Charming the Prince (32 page)

 
Willow should have been shivering in her thin chemise, but it seemed both of them were immune to the chill in the fireless chamber. As Bannor bore her back against the bedpost, his powerful body trembled all over, burning with the same fever that threatened to consume her.

 
"I can't bear it when you cry," he muttered, seeking to kiss the tearstains from her cheeks.

 
"Not even when I'm weeping for your touch?" Willow murmured against his ear, seized by a spirit of boldness.

 
Not even in her boldest fantasy would Willow have dared to imagine that Bannor would drop to his knees at her feet, ease up her chemise, and seek a taste of those pearly tears. She gasped as he used his broad thumbs to part the softness of her nether curls, exposing her to the silken wonder of his tongue.

Her first instinct was to clench her thighs together, to prevent the both of them from committing a sin so deliriously shocking it must surely be mortal.

Bannor pressed his stubbled cheek to the pale cream of her thigh, his voice raw with longing. "Please, Willow..."

Willow knew he was not a man to beg. Nor a man to kneel before anyone but his king. But he was willing to humble himself so he might exalt her. By generously granting her such sway over him, he rendered her powerless to deny him anything. Stroking her fingers through his hair, she allowed him to coax her thighs apart, then pressed her eyes shut, too shy to bear the primal beauty of his dark head between her legs.

As Bannor took his first sip from her brimming chalice, Willow was seized by a pleasure so piercing she feared she might swoon. She fisted her hands in his hair, whimpering his name with her every breath. He cupped her naked bottom in his palms, making it clear that she could beg and writhe all she wanted, but to no avail. With the rigid bedpost at her back and his hot mouth pressed against her, there was no escaping the unholy rapture of his kiss.

 
His tongue flickered over her, probing the delicate shell of her flesh as if to seek a priceless treasure. When he finally found the glistening pearl tucked within, he suckled it until her head rolled back and her knees crumpled. His fingers dug into the soft flesh of her buttocks as shudder after shudder of raw ecstasy wracked her.

 
When they subsided, Willow could only collapse over his shoulder, clinging as if to keep from drowning in a fathomless sea. Their sin had indeed proved mortal. She had died in his arms, and he had stolen her soul as surely as he had stolen her heart.

 
"Not enough, sweeting," Bannor whispered fiercely against her quivering belly. "Not this time. This time I promised you more."

Rising, he drew off her chemise and heaved her back on the feather mattress, then dragged his shirt over his head, his expression as relentless as if he was preparing to march into battle. Willow reached for him with both hands, unable to resist the primitive allure of his battle-scarred chest. Kicking off his boots, he fell on her like a starving man, devouring her lips, her throat, her throbbing nipples. Before she could catch her breath, his fingers were sifting through the damp curls at the juncture of her thighs, gliding through the warm honey his tongue had melted from her womanhood.

 
He dipped his longest finger in and out of that virgin hollow, causing exquisite shivers of anticipation to wrack her womb. Without even realizing it, Willow began to arch her hips in a rhythm as old as time itself, inviting him to go deeper, entreating him to be rougher, panting with a need she could barely comprehend.

But Bannor seemed to know exactly what she needed. Even as he was kissing her mouth with a sinuous tenderness that made her want to weep, he was joining another finger to the first. He pressed them both deep within her, then began to circle that throbbing pearl with the callused pad of his thumb. A broken sob escaped her as the pleasure crested without warning, leaving her limp with delight, yet strangely unfulfilled.

 
She opened her misty eyes to find Bannor resting on his back beside her, with one arm flung over his eyes. "Bannor?" she whispered.

He grunted a reply, but did not lower his arm.

 
Willow rolled to her side and began to stroke his chest, thinking how curious it was to be naked while he was still half-clothed, yet feel no hint of shyness. "I know how you hate these frank discussions, but if we're to stay wed and don't want any more children, perhaps you'd best share how you kept all the women who weren't your wives from breeding."

 
" 'Twas never a concern. I wasn't willing to risk scattering a bunch of bastards like myself about the countryside. I didn't want some son or daughter I'd never met to grow up despising me."

 
Willow's hand froze in its motion. "Do you mean to tell me that when you wed Mary, you were a—"

 
Bannor lowered his arm to glare at her. "If you laugh, I shall petition the church for that annulment.
After
I strangle you."

 
But Willow's smile was one of bemused wonder. "And in the years since Margaret died, you've never
...?"

 
"Not even once. Although God knows I've wanted to." His glare deepened to a full-blown scowl. "Never more than the first time I laid eyes on you, my lady."

 
Willow's heart melted at his reluctant confession. Her hand skated down his abdomen, making his taut flesh ripple in reaction. "Netta told me of another trick we might try."

 
He cocked an eyebrow at her. "Do you really think 'twould be wise to heed the advice of a woman who has had four children?"

She leaned over and whispered something in his ear. He lay utterly still for a moment, then sprang to his knees and began to work at a stubborn knot in the drawstring of his hose.

 
Willow was somewhat unnerved by his sudden burst of enthusiasm. "Of course, I should warn you that Netta said there was only one sure way for a woman to keep from getting with child."

 
"And that would be?" Bannor gave the hapless drawstring a savage tug that snapped it in two.

 
As the hose slid from his hips, Willow blushed and turned her face away, suffering a latent pang of shyness. "Swear a vow of chastity."

 
Bannor hurled his hose into a far corner and seized Willow's face in the cup of his hands. "I'll leave it up to you, sweeting. Will it be chastity?" He lowered himself on top of her, settling his weight between her splayed thighs. "Or me?"

 
"You," Willow whispered, mesmerized by the wicked sparkle in his heavy-lidded eyes.

