something of his notion of honor at work.
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