“Thorne,” she whispered.
Again he touched his fingertips to her lips, but this time his eyes were filled not with caution, but with regret. His gaze traveled from her eyes to her mouth as he stroked his callused thumb across her lower lip. She thought he was going to speak, but he seemed to think better of it. Instead, he bent to retrieve his lantern from the floor and rose to his feet.
At the doorway, he parted the curtain and stood for a long moment with his back to her. Finally he glanced quickly over his shoulder, said “Good night, my lady,” and left.
* * *
Sleep eluded Martine, although she hovered for some time in a dreamy, half-wakeful haze. Long golden ribbons and yards of apple-green silk swirled around her while muted voices whispered of fate and free will, fear and courage.
She saw the lake in Normandy from the perspective of a child standing at its edge. The water was the fathomless blue of Thorne’s eyes, and very still, reflecting the cloud-speckled sky like a giant looking glass. It beckoned her so invitingly, as it always had when she was a child. It had beckoned her mother, too, but with a darker invitation, the comforting seduction of eternity.
In her mind’s eye, she stepped into the water. Cold fear clutched at her chest, but she gulped it down and took another step.
Her conversation with Thorne had enlightened her. She knew what she had to do. If she didn’t, she would always regret her cowardice.
Having made her decision, she lay awake the rest of the night, eyes wide in the dark, waiting for dawn.
* * *
Stretched out naked on his little cot, his crossed feet hanging off the end, his hands clasped behind his head, Thorne watched the first pale hint of dawn wash the blackness from the sky outside his chamber window. He wondered if he would ever sleep again.
He frowned in puzzlement at the muffled sounds from the main hall. Someone had gotten up early. They hadn’t even rung the bell for lauds yet. He reached over and pulled the curtain aside just in time to see a black-clad figure disappear down the stairwell.
Presently he heard footsteps in the courtyard. Rising, he looked out the window.
It was still dark, but no longer raining, and he could clearly see Martine, in her hooded mantle, entering the stable. He watched until she reappeared, leading her saddled dun mare. Where could she be going at this hour? She mounted, rode out through the main entrance, then headed north. There was nothing of interest north of the priory except the river. Was that where she went?
He pulled on his chausses, sat on the edge of the bed, and thoughtfully scratched his morning stubble. She had never gone to the river without him, not that he knew. Why had she decided to go now, when it was barely light out, and they had to prepare for the ride back to Harford?
She wouldn’t be eager to return, with her wedding, which she dreaded, but a fortnight hence. It was curious that the married state Adela had so coveted should be viewed by Martine as such a curse. What the mother saw as heaven, the daughter saw as hell, a hell she voluntarily condemned herself to for the rest of her life.
There is no rest of my life, she had said. I’ve made my decision.
Decision. She had used that word in regard to her mother as well, Thorne recalled. She made the decision and acted on it. In a way, I even admire it.
A chill crawled up Thorne’s back and clutched at his scalp. ‘Twas the only way out, she had said. She made the decision and acted on it...
I’ve made my decision... There is no rest of my life.
Thorne stood up.
I’ve made my decision.
“Sweet Jesus,” he muttered, grabbing his shirt off its hook and sprinting from the chamber.
* * *
Thorne slid off the bare back of his white stallion and left the animal untethered above the river while he made his way swiftly down to the water’s edge. It was barely light out, and a thick mist filled the gorge, trapped within its mossy walls. He could see nothing but what was close enough to touch.
“My lady!” he yelled, and waited, hearing nothing. Was he too late? Had she already done it? His heart filled his chest, pounding like Spanish drums.
He whipped off his shirt and waded hip-deep into the river, looking wildly around. Even without the mist, he wouldn’t have known which way to turn.
“My lady!” he shouted. “My lady!”
Dear God, please don’t let this happen, he prayed. You’ve punished me enough. Don’t take Martine.
He imagined finding her, cold and limp, and a scream tore from his lungs. “Martine!”
