Flowers From The Storm (47 page)

And a pillow that held the presence of the man who slept in the next room, close enough to come to her aid if she should be threatened by the Black Guard.

Harbored as she was, the trepidation was only a delicious tremor—an excuse to recall how solidly he’d held on to her when she’d burst into the room in her headlong flight. There were no ghosts. Jervaulx said there were not. Devil had growled at a cat, and the duke had lit the whole hall and sent specters into oblivion against his glowing solid reality, his body in torchlight, in the incandescent flame of two hundred candles.

She tried to listen for his breathing from the other room. But of course the door was shut—almost shut; he’d left it open a crack for her, and she couldn’t hear anything but the dogs’ quiet inhalation.

She gazed upward into the dark. And then she did a reckless thing.

She pushed the bedclothes back and rose, climbing down from the high bed. The last of the fire cast a color that did not light anything, but she remembered the path to the dressing room door. She slipped her bare feet over the floor, feeling her way.

She felt the wall and the doorframe. She stopped.

“Jervaulx?” she whispered.

If he were asleep, it was too soft to wake him. But he instantly said, “Maddygirl?”

She took a breath. “I’m…” She could not quite lie and say that she was still afraid. “I’m… shaky.”

That was true enough. She shivered as she stood there, from cold and agitation.

She heard the creak of his cot. In a moment the door slipped from beneath her fingers and he was there, a warm shadow. He touched her, finding her arm, outlining her, holding her up close against him.

“Scare?”

She said nothing, only pressed herself into the embrace. He was still bare-chested, and she felt a surge of guilt for not seeing that he was properly taken care of.

It was a kiss that she’d wanted, and he gave it to her— light and gentle, his tongue briefly tasting her lips.

“With… you?” he asked, exerting a pressure against her, guiding her into the main room.

Maddy drew back, not certain what she wished, beyond her flimsy pretext, her excuse for carnal kisses.

He stood close to her, not quite touching.

“Scared?” he asked, offering her such easy justification. “Want… stay with you?”

She shivered again.

He chuckled softly. “Poor Maddygirl. Come here.”

So warm and bare and smooth he was as he enclosed her in his arms—his shoulder, his skin against her cheek. When he prompted her to move toward the bed, she went with him. In the dimness, he knew it better than she: he turned when they reached it and hiked himself up onto the high bedstead. The dogs shifted about, sniffing at Maddy as Jervaulx gave her his hand and drew her up with him.

“
Off
,” the duke ordered them firmly, at which they retreated as far as the foot of the bed.

Maddy could only see him as an indistinct outline of motion against the paler bedclothes as he settled into the bed. He made a luxurious low sound of pleasure. “Warm here…
you
… Maddygirl.”

She was still sitting up among the sheets, nervous and doubtful at the way things had gone beyond her intention. He caught her, drawing her down next to him. His body seemed to come all around hers: her back pressed up against him, his leg raised in the hollow of her knee. He leaned over her, kissed her shoulder and her throat.

He slid the sleeve of her shift downward. His fingers slipped over her skin, drifting to her breast. Behind her ear, at the margin of her hair, he stroked her with his tongue. There was a boldness to his caresses, an intention.

“Thou said…” Maddy could hardly find her voice. “Thou agreed—”

All of his movement stilled. His hand rested on her arm.

He made a soft groan. He buried his face in the curve of her shoulder for an instant and then fell back against the bed.

Maddy stared into the dark. She was relieved and disappointed at once, scared of things beyond ghosts.

Suddenly he pulled her into his arms again and held her very hard, rubbing his cheek against her hair. All along her back he pressed into her. She realized with a shock that he had nothing on at all and was in a state of animal arousal.

He relaxed his overpowering embrace. With a deep sigh, he cradled her. His arm lay beneath her head, a solid heat against her cheek.

For a long time they rested that way.

“Jervaulx—” she said into the dark.

“My name.” His breath warmed her neck when he spoke. “Christian.” He leaned a little closer. “
Wife
.”

She felt guilty and ashamed. It was not he who had demanded that the marriage be kept undone. It was not he who had got up in the night and come to her.

He made no other move. Asked nothing of her. Only lay, impassioned, clasping her in the bed.

She knew what she had done. She had already yielded to the weakness of her earthly self. She had given the decision to him—and he, a man of honor, held to his promise better than she held to her truthfulness.

If there were ever, Christian thought, a time for his peers to question his sanity, it must be if they could see him now, with his arms around the woman he’d taken for his wife, ready for her, aching for her after days of teasing contact— and he did not do it.

Chose not to do it. Smelled the smoky-sweet scent of her hair, felt the curve of her body, the trusting delicate girl-softness under a slip of linen—all the blood in his body ran erotic—beat longing—beat
mine,mine, mine
.

He wanted her, craving more than entry; craving full possession.

And she wanted it, too. He could feel it in her: no stiff withdrawal, no animosity. He knew when a woman was hostile to him and when she was playing at indignation—and this was neither. This was just pure hell, that he could give her all the pleasure that he’d spent the past days leading her on toward; that she’d come this far, to seek him and let him lie down beside her; that he had every right.

Every right.

Hang her religion and her Friends. Was it a different God they’d pledged themselves before? Had she married an infidel? A padishah with two hundred wives?

He was just a man, with a pretty good idea of what his sins were. And wanting to have a real union with his own bride was not one of them.

She was his wife. She was his.

He held her tighter and put his face against her. “You tell… when to stop,” he said, his voice muffled.

“You say… you don’t want.”

