Lord of a Thousand Nights (29 page)

With an abrupt movement he turned on the writing table, grabbed its edge, jerked his arms upright, and threw it violently against the wall. One board split from the force of the impact. Parchments and quills flew out in all directions and fluttered to the floor like the debris of an autumn storm.

Her fragile control broke with the table. Pulling the bedsheet around her body, she bolted to her feet. “You despicable son of the devil. By what right do you—”

“You are my
wife
. If I ask what you have been doing half the night with a man,
you will answer me
.”

“We spent most of the time cursing you!”

“And the rest of the time?”

Complex, ominous emotions streaked out of him, unsettling the air in the room like lightning, but she didn't give a damn. “Is that what this is about? Is that the reason for this display of outrage now? You still cling to the notion that Edmund and I share that kind of love? You
madman
. He is a celibate knight. Do not judge all men by your base standards, you English whoreson.”

“My standards may be base, but I can spot a man who wants something when I see him. What did Saint Edmund want of you, wife?”

A dangerous, cold peace swept away the heat of her fury. She hadn't really calmed, but merely found the center of her storm. They faced each other a mere armspan away, two tense bodies locked over space by unwavering eyes.

“He wanted to take me away,” she said. “He doesn't
trust you to protect me if you find it does not benefit you. Like a fool, I refused him, but no sooner did I climb those stairs than I regretted that decision.”

His jaw clenched. “And so you came here to your philosopher's study to reconsider? To subject that dutiful decision to cold logic and weigh your options?”

“I came here because your
slut
was leaving your bed when I passed the solar door.”

He didn't reply to her accusation, but then, what could he say? The winds of fury began rising in her again. “Did you intend me to find you together, Ian, or would you have been satisfied if I just learned about it from the servants' gossip tomorrow? Tell me, you rutting knave, did you call for her because I was not there to satisfy a passing hunger, or did you plan this as revenge and punishment because I dared delay with my friend and not attend on you as was customary?”

His eyes got hotter, but she didn't back down. She felt too hurt and angry to know any fear. A horrible tension arced between them. She almost hoped that he would hit her so that she could strike a few blows of her own, if only to relieve the tightness racking her.

He turned away, hands on hips. “If it had been as you say, it would have been no more than you deserved. You should have been here, and not with him.”

“
Damn you
. Edmund is a friend who loves me as you never will. Like a fool, I chose against all logic to trust you more than him, and like a spiteful child, you lash out because for one evening you have not had all the attention.”

He swung back to face her with a startled expression, but his face quickly retreated into its hard planes. “It is neither childish nor spiteful for a man to want his wife with him the night before he rides off to war, Reyna.”

A physical blow could not have shocked her more. The impact of his words knocked the anger out of her completely.

She felt the full onslaught of the emotions thundering out of him. The anger and desire she recognized, but there were other currents there, too, unfamiliar ones. Gusts of needs and yearnings that did not have names seemed to be feeding the storm of his mood.

“When did you learn this?” she asked.

“The messenger came just after you left the hall. I will leave in the morning.” His voice carried a bitter edge.

“Why didn't you come and tell me, or send word?”

“It was clear that you longed to talk with your knight and discuss your misfortune. I sensed that he wanted something from you, but I did not think him so bold as to violate my hospitality by trying to steal my wife.”

“That implies—it was not—” She let the explanations die. She did not want to talk about Edmund anymore. Worry and fear had replaced her anger. Edmund's warnings, Eva's smile, even this wounding argument, had become instantly insignificant.

In a few hours Ian was leaving. Going away, and not to a quick battle on the border, but to a dangerous siege where men died every day while they scaled walls on which the enemy waited with arrows and fire.

They still faced each other stiffly, like stone statues decorating a building buffeted by a soundless gale.

“How long will you be gone?”

“Two weeks. A month. Until it ends.”

Two weeks. A month.
Forever.
“Do you go alone?”

“I will bring most of the company with me. Your Hospitaller will have to leave in the morning, because the gate will close when we depart and none will enter without my sign.” He was not looking at her directly, but
she could see the steely lights glowing in the depths of his eyes.

She ached to bridge the space between them, but his stance and face said the few feet of wooden floor might as well have been a mile of cliffs. She took one step anyway, and raised a tentative hand as if to touch him. It hovered there, not completing its path, a helpless, frail command for the whirlwind to calm. “So we will live as in siege until your return?”

“You will not. Morvan has ordered that his wife and sister be sent to Carlisle. You are going with them.”

Going to Carlisle sounded so permanent, as if he were sending her to the other side of the world. “This is my home, Ian. I do not understand.”

“You will be safe there.”

“I will be safe here.”

“Not if Morvan fails and I die.”

A soul-tearing anguish full of fear and regret and love had been building inside her, and it overwhelmed her now so badly that her throat clenched and her eyes burned. Groping for composure, she took refuge in practicalities. “You are right. I should have been here. You expected me to see to preparations, and your departure will be delayed now. I will wake the servants in a few hours, and—”

“I do not give a damn about preparations.” He reached out and grabbed her and pulled her across the divide, into his turbulence. The violent movement so startled her that she cried out. Iron fingers gripped her upper arms, practically lifting her feet from the floor, and he looked at her with dark, intense eyes. “For a widow married twelve years, there is much you don't know about being a wife.”

The danger in his eyes and the brutal grip of his hands
should have frightened her, but they didn't. She did not understand much about this mood, but she recognized some of it.

“Then it is for you to guide me,” she whispered.

