Lady Midnight (30 page)

She leaned back against the pillows, focusing her attention on the fire. "Do you think the Semerwater will rise tonight?"

"And bring up your drowned city? I don't doubt that it will overflow its banks, but I doubt the city," he answered. He also reclined in their cozy nest, still too far away for her to touch but still near. So very near. "I am glad all of Thorn Hill's sheep are safely gathered in their barns."

"It will not be as the lake we sat beside at our picnic."

"No."

They fell quiet for a long moment, listening to the crackle of the fire, the lash of the rain and wind against the window. Kate felt her body growing heavy, sinking into the luxury of being warm at last. Michael's scent, of clean soap mixed with sweet rain and the spiciness of his skin, wrapped around her like drugging smoke.

"Tell me a tale," she murmured. "Another Yorkshire tale."

Michael laughed quietly, a sound full of the same luxurious lassitude she was feeling herself. "I fear I don't know many. Peg o' the Well, the bridge trolls, the gytrash—but you already said you would never cross another bridge without fearing the little beasties. I hesitate to frighten a lady again."

Kate wrinkled her nose. "No. Trolls are not terribly interesting, nor are old crones who drag poor children down into wells."

"Then
you
tell a tale, Kate. A story of Italy."

She thought back to all of the romantic fables that had so occupied her mind in her youth, during the lonely hours in her well-appointed chamber with only books for companions. They were nearly all tragic, full of lust and love, death and redemption. Perfect for a stormy night. "There is Paolo and Francesca. But you must know that one, since you traveled in Italy. It is a sad tale, yet one worth repeating."

"Then tell it to me."

Kate gazed up at the ceiling, but she did not see the rough, dark wooden beams and peeling whitewash. She saw a summer garden in Rimini, lushly green, filled with sweet perfumes of flowers. She saw a woman, all loops of golden hair and swaths of blue brocade, sparkling with a jeweled kirtle and pearl-edged cap, sitting on a marble bench awaiting her true love.

"It is a true story," she began. "Or so they say. It happened in Rimini in the twelve hundreds. I know the tale from Dante. Francesca was a beautiful young noblewoman, who was married to Gianciotto Malatesta, a cruel man many years older than herself. But she was in love with Gianciotto's handsome, gallant younger brother, Paolo, and he with her. Their other brother, Malatestino dell'Occhio—the One-Eyed One—also loved Francesca."

"She must have been quite the beauty."

"Indeed she was, and you are interrupting. Where was I?"

"The One-Eyed One."

"Yes. Well, he was even uglier than Francesca's husband, and totally insane, too. One day, Gianciotto and Malatestino went off riding. Francesca was left in her chamber, reading aloud to her maids the tale of Guinevere and Lancelot. Just as Guinevere falls helplessly in love with Lancelot, Francesca loves Paolo. The girls made many remarks about the tale, but Francesca was in a strange, sad mood. Musicians were brought in to cheer her up, playing madrigals. But she is still sad, and dismisses them. Paolo then comes to her, and together they read about Guinevere and Lancelot. Soon Francesca comes to these lines:
Tra le braccia lo serra e lungamente, lo bacia in bocca."

"That is the song you were singing in the garden at Thorn Hill," Michael said. While she told her tale, he had moved closer to her—or she to him. She felt the soft touch of his breath against her bare neck. She could not move away. They were bound by invisible, silken cords woven of the night, the rain, the romantic tale.

She turned onto her side, facing him. He did not look at her; his gaze was on the fire. Yet she felt the tension in his body, the coiled power of his muscles and sinews. They were so acutely aware of each other they could
be
Paolo and Francesca, trapped in an undeniable, uncontrollable passion, but always awaiting the armored fist of Gianciotto.

"Yes," she whispered. "That is the song I was singing." She had forgotten about that, about how on her first night at Thorn Hill she had wandered alone in the garden, full of hope and apprehension and strange longings.

"Tell me what it means."