A soft ripple from behind. He wheeled around and saw a form in the mist, pale and luminous and very close.
Her eyes, like lakes, met his through the swirling fog. She stood waist-deep in the water, her arms crossed on her bare chest, clothed only in long wet ribbons of golden hair.
“Martine! Thank God.” In a heartbeat he closed the distance between them and gathered her in his arms, relief overwhelming him. “I thought you were dead.” He held her tight and kissed the top of her head.
“Dead!” She looked up at him, her eyes betraying confusion and then understanding. “You thought I—you thought...”
His face must have mirrored the torment in his heart, because she reached up to comfortingly stroke his cheek. He closed his eyes, straining for composure. Such fear, then such joy. It was more than he could bear.
“I swam,” she said, and he opened his eyes. She stood so close, her face inches from his. “You said I should swim, that I should face my fear. I did. ‘Twas wonderful. I felt so strong.” Her arms encircled him.
He laughed in relief, pulling her close. She had been swimming. Of course. She had just been swimming.
He kissed her forehead, her temple. He laced the fingers of one hand through her hair while the other kneaded her back, smooth and wet, pressing her to him.
Her hair covered her like a mantle. Where its cool strands parted, he could feel her breasts, warm and soft, against his bare chest. A small, civilized voice told him to pull back. I will, he thought. Just let me feel her, just for a moment.
Cradling her head with both big hands, he tilted her face up and pressed his lips to her eyelids, then to the skin stretched taut over her high cheekbones. Her eyes were closed, her lips so ripe and inviting. No, he wouldn’t kiss her mouth. Then he would truly be lost.
I won’t kiss her, he thought, lowering his mouth to hers.
Just a touch... He brushed his lips against hers and heard her sigh unevenly.
These are Martine’s lips touching mine, he thought dizzily. Again, slowly, warm flesh against flesh, a fleeting caress. Not a kiss, not really, just a caress of the lips, nothing more.
Through his ragged breathing he thought he could hear the drumming of his heart, feel its driving rhythm in his loins. He closed his mouth gently over hers... not a kiss, not really. His tongue parted her lips, seeking her heat, the sweet, intoxicating taste of her. She trembled ever so slightly, and he felt her nipples stiffen against his chest.
There was no sound in the gorge save their breathing. But deep inside, heard only by him, rose an untamed howl, the roar of the bear straining at his tethers.
He had to touch her. Without moving his mouth from hers, he bared her by gathering her hair to the back, then brought both palms to rest on her breasts, which made her gasp. He filled his hands with her, stroking, caressing, thrilling to the pulse of her heart through the warm flesh, thumbing the rigid nipples until she moaned.
His body responded, rising and straining against his wet woolen chausses. He knew she felt it, but she made no move to back away, so he reached down beneath the water, closed his hands over her cool bottom, and pressed her to him. She molded her body to his, her own hands gliding down to the small of his back to urge him against her.
With one hand tangled in her hair and the other wrapped around her, crushing her to him, he surrendered to his need to take her mouth in a deep, hungry kiss. She kissed him back. He felt her passion, her h
eat, and knew without a doubt that she felt just as helpless as he, just as lost, just as overcome by desire.
Inside, he felt the tethers snap and fall away, and then a fierce, raw surge of animal power. Without breaking the kiss, he scooped her up in his arms and waded purposefully to shore, his head filled with a savage roar that only he could hear.
The bear had broken free.
Chapter 14
‘Tis a dream, she thought as he lowered her onto the cool, spongy moss. He rose over her in the mist, yanking at the drawstring of his chausses.
She closed her eyes. ‘Tis a dream. Soon I’ll awaken.
And then he covered her with his large body and took her in his arms, and she knew it was no dream. She was here, on this foggy riverbank, at dawn. She was here with Thorne. These were Throne’s lips on hers, she thought with amazement, Thorne’s rough, unshaven cheek grazing her own. The restless hands exploring her body were Thorne’s, the rigid heat pressed against her thigh belonged to him.
