Come Back to Me (24 page)

That was the proper order of the world, never mind that he had managed to avoid it all these years. He was married now and he was damn well going to do it right.

Dragon walked into the center of the room where his wife stood. Deliberately, he came up behind her and set a hand on her shoulder. The startled little jump she gave was gratifying but merely a beginning. His long fingers brushed aside the silken fall of her hair, baring the slender line of her neck. He leaned closer, exhaling lightly, and smiled at the shiver that ran through her. Slowly, deliberately, he touched his mouth to the base of her throat, first on one side, then on the other. Her head fell back as she trembled.

"My lord… ?" Her voice was breathless and a little high. A good start.

"Hmmm?" She tasted of honeysuckle, whirls of piney smoke, and her own elusive, purely female scent.

"It was so kind of you to let me ride Grani. Have you had him and Sleipnir long? Are there other horses here, not like them for surely none could be, but I wondered if perhaps you bred them? There is much to be said for that for good horses are always needed. I thought perhaps if you did already, I could help or if not, perhaps you would consider beginning. With such fine stock it would only be a matter of time before people from all over were clamoring for your horses. As you are much interested in trading—"

Grinning, he turned her to face him. She was flushed and her amber eyes looked wide enough to swallow a man. "We can discuss such matters at another time,
wife
. At the moment, all I am interested in is taking you to bed."

He wouldn't have thought it possible but her flush deepened. "Oh, well, as to that, surely there is no rush? I mean, after all, it is not as though we haven't already…"

"Once and as though in a dream. Frankly, my lady, you had me at a disadvantage. I fell asleep embracing a wine skin and awoke to find myself embraced by you."

"You seemed to enjoy it well enough," she said just a little tartly.

"True for all that it was a mere taste, the slightest hint of what is possible."

Excitement warred with alarm. Surely he exaggerated? It wasn't really possible to feel more than she had that night, was it? And if it was, did she want to when she had already come so close to experiencing the seeming oblivion of herself lost in a sea of pleasure? Of her own making, that had been, but this would be of his for she had no doubt now that he meant to take control. Wasn't he doing it already, touching her so lightly, so tantalizingly, tracing the curve of her cheek and her mouth, his breath warm on her, his body so close until it was all she could do not to cry out for him?

By heaven, she would not! Pleasure was well and good, and marriage holy, but pride demanded he not know how easily he could sway her. Did he learn that, she surely would be lost.

"I merely thought you might be tired," she said and raised a winged brow. "After so long a day and the journey itself."

His body, already powerfully aroused, tightened even further. Did she understand that she challenged his manhood? Probably not, for she was in many ways still an innocent. He smiled, but guardedly. "Such wifely concern but unnecessary, I assure you. The feast was to your liking?"

The feast? Vaguely did she remember it for all that it still went on. She could still hear the sounds of reverie, but softly and in the distance. They were quite alone. She looked up, met his gaze, and felt the tingle of surprise she always did at his height and size. His shoulders blocked out the moonlight creeping through the slatted shutters, leaving only the glow of banked fire to illuminate his features. Cast between shadows, he looked carved from stone.

"Your people are kind."

"They can be. Why are you afraid?"

"I am not!" Spoken too quickly, the words rang false.

"I thought you merely uneasy but now I see there is more than that. Why? It is not as though I am a stranger to you."

"But you are, stranger than any man I have ever met before."

Dragon grimaced and caught her hair in his hand, drawing her head back slightly, the better to look at her. "Ever do you prick my vanity. There will be nothing left of it soon."

She stared back at him in bewilderment. "What have I said?"

"It is what you have not, but never mind, I am resolved, what sighs and moans of pleasure, what cries of delight I wish to hear, I will have from you,
wife
, before this night is done."

Rycca gasped and would have pulled away but he had anticipated that and held her fast, by the hair not cruelly but entangled in his hand and by the waist, gripped firmly in a steely arm. She was all womanly curves but they did not melt against him, rather met him strength for strength as she strained to break his hold. He laughed at the fire in her gaze but prudently moved to one side. "That trick will not work twice on me," he cautioned, remembering how she had broken free of him in the Essex wood.