"It—it means 'Thereat she takes him by the chin, and slowly kisses him on the mouth.' And then Dante said, in his great poem, 'That day they read no more.'"

A silence descended on their small hut, heavier, more charged, like the violet blue lightning flashing outside the window. Kate did not turn away from staring at Michael's profile, as sharply etched as a Roman coin. Finally, he turned his face toward her, and their stares clashed and melded.

"What happened to them?" he said hoarsely. "To your lovers?"

What
had
happened? Kate found she could scarcely recall her own name in the power of his stare, let alone the fate of two people from six hundred years ago. But then she
did
remember, and it was chilling. "Oh, it is not happy. Francesca's husband leaves her one night, and Malatestino tells him that Francesca is unfaithful, that another lives in her heart. Francesca, thinking Gianciotto gone, invites Paolo into her chamber, where they embrace and kiss each other into forgetfulness."

"But the husband returns."

"Oh, yes, and runs the lovers through with his sword. Now, according to Dante, they are blown eternally around hell by whirlwinds for their sins."

"And does she still sing that song, in the winds and the brimstone?"

"If she is with her love, even in the winds, I imagine she would."

"Will you sing it to me now, Kate? Please?"

Kate feared her voice would strangle in her throat. She touched the tip of her tongue to her dry lips, and slowly began, wobbly and off-key,
"Tra le braccia, lo serra..."

But she did not finish. Michael's lips swooped down on hers, swallowing the words into his mouth, catching her breath, her sense, her thoughts, everything. She was surrounded entirely by
him,
his heat and scent, the palpable force of his passion.

Her own passion, her desire, rose up to meet his, equal if not even greater. With a low moan, her arms came around him as she rolled to her back, drawing him down onto her. His weight was heavy and sweet. She had tried to force away her feelings for him, tried to push them down, stamp them into oblivion, yet they would not be gone. They burst free now, leaping up into glorious splashes of color under his kiss. She needed him—it was a force no mortal could contain—it was as free and elemental and undeniable as the storm that raged outdoors. He could not be hers forever, but he was now. Just as she was—and always would be—his.

Impatient, driven by long-denied love, Kate shoved the blanket off of his shoulders. It fell to his hips, leaving his skin bare for her seeking, caressing hands. It was everything she had dreamed it could be, hot, smooth, taut satin stretched over muscles and bone, shifting and bunching under her touch. She scored her fingernails lightly along the long groove of his spine, almost to the very cleft of his buttocks and then back up again, to plunge into the hair at his nape.

He groaned, his tongue seeking hers, tangling and clashing, full of heat and moisture and the quick rush of hot breath. It was not a calculated kiss, practiced and smooth and designed to seduce. It was quick, rough with need. Kate's fingers delved deeper into his damp hair, drawing him even closer, while her other hand palmed over his shoulder, feeling the slight roughness of the raised pattern of those scars.

The blanket she was wrapped in seemed to abrade her sensitive skin with its coarseness, and she was burning with a fever that boiled deep inside. She shoved the cloth away, and Michael's hands came up to help her, stripping the coverings away until she was completely bare beneath him. She raised up her leg, and with her foot pushed his own blanket all the way off. At last, they were skin to skin, their bodies pressed against each other. His hair-roughened chest rubbed over her breasts, raising her nipples to sharp, sensitive points. Her other leg wrapped over his tight buttocks, clasping him to her so he could never escape. She felt the faint crookedness of his thighbone, the pattern of more scars imprinted on his precious flesh.

In his imperfections, he was perfect to her. And tonight, she could show him that fully. Wrapped in the unreality of the storm, they were free. They were just a man and a woman overcome by passion for each other, and she could no more have turned away from that than she could cease to breathe.

Once, she had read ancient texts on the fine art of lovemaking, had listened to her mother's careful instructions on pleasing a man. All of that education was vanished now that she needed it, entirely lost in her sheer need for his touch. She wished she
could
remember, could make him scream out with pleasure from all the little tricks she had heard of, but her mind was in a hot, filmy whirl. She was lost. All she could think of was
him.