He awakened her untouched places, drawing sighs of pleasure from her throat as his caresses grew bolder, more impassioned. He lowered his head to her breast, drawing first one nipple and then the other into the heat of his mouth, sucking hard, grazing her with his teeth. He followed that torment with little licks and kisses, continuing them in a warm path down her belly.
She shivered when she felt his breath between her legs, gasped at the warm pressure of his lips, the hot intimacy of his tongue. Closing one hand around her hip, he slid a long finger inside her, caressing her from within.
It was a strange, dark sorcery he worked with his hand and his mouth. It was like making fire by rubbing two sticks together, the friction coaxing a red-hot glow from what had always been cool, generating a spark of excruciating pleasure that flickered breathlessly on the edge of flame...
Delirious with need, deafened by the blood pounding in her ears, she clutched at his hair. “Please...”
He withdrew his finger, gently kissed her aching sex, and eased his large body down onto hers. She opened herself to him, holding him close. Then he shifted and reached between them. She knew what was coming and welcomed it, yet when he pressed into her, stretching her open, she tensed, her heart racing in panic.
Now he would own her. Now he would consume her.
He took her face in his hands and she looked up into his eyes, so close, so endlessly blue. He whispered things she could barely hear over the roar in her ears... endearments, promises...
In the depths of his eyes she saw reassurance, as well as a deep and profound hunger. On their glassy surface she saw her own reflection, and her own hunger, as great as his. Their coming together had been inevitable. She had known it from the moment she first saw him on the dock at Bulverhythe Harbor.
She could just make out his words. “...but if you want me to stop—”
She chuckled and shook her head. How could he think she would want him to stop?
He took her mouth in a kiss of thanks and fierce longing. The kiss muffled her gasp as he moved within her again, pushing with slow, deliberate care. The muscles in his arms and shoulders were as tight as bowstrings, and Martine knew that he was holding back for her.
He paused. Half sheathed within her, he reached down to caress her again where their bodies joined. That wondrous spark ignited once more within her, and she lifted her hips, seeking his touch, pleading this time not with her voice, but with her body. Please, please... oh, please...
In the heart-stopping moment before the spark flamed, she gripped his shoulders, crying his name. White heat consumed her, a flash fire that crackled along her veins, rocking her with its force. Dimly she felt his hands lift her hips and heard his groan of effort as he drove in hard. In a single, rending stroke, he buried himself completely within her, then gathered her in his arms and held her tight and still as her quaking subsided.
“Are you all right?” he asked softly.
She took a deep breath and nodded. So great had been her pleasure that it had overwhelmed the pain. She had barely been aware of it. No doubt it was as he had intended. He trailed his fingers through her wet hair, and she closed her eyes.
He filled her, possessed her. She felt impossibly hot and stretched, and knew that he’d torn her inside. She wondered if she would be sore tomorrow, then remembered that tomorrow she would be back at Harford Castle, preparing to wed Sir Edmond.
She opened her eyes. “We must be mad.”
He pressed a thoughtful kiss to her forehead. “I lived among madmen once, in a hole in the ground in the Levant. All but your brother and I eventually lost their senses. They were the lucky ones. They forgot about the chains that bound their feet and the prison walls that surrounded them. Some of them were even happy.”
He trailed a finger down her forehead and along her nose. When he pressed it to her lips, she tasted it with the tip of her tongue.
“If we’re mad,” he murmured, his mouth descending toward hers, “so be it.”
His lips barely grazed hers. The kiss—the kisses, for there were many—were soft and worshipful, as if bestowed upon a precious thing, a sacred object. He worshiped her mouth, her cheeks, her eyelids, ears, and throat.
She became aware of an almost imperceptible movement of his hips, the thrusts excruciatingly slow, achingly gentle.
“Does this hurt?” he whispered hoarsely.
She wrapped her arms around him. “Nay.” Through her breast, she felt his heart pounding in his chest. He has seen to my pleasure, she thought. Now he will see to his own.
