Bound to Be a Groom (3 page)

Abbey of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas, Burgos, Spain – September 1807

Initially, they had tried to ignore the heat that flamed between them. For many months in the spring and summer, they would catch one another’s eyes and quickly look away—in vespers, in the library, at mealtimes. They would speak of art and nature and herbal remedies, books and political ideas and astronomy . . . but never of feelings.

Anna had tried to quash her feelings through petition and penance, with prayers for forgiveness and relief from her agitation. She had tried to deny how deeply she loved Pia, to convince herself that she only loved her as a friend. She had tried to persuade herself that her physical desire was part of a childish infatuation or sinful temptation, a brief flare of unfamiliar lust that would pass soon enough.

But it hadn’t passed. It had grown.

So, when she began to suspect that Pia felt the same way, there was nothing for it. Anna finally decided to declare her feelings one warm afternoon in September, when the two of them were sent to the surrounding forest to collect some late-summer herbs that would be dried during the long winter. Pia appeared serious and thoughtful as always, but Anna’s heart thudded wildly, emboldened by their exceptional solitude. The novices were rarely granted times to speak privately, so Anna saw it as an opportunity to dash her foolish hopes. Perhaps she had imagined Pia’s answering gazes, and Pia would put an end to her madness once and for all.

“Do you look forward to spending your life in the convent, Pia?” Anna tried to sound casual as she bent to snip an herb.

Pia turned her head slightly. “I never think about it one way or another. It will be my life whether I look forward to it or not.”

Her moderate, equable nature was something Anna had come to love about Pia because it was the shell she wanted to break apart, to see what roiled beneath.

Choosing her words carefully, Anna said, “I think about it.”
I think about taking you away with me.

Bending to pick a stalk of malva, Pia spoke without looking up. “As well you should. That is your future, is it not? To be a lady-in-waiting at court next year?”

Anna couldn’t look away from the turn of Pia’s long back and strong shoulders. She could stare at her for hours. She was desperate to touch her. Her breath caught in her throat.

“Anna?” Pia was standing in front of her by then, stepping closer.

“Yes?” She licked her lips in the one nervous gesture she’d never been able to conquer.

Pia looked at her mouth for a split second. “Are you unwell?”

“I don’t know . . .” Anna whispered, her heart pounding.

“What is it?” Pia’s voice had softened to a near whisper, as well.

Anna gathered all her courage. “I believe I’m in love with you.”

Pia didn’t gasp or step back, as Anna had half hoped she would. They stood like that in the dappled glade—staring at one another—until the autumn noises of the forest were like clanging cymbals all around them. Insects skittered and dried leaves crackled into the air. An acorn falling might as well have been a hundred-year-old oak crashing to the earth for how the small sound resonated.

Finally, after what felt like an entire rotation of the moon, Pia’s eyes blinked slowly, then drifted shut. The sparsely filled basket slid out of her weak hold. “Touch me,” Pia pleaded. “I beg you.”

That was all the encouragement Anna needed. Within seconds, she had pinned Pia against one of the large oak trees. After so many months of wondering and hoping, the reality of Pia’s lips and skin and hair threw Anna into a sort of frenzy. Kissing her lips and then along the strong turn of her ivory neck, nipping at her ear, Anna reveled in the physical reality of Pia in her arms. The smell of her—a mixture of fresh autumn air and spices from the convent kitchen where Pia had baked bread that morning. The sound of her—a loving compilation of supplication and devotion.

Anna began removing Pia’s clothes without asking permission, pulling desperately at her tightly wound coil of hair. The more Anna pushed, the more Pia bent. As if they were both perfectly attuned to the moment and its meaning: that they were both discovering their true natures. Pia was made to soften and sway into Anna’s controlling, greedy hands.

“You are so beautiful, Pia, so strong and wise,” Anna gasped between kisses and fumbling fingers. “I watch you all the time, how you manage everyone without flouting the abbess’s authority.” Her lips trailed down Pia’s neck. “I’ve seen your lovely drawings and your modesty about them. I’ve seen your patience with the younger girls. I love watching you.”

“I’ve watched you too, Anna,” Pia confessed, her breath shallow. “I’ve watched you grow into this woman who knows her own mind. I see how you look at the world. How you will take what you want.”

“I will take you. I know that now.” Anna’s voice was low and demanding, and she watched as Pia’s body responded to its strength—her strength. “My wild ideas about you have become so real to me.” Pia whimpered at the words, and Anna kissed her full on the lips, savoring the texture and taste, the feel of Pia’s tongue against hers.

Anna broke away for a moment. Pia leaned her forehead against hers and said, “I’ve dreamt of you so many times, Anna.” She reached tentatively to hold a strand of Anna’s silky blonde hair between her curious fingers. “You come to me at night, into my bed, like an angel.”

Anna laughed, low and mischievous. “If I am an angel, I’m an angel of darkness.” She spoke as she worked, removing the last of Pia’s clothes with rough, tugging movements. Every time she gave a firm pull at a piece of fabric, Pia seemed to come emotionally, as well as physically, undone. “The thoughts I have about you, Pia, they are dark and heathenish. Beautiful and raw.”

“Oh God,” Pia whispered after Anna removed her coarse overdress and her well-worn underclothes. All that remained was the long skein of linen that Pia used to bind her large breasts. She had never been naked in front of anyone. Out of fear or habit, she reached up quickly to prevent Anna from removing the last vestige of her modesty.

A stormy look of disapproval passed across Anna’s face, and she took a step away from Pia. Many years later, when Pia would look back over the course of their life together, Pia knew this for what it was: the first small punishment for her defiance. At the time, Pia was confused, both timid and exhilarated at once.

