Delectably Undone! (15 page)

Little kisses nuzzling her back to consciousness… Abruptly, Belle sat up. Reluctantly, she pulled herself away. She untied him.

Ewan smiled at her lazily. “How does it feel to win?”

“How does it feel to lose?”

“Surprisingly good.” He sat up, massaging his wrists.

To her embarrassment, there were red wheals where the ribbons had been pulled too tight when he had strained against them. “I’m sorry,” she said contritely. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

He shrugged and pulled her down on top of him. “It’s of no consequence.”

His hands stroked her back, pulled her close, so close she could hear the thump of his heart. Her head fitted snugly onto his shoulder. How could three days have passed so quickly? Why could not the night last longer? She was dreading daybreak.

“Belle, about tomorrow,” Ewan said.

“There is no need to say anything,” she mumbled into his chest, unwilling to hear any reminder of their terms or, God forbid, his thanks or his excuses. She would leave without betraying herself if it killed her.

Assuming they were in perfect accord, Ewan smiled contentedly. She was right. There was no need for words to frame something so fundamental. But he would say them all the same in the morning. Unconventional this courtship may have been, but it must be formally sealed. He slept deeply and dreamt of their future together. When he awoke she was gone.

Chapter Six

“W
hy did you leave without so much as a word?”

Ewan pushed passed the maidservant and slammed the door of the small parlour firmly behind them. He was clearly angry. It showed in the hard glitter of his eyes, in the rigid way he held himself, leaning against the door, muscles tensed as if waiting to pounce, holding her in a gimlet glare she dared not break.

Isabella shook her head helplessly.

“I thought things were understood between us,” Ewan said harshly, pushing himself from the door and closing the distance to her with three long strides. “Last night, you said we need not say anything, I thought you realised—” He stopped abruptly, ran a hand over his unshaven jaw, up to his hair, copper and gold in wild disarray, in tune with his mood. “Isabella, have you any idea how I felt? I did not even know where you live.”

She smiled nervously. “We did not get around to such common place information.”

“No. What we shared was rather more fundamental,” he said, taking her hand. “Luckily, the footman who summoned the hackney for you this morning has an excellent memory.”

Hope flickered in her breast, but she could not yet turn it into belief. “We certainly reached a—a frankness in a very short acquaintance which few people achieve in a lifetime.”

Navy blue eyes met amber. Each searching desperately for reassurance. It was Ewan who spoke first.

“Two days and three nights that is all, yet I feel I know you. I feel you know me, too.”

He was frowning, his mouth a tight line. It was a look which could have been frightening, so fierce it was, but she was not frightened. Uncertainty, need, too, were reflected there. She had never seen him look so anxious. Never heard that note in his voice, not even at the height of their passion. She recognised it all. A reflection of herself.

But still she sought reassurance. “You said last night we had no need for words.”

“You thought I meant no regrets,” he said, understanding slowly dawning.

She gave a ragged laugh. “I thought you were reminding me of our terms. That you had had enough of me. I could not bear to say goodbye.”

A smile lurked at the corner of Ewan’s mouth. “Goodbye! One word we will never say. No, it was not that. It was just—something so elemental as we share, it seemed to me sacrilege to speak it.”

“Elemental,” Isabella whispered. “That is how it felt.”

“An irresistible force. We called it a battle, but it was more like an explosion, so powerful it was, that thing which brought us together.” He pressed her hand between his, then. knelt at her feet. “We fought for control, when we should have simply surrendered. We are two halves of one being, Isabella. One creation far more powerful than its components. Do you not realise that?”

She knew only too well.
“My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,”
she quoted softly. “I know that I love you, Ewan, if that is what you mean.”

“I look at you and see me. That, my lovely Isabella, is exactly what I mean,” he said. “And though our wooing has been rather unconventional, that is what it was after all, a wooing. So I would beg you in the most conventional way to be my wife, for the most conventional of reasons, that I cannot live without you and my life would be empty without you.”

She fell to the floor beside him, wrapping her arms around him. “And I must reply in the most conventional of ways that I will, I will,
indeed
I will.”

“I love you, Isabella,” he whispered into her ear. “A mere three days we have spent together, but we have been meant for each other since the beginning of time.”

Finally, his lips met hers. Tongues tangling. Breath mingling. Hot, hard kisses. Arms entwined. Bodies pressed so tight together nothing could ever come between them.

A mere two hours they had been wed. They left on the morrow for the New World.

“You’re shivering,” Ewan said, running his hands down his wife’s arms.

“I’m nervous,” Isabella replied. “I know it’s foolish, but I feel as if this is the first time.”