Her pleasure had been a surprise to her, and she hadn’t thought it could be repeated. Yet, as he moved within her, his strokes exquisitely measured, she felt that hot little spark rekindle at the juncture of their bodies. Flames of desire licked and teased her; he stoked them with thrusts that grew ever faster, more urgent, more intense. She matched his rhythm, straining unthinkingly toward release, insensible to anything except the rising flood of heat that consumed her. When the firestorm swept through her, it tore sobs from her throat.
He arched over her, rigid and quivering, his hair hanging in sweat-dampened tendrils. When her climax subsided, he swiftly drew himself out and fell on her, crushing her hard into the blanket of moss, his trembling hands fisted in her hair. The gorge echoed with his low, shuddering groans as he pumped against her. She felt his seed pulse hotly over her belly, and then he collapsed, slick with sweat, riding out the tremors that coursed through him.
He breathed an Anglo-Saxon exclamation that she recognized as the English equivalent of “Mon Dieu.” She held him tight, stroking his head as it rested on her shoulder, savoring the feel of him on top of her—his size, his strength, his warmth. She knew enough of reproduction to understand why he had withdrawn, and to be grateful that he’d done so, but she couldn’t help wishing he was still inside her, still connected in that amazingly intimate way.
Presently he brought his mouth to hers for a sweet, languid kiss, then shifted so he could kiss her breasts as well. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured. “Perfect.”
Kneeling over her, he carefully touched the stinging flesh of her sex. “You’re bleeding,” he said, and leaned down to soothe this place of pain and ecstasy with soft kisses and healing licks.
The mist had thinned, and soft dawn sunlight glittered through the trees. Taking her hand, Throne led her off the mossy bank and back into the river. There they remained for some time, holding each other in silence until long after the cold, clear water had washed away all of his seed and the last traces of her virgin’s blood.
* * *
The ride back seemed interminable to Martine. She and Thorne exchanged nothing more than innocuous pleasantries, conscious always of Rainulf’s presence. By the time they arrived at Harford that evening, she felt completely exhausted, not just physically, but emotionally.
What have I done? she thought over and over again as she washed and changed out of her dusty traveling clothes. And where do I go from here?
&
nbsp; Thorne was waiting for her in the stairwell when she came down for supper. She gasped as he wrapped his big arms around her, pressing her back against the curved stone wall, his mouth seeking hers for a hard, urgent kiss.
“Come to me tonight,” he rasped. His eyes pleaded with her, his hands hungrily exploring her hips, her waist, her breasts.
“Thorne...” She moaned as he found a taut nipple through two layers of wool and tugged. “We have to...” He crushed his hips to hers, and he was so hard, so ready. “Oh, God...”
He bit her earlobe. “Come to me.”
“We have to talk,” she managed, as her arms encircled him.
“God, I need you so much. We’ll talk. Just come to—”
Footsteps. Thorne released her quickly as Bernard came into view from below.
“My lady,” Bernard said silkily, nodding toward Martine. “Woodsman,” he added, glancing back and forth between them. “Supper is on the table, if you two can be troubled to join us.”
* * *
“Enough of that damned Neville,” Godfrey bellowed, rising unsteadily at the head of the supper table. “‘Twould please me if I never heard the bastard’s name again!”
‘Twould please me, as well, thought Martine. All conversation that evening had centered around the murderous baron, who had disappeared from Sussex, along with most of his men, on the day of the betrothal ceremony. His wife had sought and received sanctuary at a small local nunnery, but Neville had not been heard from since. There were rumors that he had fled to the Continent, but several more reliable sources claimed he had journeyed north in order to amass an army of hired soldiers. Not knowing his intent, Olivier had instructed his barons to prepare for battle.
“Everyone shut up!” Godfrey commanded. “You—Thorne. Stand up!” The Saxon, looking slightly wary, rose to his feet. “I have something to say.”
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