Her bewildered stare followed swiftly by the hot flush of understanding made him regret the words. He had no reason to believe she would behave in such a way again. Still, there were times when a man could be forgiven for choosing prudence.

Yet he could also make amends. He loosed her hair but held her still, drawing her ever closer, and with his free hand stroked her arm lightly. The sleeves of her gown were snugly fitted. He knew she felt his caress as keenly as if he had touched bare skin. "Why should we spar?" he murmured against her mouth. "I only want to give you pleasure."

She trembled, unable to stop herself. He let his hand slip to her breast, his long fingers stroking and teasing the nipple that strained against the thin fabric. Dropping his head, holding her firmly, he touched her there, just letting her feel the rasp of his teeth through the silk that moistened quickly at the touch of his tongue, darkening and clinging to her tightly. Her hands curled into his shoulders as her knees threatened to give way. Yet there was no weakness to her words.

"You want to control me." She spoke dispassionately as though observing the plight of another woman far distant from herself.

Dragon looked up, surprised. "You are my wife."

"Say rather your possession for so do you think, do you not?"

He shrugged, wondering why she stated the obvious. "All wives belong to their husbands."

"I wanted to be free."

His eyes darkened. There was greater challenge here than even he had thought. "You wanted to be safe from Wolscroft and the rest of them, even from me when you thought misguidedly. That is why you fled."

She shook her head. "Oh, no, safety was a convent from which not even my father could have forced me. But it was not to one such that I fled, was it? I wanted freedom, and having tasted it, however briefly, I want it still."

His hands tightened on her, driven by the sudden, piercing pain her words brought. Did she think to leave him again? To flee as she had done and leave him once more bereft. No, by heaven, she would not! "No one is free," he said fiercely. "We are all enmeshed in duty and responsibility."

"Your duty is of your own choosing, for did you not return here after many years away and willingly take up your inheritance? Your destiny is of your own making and you the master of it as much as any man can claim to be. I want the same for myself, no more, no less."

"But you are a woman…" His bewilderment was genuine. Such yearnings as she described belonged to the realm of men. Women were for hearth and home, the nurturing of children, such ordered security of days as could be wrested from uncertain fate. A man in the thick of battle, in the fury of adventure, in the depths of night had to be able to count on that, for without it, of what purpose was anything?

"You are a woman," he repeated firmly. "And my wife. You have been too long apart from womanly ways with no proper influence to guide you. I applaud your strength and your courage; both will breed true in my sons, but—"

"Your sons?
Your sons
! They will be
my
sons, Lord Vanity, and my daughters as well. Mayhap only daughters, for by heaven it would suit me to thwart you so!"

Lies, all lies. Yet strangely truth as well, for she seemed torn in two, at war within herself. The girl she had been was in danger of being lost forever, and the woman she was becoming was as much a stranger to her as the man who sparked the transformation.

His gentleness was forgotten, banished along with the memory of the sweet urgency she had felt lying in the night in his arms as they sped over the sea and the kindnesses he had done her that pierced the shield of loneliness forged in a child's anguish. Yet all this lingered deep within, weighing her down as though with chains of her . own heart's making.

"I think it is not me you fear," he said suddenly, "but yourself." Skald-souled, he saw as though a curtain had been pushed aside and the landscape of her inner self bared to him as surely as he meant to bare her body. "You are afraid of being a woman because you think it makes you weak and vulnerable. Nothing could be less so, but were it not, you still have no choice for your own God has made you so."

He laughed suddenly, relieved to have discovered what he believed to be the source of her rebellion. "But, lady, at least give Him credit. He did a splendid job."

His cheerful evoking of the divine robbed her of breath momentarily. That was just enough for Dragon, who had learned long ago the advantage of surprise. She was in his arms, across the room, and deposited on the bed before she could do more than gasp.

He loomed over her, very big and very determined. His arms were braced on both sides of her, not touching but effectively constraining.

"So you are not afraid. You wish merely to be free."

She glared at him as pride demanded. "I have said as much, have I not?"