“It is. Before, we indulged in love-making. Tonight we will be making love. I am as nervous as you are.”

Shyly, she untied the fastening of her chemise and let it fall to the ground. She came towards him, white skin, black hair, blue eyes, pink mouth.

“Beautiful,” Ewan whispered. “Beautiful Isabella.” He ran his hands down the line of her spine to cup the curves of her bottom, pulling her close against him. “My wife. I love you.”

“My husband,” she whispered, rubbing herself sensuously against him. “I love you.”

He kissed her, and his touch sent a jolt of fire through her. Ewan’s hair clenched in her hand. Herself pushing, arching her hips into his, relishing the hardness of him against her. He lifted her onto the bed. Touching. Stroking. Licking. Sucking. Her mouth. Her breasts. Down to the heat between her legs. She moaned his name. Began to fall. Then he was on top of her, kissing her, thrusting deep inside her as she climaxed, arching against him, feeling him spill into her at the same moment, kissing, clutching. Calling her name. Calling his name. Drifting weightless, dispersed like a thousand stars into a new sky.

One. They were one. That is how it ended. And that is how it began. In a new world.

THE SAMURAI’S FORBIDDEN TOUCH

Ashley Radcliff

Author Note

Welcome to the opulent world of medieval Japan, where wealth dictates power and social castes are absolute. Here, the land’s untamed natural beauty stands in stark contrast to highly ritualized rules of courtship, and an elite few rule the impoverished masses with sword and bow.

In this complex feudal realm blossoms a tenderhearted yet spirited poetess, Miku. Orphaned and alone, she dreams of a love that transcends the oppressive structure of her warlord uncle’s luxurious, yet intolerably restrictive, country estate.

Though Miku’s journey occurs in a distant land veiled by mystery and beauty, I believe you will find her hopes and dreams intimately familiar. And please join me for future adventures in other equally exotic, sensual locales!

To my Favorite,
who reminded me of all that I’d forgotten
and showed me truths I hadn’t yet discovered.

1183 AD. The windswept mountains of northern Japan. The cultural renaissance of the Heian period is fading as regional nobles, fattened on the abundance produced by impoverished peasants, ignore the growing power of their samurai, hired warriors bound by tradition.

M
iku’s breath caught when she realized it wasn’t a breeze moving the translucent silk panels that hung across the wide veranda doorway, hiding her chaste beauty from her uncle’s garden and the world beyond his opulent estate.

Seated at her low, black-lacquered writing table, she’d first assumed that the shadow moving across the silk
kicho
was merely a wayward cloud dancing in front of the late-afternoon sun. But then the tip of a man’s long sword curved against the edge of the elaborately painted golden drapes, and her calligraphy brush hesitated above the scroll. After being banished to her quarters earlier in the day by her enraged uncle, Miku had expected another quiet day writing. But the blade’s startling appearance implied something much less predictable—and potentially more dangerous.

Yet danger—as well as love—was something she had only experienced in her poetry. Far from the wanton lifestyle available in the Emperor’s glittering court, the cloistered life of an unmarried country noblewoman offered little diversion beyond parlor games. Little diversion for most women, that was.

Miku, however, unlocked her silken cage each day with her calligraphy brush, writing poetry that freed her mind and soul, if not her body. Poetry that stirred her imagination and gave flight to her fantasies. Poetry that her decidedly practical uncle never appreciated—an uncle who now dared to imprison her in her own home for what he called unforgivable breaches of etiquette. Just the thought of his self-righteous pettiness made her free spirit seethe in revolt.

Perhaps soon, maybe even tonight, her dream of a life untethered to the hollow pomp of petty nobility—a life where she was free to be herself, and even appreciated for it—would be fulfilled. Until then, though, at least she had her brush and ink.

But the armed man now standing silently just inches from her was no dream—not even a nightmare.

Miku’s mind raced as she contemplated the gauzy screen, her only shield. Her uncle had taken all his servants when he’d left earlier to meet a distinguished—and politically connected—man journeying from the capital city of Heian-kyo. Though he would return the next morning, she was nonetheless alone now as the afternoon shadows lengthened. Alone, except for the single samurai her uncle had left to protect her in his absence.
Or to guard her,
she thought with bitter indignation.

Her uncle controlled hundreds of vassals who worked the wide rice fields surrounding the thick walls of her home. Though lacking the more sweeping national power given occasionally by the Emperor to Shogun warlords, her uncle nonetheless wielded significant local power. And like so many other regional lords, he even commanded a private army of samurai, powerful warriors sworn to do his bidding alone.