With a hard movement, he pulled her into an urgent kiss and a rough embrace. Cruel fingers imprisoned her head so she could not avoid the mouth bruising her lips, devouring her misgivings, demanding its rights. Arms of steel bowed her body against his so tightly that her hands holding the sheet became small rocks gouging into the flesh and bone pressing against them. There was no request for willing submission in his savage assault. Her body responded with a staggering wave of heat, and her love blazed at the evidence that, whatever drove him, he clearly needed and wanted her.

He lifted his head and the blood flowed back to her ravished mouth, prickling her tender skin. Through filmy eyes she saw his uncompromising expression. He grasped her cocooned body tighter, with one hand splayed over her bottom so that the hard ridge of his arousal cleaved her belly and stomach. “Aye, this is what the thought of our parting does to me,” he muttered hoarsely, examining her face as if he sought to memorize it. “If I am less than gentle, blame yourself for giving me too much time to dwell on it.”

“I do not think to blame anyone.”

“You may think differently before this night ends.” He kissed her again, only slightly less violently. “I will see that you do not quickly forget that you are mine. If another man looks at you, it will be my eyes that you see on his face, and at night in your dreams it will not be some specter who takes you but me. If your holy knight dares to follow you to Carlisle, you will feel this devil's hands
on your body while he lures you, and this brigand's breath in your ear while he persuades you.”

She barely heard him. The storm had absorbed her, and she spun in its center with her body molded to his, dangling against it weightlessly, his strength the only solid connection with the world.

He lifted her in his arms, and his hot kisses scorched her mouth and neck while the chamber and passageway and solar blurred by. He dropped her on their bed and yanked aside the sheet which she still grasped to her body. Fully dressed, he came down on top of her, pushing her legs apart, settling on her. One rough hand stroked firmly up her thigh in a path that ended at the moisture coating that secret center.

His arm circled her shoulder and his hand entwined her hair, holding her head so that she faced him directly. She saw his triumph when he discovered her own arousal, but she didn't care. She ached painfully for the fullness of him, and groaned with relief when he thrust inside her with one hard move.

It was far from gentle. In primitive possession, his body slammed into her again and again while his rage of passion whirled around them. He bent up her legs so he could penetrate more deeply, and his violent thrusts lifted her hips with their strength. He watched her reaction to this bruising claim of rights, and lightning flashed in those dark pools when her response broke loose and their mutual frenzies clashed in battle. She became powerless against a spiritual invasion as the ecstasy began tightening and building and pulling her into him.

“Aye, Reyna,” he said lowly as the taste of fulfillment quivered and licked through her. “Robert may still hold your heart, and your monk may inspire your mind, but in
this you are wholly mine. You will deny me nothing tonight.”

She knew that he did not just speak of physical things, but she found no will to summon resistance. Acknowledging her love had undermined the fragile walls with which she fearfully protected her heart. Now they wobbled and cracked and fell beneath the onslaught of his intensity.

In the fevered heat of that larger unity, the aggressive taking became a soul-scorching sharing. She reached to absorb him with all of herself while the turbulent pleasure rose to its frenzied peak. They came to each other in a long ferocious release full of bites and cries and clawing holds, merging in a violent rapture.

They lay entwined together in exhaustion, bodies sealed with sweat and embraces. She slowly grew aware of the breath in her ear with which he had promised to mark her memory. The sound reminded her of their imminent parting. She closed her eyes and listened to its rhythm, and tried to suppress the sadness that wanted to intrude on the perfection of holding him.

Chapter NINETEEN

S
he caressed his back, and he felt her touch grow alert to the cloth of his tunic. She moved her hand beyond the sheet bunched beneath them and stroked the coverlet.

Ian rose on his forearms to look down at her. He saw her calculating that he was still clothed, and that the bed had not been used before he flung her on it.

He experienced a renewed annoyance that she hadn't asked about Eva before accusing him. Most of his wounded anger had been absorbed by their passion, but not all of it. “Maybe I took her on the floor or against the wall.”

She glanced away with a dismayed expression, and he felt guilty for deliberately hurting her, especially now, after this.

“That was churlish of me,” he whispered, nuzzling her ear. “I did not call her. She came on her own, to finish the request she had begun in the yard last week. There is a young archer in my company who has befriended her, but he wouldn't touch her because of me.”

“She asked you for permission to bed another man?”

“Something like that. I doubt that Eva is concerned with such formalities, but the man thought it prudent. He wants to marry her. Her father has no sons, and they would go to his farm.”

“She wants to leave?”

“I said that I had to ask you if you could manage without her.”

She puckered her brow thoughtfully. “I don't know if I can. She is an excellent needlewoman. And if my husband decided to brutalize a woman on a regular basis, it might be useful to have her here.”

He looked down at the evidence of his hard use. Finger marks showed where he had gripped her shoulders, and a love bite glowed red on her neck, where it would be visible to the world tomorrow. He gently kissed the spot, knowing that if he could make it permanent, like a brand, he would do so. “I would say that I am sorry, except that I am not.”

“Nor am I.”

He lay still a moment, grateful that she neither regretted nor resented what he had forced.

He slid off the bed and stripped off his clothes, then went to the hearth where a bucket of water warmed for morning washing. Wetting a rag, he returned and eased next to her, pressing the cloth to the marks he had made.

He moved lower to bring the warm compress between her thighs. In his mind he heard the echo of Morvan's words, spoken in this room:
Hell, Ian, didn't Elizabeth teach you anything?