 
She was still gazing into those eyes when Bannor buried himself deep inside of her. He had promised to serve her a banquet sweeter than any she had ever known, but he'd failed to warn her it would be so filling. As her body struggled to contain him, a hoarse moan—half pleasure and half pain—spilled from her throat. The pain was sharp and fleeting, but the pleasure seemed to go on and on, pulsing in time with each shuddering beat of her heart.

 
Kissing away the tears that had sprung unbidden to her eyes, Bannor began to glide in and out of her, stroking her honeyed sheath with such paralyzing tenderness that his absence soon became more painful than his presence. He was so much bigger than she was, so much stronger. Yet she sensed he was holding his lust in check, much as he had held his bloodlust in check when he had feared harming his children.

 
She clung to his powerful shoulders and turned her head from side to side, gasping for breath. "Bannor, please... oh, sweet heaven, please..."

 
He mistook her whimper as a plea for freedom. When he began to roll off of her, Willow wrapped her legs around his waist and rolled with him, impaling herself on the full measure of his manhood. Bannor collapsed against the mattress, groaning as if it had been he, and not she, who had been struck the mortal blow.

 
Willow shook her hair out of her eyes, marveling that she could contain such power and passion within her fragile body. Her exultation swelled as she watched the flickers of rapture dance across the rugged beauty of Bannor's features with each rise and fall of her hips. He closed his hands around her waist and arched against her, urging her to take more of him when she would have sworn she'd already taken all she could hold.

 
Still clutching her waist, he rolled again, imprisoning her beneath him. A thrill of raw delight coursed through her veins as his hips increased their tempo. His tongue swept through her mouth, wordlessly promising that this time he would hold nothing back. He would grant her no mercy and no reprieve until she'd surrendered the last shred of her self-control to his tender mastery.

 
Willow had no choice but to do just that, as he angled his hips, deliberately rubbing his rigid length against that live ember buried at the crux of her curls. A scarlet haze descended over her eyes as the world burst into flames. As her womb convulsed in an agony of pleasure, Bannor's own massive body began to shudder.

 
Willow could not help but reach for him as he tore himself from her, spilling his seed against the softness of her belly with a mighty roar.

Twenty Seven

 
Sir Hollis was haggling over the price of a barrel of wine with a traveling tinker when his master's roar resounded through the castle. He might not have started so violently, had Bannor not been bellowing
his
name. Muttering an excuse to escape from the bandy-legged little man, Hollis began to back out of the buttery. As soon as he rounded the corner, he forsook the dignity of his position and went flying up the stairs to the north tower, fearing the worst. The last time his lord had summoned him in such an earsplitting manner, he had found Bannor barricaded in the tower, cursing the treaty with France and bemoaning the fact that he was being held hostage by his own offspring.

 
This time the tower door had been flung wide open, spilling a puddle of golden sunshine onto the landing. As Hollis came stumbling into the chamber, Bannor swung away from the unshuttered window, giving him a bemused look.

 
"You bellowed, my lord?" Hollis inquired, still gasping for breath.

 
"There was no need for you to make such haste. The tower wasn't afire, and neither was my beard." Bannor stroked the fresh growth that darkened his jaw.

 
Feeling a trifle bit foolish, Hollis gave his doublet a tug to straighten it and joined Bannor at the window. "Old habits die hard, my lord. How was I to know I wouldn't find you with a French dagger at your throat or with Mary Margaret bouncing up and down on your chest?"

Bannor chuckled. "Once I would have preferred the former to the latter, but now I'm not so sure."

 
A gleeful shriek wafted up from the courtyard, making him grin instead of wince. The day was uncommonly cold, but sunny, and after nearly two months of snowfall, relieved only by fitful spells of icy rain, the children had streamed out of the castle like a horde of eager honeybees bursting from their hive.

 
They were currently engaged in a rousing game of hot cockles. When Ennis asked for a new volunteer, Hammish thrust his hand into the air, bouncing up and down in his eagerness to be chosen. After he had donned a coarse linen hood, the children took turns hitting him over the head and urging him to identify his assailant. Since their halfhearted blows only made the lad giggle hysterically, they soon grew winded and bored.

 
'Twas Desmond who suggested a round of hood-man blind. A reluctant Bea was coaxed into being the first one to wear the hood this time. Blinded by its thick folds, she groped at the air while the rest of the children danced just out of her reach.

Bannor shook his head. "I still don't understand why Willow favors that little maidservant of hers. I've yet to see the wench do an honest lick of work."

 
As they watched, Desmond seized one of the fat flaxen braids protruding from beneath the hood and gave it a playful yank.

 
Bea snatched off the hood and whirled on him, her blue eyes pools of outrage. As he sprinted out of the bailey, casting a taunt over his shoulder, she snatched up her skirts and gave chase. With her braids flying out behind her, she looked like the little girl she was, instead of the woman she pretended to be.

 
"As long as the lad's legs are getting, she'll never catch him," Hollis predicted.

 
"Oh, she'll catch him," Bannor said, a wry grin playing around his mouth. "He'll see to that, I'll wager."

 
While Bannor watched them pelt through the list and disappear into the barn, Hollis's gaze was drawn to an iron gate in the far corner of the bailey. A woman had just emerged from the herb garden with chubby little Peg balanced on her hip. The baby's questing fingers tangled in the tidy bun at her nape, causing her thick mane of honey brown hair to come tumbling around her shoulders. Instead of scolding the babe, she pressed a kiss to its rosy cheek, a smile transforming her own rawboned features.

Bannor followed the direction of Hollis's gaze. "She is a handsome woman, is she not?"