The thought of one of these common soldiers lurking so near her private chambers sent a surge of anger through Miku. She had expected the samurai to remain a respectful distance from her the rest of the evening, as he had all day—far enough away, in fact, for him not to notice her escape from the manor once darkness fell. But was he now so bold as to step on to her veranda, mere inches from her hidden form?

Miku’s eyes fell to the scroll spread open across the lacquered table in front of her. The verse she was composing spoke of cherry blossoms, long considered the most beautiful yet most fragile flower. In her poem, however, one blossom remained open as the first winter snowfall began to drift down, the flower’s unexpected resilience against the frost magnifying its pale beauty.

Though her heart thudded wildly, Miku’s resolve solidified. How dare this coarse warrior intrude upon her private sanctuary uninvited, regardless of any edict given by her manipulative uncle? All trepidation was now replaced by a sense of smoldering outrage at the armed man’s presumptuous arrival.

“Speak now, or leave,” she said firmly.

There was a beat of silence, and then a low voice growled from the other side of the
kicho
. “I will answer to no one but the Master of this estate.”

“The Master is gone, so you must answer to me,” Miku said.

“I am aware of his absence and am here because of it.”

A chill sharper than the winter’s northern wind drove through Miku. So her uncle
had
instructed the samurai to encroach upon her private rooms as dusk fell. She took a deep breath to steady her voice, then spoke again to the shadowy figure concealed by her veranda curtain. “You have invaded the solitude of a noblewoman, and your continued presence is not needed.”

A humorless laugh stirred the delicate fabric of the
kicho
. “I will decide what you need.”

Any renewed fear the man’s words stirred in Miku was quickly burned away by her growing anger toward this insolent stranger who seemed so intent on speaking in riddles. “All my uncle’s samurai have sworn an oath to serve him to the death,” she said, “and that vow includes protecting me, his only niece. You must therefore guard my virtue as well as my life. And—samurai or not—being this close to me without an appropriate chaperone threatens that honor.”

“Your life—and virtue—will both remain in my hands tonight,” the samurai said. “Your uncle has commanded that I am not to leave your side until dawn.”

The man’s uninvited appearance, the unspoken threat of his sword, his unemotional insistence that she had been left at his mercy—all these factors pushed Miku’s indignation to the boiling point. Too furious to care that social protocol demanded the thin curtain remain between her, a maiden, and this common soldier, she stood and ripped aside the golden silk. “And I am to have no say in who sleeps in my chambers?”

“I do not plan to sleep tonight,” said the man, his dark eyes locking with hers.

The tall, lean form of one of her uncle’s finest warriors stood with his back to the setting sun. Though dressed in full military regalia, not even the intricate red lacing and stenciled leather of his plated armor could distract from the man’s striking physique. Resting low on the horizon, the sun’s fiery orange glow outlined the soldier’s broad shoulders and powerful arms. Tightly muscled legs, chiseled as from stone by elite cavalry service, were planted with immovable authority on Miku’s veranda. Though he appeared relaxed, the man’s muscular power was obviously held at bay only by his recognition of the quiet respect due a noblewoman. This was a warrior, not a gentleman…and his hardened body spoke to years spent conquering and crushing.

As she wondered why a man of his obviously high martial rank would be sent to guard her, the samurai’s eyes dropped to take in the white silk
kosode
Miku wore. She wrapped her arms around her body, keenly aware that the flowing, calf-length robe should have been covered with proper outer-garments.
Would have been,
she thought, had she expected anything more than yet another long afternoon sitting alone at her writing bench.

Her skin prickled as the man took in her softly curving frame barely concealed beneath the pale silk. The molten heat of his eyes intensified as they lingered on the exposed skin of her bare ankles, and Miku gasped as a surprising excitement shivered through her body. This man looked upon her as if he owned her, with the bold assurance of a victor in battle assessing the spoils of war.

Never before had a man dared to stare with such unveiled appreciation—and desire—of her physical charms. The realization stunned Miku, leaving her both excited and terrified.

And yet neither had Miku truly felt any of the intense longing her poetry so often described—verses her uncle disparaged as improperly sensual for a noblewoman’s pen. Until now…until this handsome samurai’s gaze had fallen upon her barely clothed body.

Though intrigued by the surge of conflicting emotions stirred by the man’s piercing gaze, Miku reminded herself that he was no elegant suitor, properly versed in the protocol of courtship, for in addition to his long, curved
katana,
he wore a shorter knife at his waist and a bow across his broad back. No, she thought resentfully, this was a hardened soldier trained in warfare. And he had come not to woo her, but to stand guard.

“Why do my activities this evening need special oversight?” she asked hotly, her suspicions mounting. “You have watched from a distance all day. Why must you stay in my rooms after sunset?”