“Don’t ever do that again,” Anna said, in a gritty voice that Pia felt in the deepest parts of her throbbing body.

Pia had spent her entire life in the convent, where her very existence had been defined by obedience; this felt like something else altogether.

“Drop your hands and open yourself to me, Pia.”

The submission Anna was demanding of her was something far more complex—far more rewarding—than the monotonous conformity of her daily life. Anna’s voice elicited a kind of sensual obedience that required strenuous complicity, not complaisance. A shiver ran down Pia’s spine.

“Do you like when I tell you what I want?” Anna trailed a single finger along Pia’s neck. “When I am firm with you?”

Pia nodded, almost weeping with the truth of it.

Anna held her chin. “Answer me, my sweet. So I know you feel it, too. I want to hear your gentle voice crack under the weight of it.”

“Yes, Anna . . . I love when you speak to me thus.” Pia gave herself to Anna in that moment, gave herself into the other woman’s keeping. With her head tilted back against the rough bark of the tree and her hands hanging loosely at her sides, Pia arched slightly forward, offering herself to Anna. It was as if they had become one in mind and spirit before they had even begun to explore one another’s flesh.

“Remove the binding, my love.” Anna’s hands grazed over the linen where it was pulled tight and firm across Pia’s breasts. “Slowly.”

Pia wanted to do as she was told. Resolved, but with trembling fingers, she began to unravel the fabric from around her ribs. She feared her heart was unraveling right along with it and hoped Anna was not orchestrating their mutual destruction. The possibility was distinct, if not deterring.

When the fabric pooled at her feet, near the overturned basket, Pia didn’t know what to do with her hands. Seeking something to ground her, she reached her hands behind her and let the rough bark of the tree dig into her palms, as if she were tying herself to the mast and Anna was the siren.

Her heart pounded madly as Anna stepped closer and said, “You are the most gorgeous creature, my wild forest nymph.”

Pia arched her chest closer to Anna’s outstretched hand, her body begging for contact. “Please, please, please touch me.”

When Anna’s small delicate hand finally caressed the bare skin of Pia’s breast, they both stopped breathing. Pia’s eyes were heavy with desire, an unfamiliar thick warmth that pounded through her veins and prickled her skin.

“Pia . . . I want to do so many things . . . with you . . . to make you feel . . .” Anna pinched Pia’s nipple and watched as her skin tightened in response.

Pia could do nothing but gasp.

Then Anna looked down at the thatch of black hair between Pia’s legs. “Do you touch yourself here?” Anna reached with her other hand and cupped Pia’s mound before she could answer. The sensation was explosive and grounding all at once. The physical contact of Anna’s hand pressing against her most private self—imprinting Anna’s ownership upon her body—had Pia shuddering as if she’d been struck. A seeking finger slipping into her moist channel had her crying out. Anna’s assault was a declaration that Pia was hers—as if she were silently asserting,
These breasts, this moist heat: mine
. It was a consummation.

“Yes,” Pia confessed, her voice reedy. “At night. When I think of you. I tried to stop, but when I imagine you—” Pia gasped again when Anna’s finger began to circle her sensitive nub.

“It’s torture, isn’t it?” Anna asked.

“Mmm hmm.” Pia bit her lip at how sweet the torture was, all the sweeter now that it was really Anna’s hand and not Pia’s imagination.

“Hold on, Pia. Hold on for as long as you can. And then let me take you.”

“Yes, Anna . . .” The words floated out of her.

When Anna’s lips captured Pia’s hard sensitive nipple and her tongue mimicked what her fingers were doing below, Pia wasn’t able to contain her reaction. A cry of complete surrender ripped through her. From that moment on, Anna’s hands and mouth took complete possession of Pia’s body. The hard bark pressing against the flesh of her back contrasted with the press of Anna’s soft mouth and demanding hands.

“You are so slick and hot, Pia. So good for me.” Anna’s narration heightened Pia’s response; warm liquid heat slid down her inner thigh. “Ah, you like when I tell you how good you are, don’t you?”

Pia nodded helplessly.

“You are
very
good,” Anna whispered in her ear as she put a second finger, then a third into Pia’s throbbing, swollen sex. “I want to know every inch of this body of yours. I want to make it sing for me.”

“Oh God,” Pia whispered. “It’s coming over me, Anna. I’m going—”

Anna kissed Pia’s lips and plunged her tongue into Pia’s mouth while she turned her fingers against the sensitive inner walls of Pia’s channel.

“Anna! Stop!” she protested against Anna’s sensual assault.

But she didn’t stop, and Pia was glad. Anna kept stroking that inner place she must know so well from taking her own pleasure. The desperate pleading of Pia’s voice only seemed to drive Anna harder to prolong the agonizing pleasure.

“Never,” Anna whispered. “I’ll never stop loving you.” She moved her fingers in and out several more times until Pia was completely spent, the final reverberations of her climax shuddering through her.

Anna kissed Pia more gently, then helped her settle to the ground. She spread out Pia’s dress, and they used it as a blanket to rest upon. Anna lay back and pulled Pia’s naked body alongside hers, rubbing her bare back in long soothing strokes to warm her skin against the cool air.

When Pia began to come back to herself, her hands started wandering over Anna’s slim body. “You are so much better than any dream.”

Anna laughed. “I certainly hope so.”

Pia blushed. “I meant . . .”

Anna softened and kissed her again. “I know what you meant. I’m sorry to tease. You are so sweet and perfect. So natural. I feel as though you have always been mine.”

God, how those words soothed and excited Pia. “I feel it too, as if I have always been preparing for you, to be yours.” And there they were: no negotiation, no confusion, only the simple realization that
that
was the nature of their relationship, the fabric of their love for one another. That Pia belonged to Anna.