The flame in her was slow and deep—he was going to incite it with the fire in himself; he was going to make a blaze to burn down cities, to lay waste cathedrals and castles and plain meetinghouses—to make a world where it was only him, and only her, and this bed, and one flesh.

Maddy felt the change in him before he spoke. She felt his body tighten and stir, the muscles in his arm move beneath her cheek. And then he bid her tell him.

Say
—
when to stop
.

He raised himself above her and bent his face to hers.

Say
: stop kissing me, stop the whisper of sensation, the touch of thy mouth along my throat.
Say
: stop thy weight, thy hands, up and down; his palms that stroked her arms.

She could not. She could not.

Say stop
, because I know thy face so well, even in the dark, thine eyes that turn to mine in bewilderment, in arrogance. They’re blue—dark, like clouds that cross the stars; they laugh without words.

No more. Stop now.

No more, no more as he hung over her, tracing lines of hot delight on her chin, to her lips, to her temples and eyelashes.

Teasing-gentle, dangerous. Oh—stop my hands from holding thy face between them, from pulling thee closer to kiss me, thy mouth on mine, deep and passionate.

Stop;
it cannot be; we are impossible, an accident of time and place, worlds collided. Stop—thou art so heavy and yet so sweet. So wicked and so sure, kisses at her chin and throat and lower.

Say stop…

Now—before he drew her shift upward, bare skin to bare skin, his hand on her thigh, sliding to her hip, her waist. And hard against her, his arousal—inference and theory made real. She had seen babies born; she had nursed male patients; she’d listened, quiet and still as in Meeting, when the married women talked immoderately. And that only made her wonder at what they had not said.

But they would not have said it, not out loud. Not this, his tongue at the tip of her breast, a slow circle that drew her taut. Not this, his hand on her hip, pulling her up against him in the same rhythm that he tugged at her nipple. She spread her hands on his shoulders and whimpered, arching with him.

He responded with a low growl, pressing his body hard to hers. Then he moved back, trailing his forefinger down the center of her torso, her belly, the most intimate curls.

Stop, oh stop—don’t follow with thy mouth and kiss me and taste—oh, that thou shouldst know such ungodly pleasures. That I should turn and twist beneath thee, all flame.

She panted with it, this indecent torture. She drove her fingers into his skin, kneading and pulling, asking him to stop, silently pleading, stop thy kisses, stop now, while I want and want and want…

He didn’t stop; he answered her body, because all her body said yes. He slipped his fingers inside her, strange and lascivious, hot pressure. He bent his mouth again to her breast.

Mindless sensation spread through her. A promiscuous sound came from her throat, a beast’s sound.

The deep exploration was pain and lust and him, her husband, pushing to discover more of her, to wring soft cries of surrender from her throat.

Stop… please… stop.

He lifted himself above her. She was open to him, she must say now, say no more, say I do not want thee, I will not have thee, thou must go away and leave me.

He came into her, delicious burn, more hurt; her husband— all heat and dark fire; her wicked husband, who knew corrupt worldly things, who held her tight and kissed her and kissed her again while it hurt, stretched his beautiful body over hers, pushing harder, creating pain and soothing it at once, more pain, until she cried out with anguish at the peak.

“Oh no—” He was murmuring, kissing her mouth. “Oh no, oh no, sweet Maddy, no—” His voice ached, as if it hurt him too. He was breathing soft and quick, butterflies of caresses at her lashes and cheeks. He held himself over her, wholly inside her, waiting, with a faint, faint tremor in his arms.

She gulped for air, her tense muscles slow to realize that the sharp piercing hurt had subsided.

A long sigh escaped from her. As if that had been a signal, he bent his head and gave her a kiss as heavy and carnal as his body’s ownership of hers.

He began to move in her, renewing the pain. Maddy’s fingers curled around his arms in alarm. He whispered to her, but she could not understand it; he had gone away into himself, touching her with his tongue, sucking at her skin, as if he could draw her into his mouth as he shoved inside her body.

It hurt, but the hurt was drowned in his sensual drive—the penetration burned so deep that it was pleasure to her. She raised her arms around him to take more of it. He moaned, shaking his head, lifting her with each stroke. He seemed to grow tormented, as if she were not close enough; he wanted her closer; he wanted every thrust to make them one. He arched into her with a sound that shuddered from deep in his chest—a long and throbbing stretch, a shiver in him and deep inside of her—and she felt him, as far in penetration as he could go, flooding her with his life.

She held him tight to her, held him as he shuddered again and again. Her fingers almost could not touch around his shoulders, he was so much larger than she, and yet he dropped his head and rested on her and nuzzled his face into the curve of her throat like a loving child.

“Maddy,” he said, between hard breaths, “make you… glad. I swear.”

She smoothed her hand down his shoulder and his back. She could feel his heart beating. He shuddered again and pushed himself closer to her.

“I’ll make you glad,” he repeated.

She bit her lip, resting her head against his.

He turned his face deeper into her. “Black Guard won’t get you,” he said, muffled.

Stop
. Oh, stop, say stop, but it’s too late.

Too late. Because God forgive me, I love thee more than my own life.

She opened her eyes to morning and close warmth, enfolded in his arms, her hair still pinned up in double braids of the day before.

She lay still, feeling the gentle rise and fall of his chest at her side.

Her husband. There would be no undoing now.

When she turned he was awake already, lying quiet on his side, looking somewhere beyond her. In the dim morning through the drapes, his hair fanned black over the pillow. His expression was austere, his jaw shadowed.

His distant gaze came back to her. Neither of them spoke. The change in things, the profound chasm between yesterday and today lay between them.