"And you want daughters, that is also so?"

"Why do you echo me? To what purpose?"

His teeth flashed white in the fiery light that also danced over her hair, making it appear as tendrils of flame licking the pillow's damask smoothness. "Ah, my lady, what purpose indeed? Perhaps I merely wish to fulfill your wishes. You want freedom? I can give it to you. Daughters, too, although that I cannot absolutely promise."

"How would you make me free?" Send her away perhaps? Banish the shrewish wife he must surely regret taking? Pain stabbed at her. She tried to steel herself against it and could not.

Because his mouth was on her throat again, trailing shivers of delight, teasing and tormenting so enticingly. And his hands, his too-skillful hands, were easing her gown up her long, tapering legs, baring her skin to the cool night air.

"Did you not notice," he murmured, concentrating on his task, "before when we lay together, how you soared at the end? That is a kind of freedom."

Truly, she had never felt freer but not for the world would she tell him that.

"Momentary," she said, "no more."

His eyes gleamed, swooped by dark lashes, crinkling at the corners, windows of his soul. "Momentary? My apologies. Be assured, I will do much better this time."

Why, she wondered, as he lifted her and eased the gown over her head, did that sound like promise and threat all at once?

BECAUSE IT WAS, BOTH TOGETHER, AS SHE REALIZED later when she surfaced just a little from the sea of pleasure into which he had cast her and, gasping, grabbed for air. A man as good as his word, he was that and more. So much more…

"Again, sweetheart," he murmured, his voice deep, compelling, and raised his dark head from the cleft between her thighs. Panting softly, Rycca gazed down the length of herself and wondered whose body she inhabited. Who was this woman who trembled beneath him, whose breasts were swollen, her nipples almost painfully hard, her legs spread shamelessly, her hips rising to the most daring caress? Who was she whose whole being focused on the rapidly coiling tension deep within her, the deceptive languor that enveloped her, drawing tighter and tighter until he bent his head once more, flicking her so lightly, and she…

"Ahhh, nooo!"

Her fingers tangled in his hair, pulling hard as she struggled against the paroxysms of pleasure that would not be denied. She had no chance against him and could scarcely remember why she would want one. He dazzled her senses with each touch, each look, each word.

And he was smiling for he had won again, wresting from her the surrender she did not wish to give. Smiling as he moved up, pausing to drop kisses along her smooth belly, in the hollows beside her hip bones, the vale of her navel, lingering over her body, savoring her until finally, having made her wait, he took her mouth with the deep, possessive thrust of his tongue.

Still, she tried to pull his hair out by the roots. He laughed then and grasped both her wrists, pressing them flat to either side of her head.

"My sweet little wife… so obedient… so compliant—"

"Damn you! You are unfair. Why will you not let me touch you?" As she ached to do, her need growing with each passing moment and unassuaged even by the pleasure he gave her again and again with such remorseless generosity.

He laughed once more and let go of her, rising to stand before the bed. Looking down at the delightfully wanton picture she presented, Dragon shook his head wryly. "Because I know my own limitations and do not care to reach them too quickly, unlike the last time." Holding her gaze, he unabashedly pulled off his tunic and tossed it to one side. Satisfied that he had her attention, he made quick work of his sandals but did not immediately rejoin her. Instead, he went to the nearby table and poured ruby wine from a silver ewer. Filling two goblets of precious glass chased at the rims with gold, he carried them to the bed.

With the tip of her tongue Rycca moistened her lips as she stared at him. Truly, whatever deity was responsible for this man had overdone. From the massive sweep of his shoulders and chest down past narrow hips to thighs bulging with corded strength, he was magnificent. A splendor of nature that compelled her scrutiny as surely as he had her surrender. He moved with grace, utterly at ease with his nakedness and her gaze that trailed over him in helpless fascination. An arrow of hair running down his flat abdomen thickened at his groin. Rycca's eyes widened. She had held this man within her body, lain beneath him in ecstasy, but save for that glimpse when he left the sauna, she had never seen him as fully as she did now. Then he had been relaxed and unaroused, now he was neither.