The man remained silent for a moment as she scanned his jet hair, pulled back from the hard angles of his bronzed face in the formal knot favored by the military caste. He was familiar, she realized. She had caught his brooding, ink-black eyes watching her on previous occasions as she moved about the manor and knew him to be one of her uncle’s most trusted warriors, although she had never spoken to him before. He seemed older than her own twenty years, but not by more than another ten.

Her eyes returned to his stoic face, and she noticed the dark shadow of his neatly trimmed beard was softened by a gentle mouth. But his words remained as sharp as the sword that hung across his plated armor. “Your uncle does not want you to forget your place.”

“My
place?
” Miku challenged, taking a fearless step toward the armed man. “That is my choice alone.”

This self-assured conviction had caused increasing friction between herself and her uncle over the past few months. He had begun to show heightened exasperation at her poetry, with its imaginatively erotic tones. And Miku, in her own right, had started to care less and less about whether her uncle approved of her verses—or that he had recently discovered she’d been sneaking out into the fields and mountains beyond the manor walls. For how else could she be free, even for a few hours, from his suffocating restrictions?

Miku’s uncle had accepted the role as her guardian seven years ago with an appropriate sense of familial duty, if not love. But as the months following her parents’ death had passed, he had become increasingly strict. Now she hardly dared peek from behind the curtains of his ox-drawn carriage when she traveled to the temple—her only
approved
trips outside of the manor—for fear of his displeased frown. Not that the view of starving, threadbare serfs along the roadside brought anything but grief to her tender heart, knowing she had no power to alleviate their suffering.

Their heretofore quiet battle of wills had come to a head this morning when she’d been caught by her uncle’s servants bathing naked in the hot springs of a nearby mountain glade. The old man had exploded with indignant rage and forbidden her from leaving her chambers while he hastily arranged for the visit of an old friend in Heian-kyo, someone Miku assumed would try to convince her of the error of her impulsive, sensual ways.

Yet why would she need such attentive supervision to simply await the arrival of a self-important nobleman to lecture her on the appropriate behavior of a young lady of her standing? An indistinct suspicion crept into her thoughts as she continued to stare defiantly at her captor.

The samurai studied his protectorate carefully, taking in her glossy black hair, loose and long, and her penetrating eyes, sparkling with equal parts curiosity and wariness. On her face she wore none of the heavy white powder favored by so many noblewomen, and her eyebrows had been left in natural arches above her eyes, rather than plucked and repainted high upon her forehead. As he watched her, she impatiently bit a full, unpainted lip with teeth unstained by the black dye strangely favored by other aristocrats for darkening their teeth.

This girl was obviously not just a pampered flower, as he had first assumed. Her independent streak was obvious—and intriguing—and now he understood why the Master had asked him to guard her so closely. He was going to have to be very careful not to reveal anything to her. But it was going to be difficult to hide much from her piercing eyes…and to ignore the thin robe clinging to her body.

“Why did my uncle command such close guard for me this evening?” she quizzed.

“Is more reason needed than the protective love of an uncle for his niece?” he responded evasively.

“More reason may not be needed, unless more reason is being hidden,” she replied. If the field of battle were words, Miku knew she could parry anyone, including this mysterious soldier.

The samurai smiled in spite of himself. So this girl was unwilling to let his half answer pass without challenge. Well, her curiosity would have to remain unsatisfied until her uncle’s return, he thought.

“My name is Takeshi,” he said instead. “Would you prefer that I watch you from here on the veranda, or may I come into the parlor?”

Miku realized that his question, veiled in dignified politeness, actually left little room for true discussion. He
would
be guarding her tonight.

“I prefer that you didn’t watch me at all,” she said stubbornly, a hand self-consciously trailing across the pale skin at the open neck of her robe, knowing as she spoke that the words weren’t completely true. After all, the heat of his gaze had certainly kindled something new within her, novel feelings she might be able to incorporate into her poetry. Why not permit the samurai to stay while she explored these new sensations, at least until she could escape his rigid oversight?

Takeshi smiled again. The Master’s niece certainly had more spirit than her repressive uncle. Takeshi had never respected the old man, whose behavior was becoming increasingly despotic toward the peasants who supported his plush lifestyle. And when Takeshi had attempted on several occasions to suggest a gentler approach toward managing the serfs, the Master had dismissed his ideas without discussion.

Although he had the physical and intellectual power to defy the Master at will, Takeshi had not yet done so. Instead, he waited with the patience and strategy of a tiger, knowing the right time would present itself—the time when he would no longer pretend to follow the old man’s orders.