Her head fell back against the pillows, his lips trailing a ribbon of fire down her arched throat, along her collarbone. She tightened her leg around him, and felt the heavy heat of his penis against her belly, impossibly tight and engorged.

"Michael," she sobbed.
"Dolce amore."

"Kate. Kate of my consolation," he whispered against the soft underside of her breast. His fingers rolled her sensitive nipple, bringing fresh waves of delight. His breath was hot and sweet, and she had the sudden, irrational desire for bigger breasts. Hers were so small, and now she longed to entice him with womanly bounty rather than too-slender limbs and a high bosom. Even that vague wish vanished as his lips closed over her nipple, drawing it deep into his mouth. Kate's back arched beneath his hot suckling, and she murmured incoherent Italian love words. Slowly, his damp warmth drew away, and he blew lightly over her pebbled, coral flesh.

"Open to me, Kate," he whispered, and she felt his hand against her thigh, trailing fingertips inexorably closer to her cleft. A cleft that was damp and pulsing, flowering for him alone. "Please, open to me."

"Yes," she gasped. Her thighs fell open to his coaxing caress, like a lotus, and her breath caught in her throat. She couldn't breathe, couldn't move, with the marvelous suspense of waiting for his touch
just there.
She ached, but it was a pleasurable pain. His fingers delved ever so lightly into her opening, teasing her, enticing her. She felt the rush of her own moisture onto his hand, the twisting, urgent need. Yet it was not enough. Not nearly enough.

"Please!" she panted, begging. "Please."

"Do you want more?" he said roughly. His body slid away, down hers, until he knelt between her open thighs. "Like this?"

One finger slid very deeply inside of her. It was strangely rough, a burning stretching, yet it was so delicious. He pressed up, against her pubic bone, seeking—something.

And then he found it, pressing lightly on a tiny fold of skin that seemed to hold all the secrets of the universe. Kate's eyes pressed tightly shut, and behind them light and colors shattered and refracted like the wild whirl of a kaleidoscope. Every nerve ending in her body sang out.

"Like this, Kate?" he said again, his voice a low growl.

"Si,
like that."

"You're so wet," he muttered. "But very tight. It must have been a long time for you, my bonny Kate."

A long time!
Kate's eyes flew open at those words, memory washing over her like a cold ocean wave. Some of the erotic haze built around her senses shattered, letting in the reality of all her lies. She was meant to be a widow, the respectable widow of a mythical English soldier. Yet, in truth, she was a virgin. A tight virgin.

It seemed a bit late to confess this, with both of them naked and sweaty, him kneeling between her open thighs. Also, she could not seem to put together a coherent thought, a plausible lie to add to her supply of deceptions.

But she
had
to say something. "I—my husband," she gasped. "He couldn't—I never..."

Michael rose over her, his body parallel to hers, his face hovering above her, wreathed in firelight and smoke like an angel's halo. The sheen of sweat glossed his skin, and his eyes, now a dark gray blue, were serious. "I don't understand."

A war wound.
That sounded as good an excuse as any. "He had a—a war wound. He could not make love to me."

"You are a virgin?" he whispered. She could not read his tone, his expression. But she
could
still feel his manhood, engorged against her hip.

"Si,"
she whispered back.

She sensed his shift away from her, the subtle withdrawal of his body from hers. "Then I should not—"

"No!"
Kate did not realize she had shouted the word aloud until his gaze swung back to her, narrowed and startled. She could
not
lose him, not now. Her body was screaming for his; she needed him like she needed water and air. She needed him to be her first lover. "Please, Michael,
caro.
Do not leave. I want you. Do I have to beg, to plead?"

Instinctively, her hand smoothed along his shoulder and back, her fingers trailing a line to the jut of his hip, light, dancing. Until she closed her fingers around the hot satin of his erect penis. Agilely, she ran her fingertips over the tracery of veins, scoring her nails over the pulsing head. His breath sucked in sharply, and he seemed to lengthen even further in her hand.