Once Upon a Knight (11 page)

Stopping the motion wasn’t easy. Vincent stood in the hunched-forward position, gripped his thighs until he bruised them, panted through breath after breath, and kept his eyes narrowed on the glow of her.

“My name is Sybil. Na’ lass.”

Vincent nodded. He wasn’t trusting his mouth. Not yet. Maybe when the effects of her potions wore off, but not now.

“Say it,” she said, and then, blast her, she moved closer, within a hairsbreadth of touching.

Vincent was shaking now, and the floor’s rolling movement was assisting him. “Sybil,” he managed.

“Oh, sweet knight. I would have it different, but I was left with nae choice. You ken?”

He shook his head. Not in answer to what she was saying, but to get distance between where those lips were hovering, tempting, pursuing.

“Does it…pain?”

“Aye…and nae,” he replied.

“Bad?”

“Oh. Aye,” he replied again.

“Bad enough to do something about it?”

Vincent moved from contemplation of her mouth to her eyes. The world spun, and then he realized it was simply the whirlpool that was her silver and blue–cast eyes, drawing him in…closer…holding him.

“Something?”

“I dinna’ fash what happens. You’ll need show me.”

“What…happens?”

His voice rose, and his body lurched forward of its own volition, putting him fully against the side of her hip. Vincent gave up a hand position on what had become a slick surface of kilt-covered thigh. He had both hands gripping her buttocks, lifting and holding her in place as he worked at controlling the primal urge. He knew his features were contorted as he struggled with himself.

“Lass. Lass.” He was crooning it without conscious thought. “You’ve na’ much time.”

“Are you going to tupp with me?” she asked.

“Nae.” He shook his head.

“Nae?”

Her breath touched his chest. Where no material was protecting. He shook his head. “Definitely nae.”

“Why na?” She asked.

“Because if I dinna’ let you go this moment…” He stopped to let the threat of words settle between them and fought for control over the haze of light that was permeating his tissues and making everything about where they touched glow and hum with intensity and power and strength.

“And?” she asked impatiently.

Vincent flexed his hands on firm mounds of buttocks and started moving her, sliding her lower belly against the raging thrust of maleness she’d tormented into being and then teased into uncontrollable lust. Then he stopped. Lurched. Pushed. Watched as her eyes widened and she trembled for a change.

“And I’m going to make it so you’ll na’ be able to walk. This is what is going to happen.” His voice was guttural and primal and angry. Viciously angry.

“Now?” she asked in a whisper, bowing her mouth into a pout made for sucking on and kissing.

Vincent didn’t answer her in words. He was beyond it.

She couldn’t breathe at first. The Viking fellow was stealing every exhalation and replacing it with his own, and all the while he was slurping and sucking and plying her lips apart with his own and making a wellspring of desire and lust foment within her until the bubbles threatened to escape.

Then she forgot the need for breath as his hands held to her, holding her in place so he could push at her, rubbing with his groin against hers without end. Creating fire and making her absorb it until everything shattered. Sybil pulled her mouth away to give the cry space and sound, but he was too quick for her, too massive, too strong. He moved one hand to the back of her head, pinioning her with a fistful of her hair, and held her in place for the marauding force of his kisses.

Nothing was working at ending the near torment of suction, licking, and caressing that he managed with his lips, although she tried pounding on him at first. It had the effect of rain against stone, even with aimed fists at the flesh-covered steel that composed his entire frame. Nothing stopped him, nothing contained him, nothing even broke through the rhythmic movement he was putting her body through…against his. Over. Again. And then another sensation started…built…mounted. Swelling to a torrent of rapture that had its core at the place where he was rubbing her. And then the spot burst, spreading flickers of elation throughout every limb and changing the fists that were beating at him into fingers that molded, caressed, and slid along every nuance of that massive chest, hard shoulders, the scarred back, the ropelike tendons of his belly, striations of sinew in his arms…all of him she could reach.

And again. He was lifting her and sliding her, pulling her upward along him only to push her back down, turning her loins into a rash of nerve endings that were all screaming. Then she was giving it voice, yanking free of him to send the sound to the rafters. He was right with her, using his lips all along her throat before capturing the space below an ear and using a sucking motion combined with little flickers of his tongue to drive her nearly insane with shivers that just wouldn’t cease.

“Ah, but you’re a wild one. Na’ so fast. We’ve all eve. All eve. Hmm…”

His voice ended in a purr of noise that sent the vibrating quality of his murmur through her entire back, since he’d reached the area at the base of her neck and was tonguing his way from there to the neckline of her shift, and leaving an alternating trail of fire that became ice. Then when he traced over the same area again, made it firelike and heated. And with a slight chuckle of air, made it icy again.

“Did you na’ heed my warnings, love?” he asked, filling the area with the heavy depth of voice he possessed and was using with devastating results.

“What?” Sybil managed to mouth.

“Master. Me. At…many things…but most especially…”

With one upward shove, he had her belly over his shoulder and was walking to her bed with odd, slanted steps, as if he were walking on the deck of a ship in storm-tossed seas, making her swing from side to side. The view was extraordinary from his height and from upside down. Sybil shut her eyes on it.

And then she was swung down, into a berth made of his arms and lap, while all of it was atop her bed, which bounced more than once with the motion. Sybil was still struggling for breath, while being held against a wall of flesh. He had a fingertip beneath her chin forcing her face up to his, and there was the most severe yet tender expression on his face.

“What?” she asked.

“Pleasure,” he said, taking so long to say the word she nearly hit at him again.

“What?” she repeated, even more mystified this time.

He didn’t answer, but with those dark lashes narrowed, her heart tried to stop before deciding it really would continue beating. And once it did, the rhythm was rapid and harsh and strong enough to make panting of her breaths. All of which he watched, running his eyes over every bit of her. And then lowered his head, closing his eyes as he did so, and took her lips again.

Sybil didn’t wait. It was her movement upward that connected them, and she used the newly taught motions on him, ravishing and licking and sucking and churning emotion into a tangible affair that grew more heated and more wanton and more grasping and needy with every stroke of her lips.

That was when she felt his fingers on the fastening up her back. Vincent had her propped up, using an upturned knee for support as his fingers unfastened and pulled the rawhide lacing apart and then fully out. Then he was delving through the voluminous openings of her sleeves, wrapping his arms about her from behind and hauling her against his chest and cupping flesh that had never felt what it was feeling now. Sybil’s eyes flew wide, and everything on her went stiff. He started chuckling, sending cool streamers of air over the heated tender flesh of her throat.

“So lovely. So fair. So…soft.” And then he was moving his hands, massaging her breasts, cupping them and then teasing each nipple into a whorl of excitement and stimulation, turning her entire being into a writhing, moaning creature that she didn’t recognize. And still he continued his cadence of words. “So lovely. So fair. So…
wild.”

He moved away, leaving her flesh quivering, her belly tensed, and her most private area a cauldron of want and desire and wickedness. And all he was doing was lifting her arms over her head in order to pull the shift completely from her body, releasing heated skin to the night air.

“It’s…Oh sweet Lord. It’s…pink.” Everything about the man holding her started to move, shifting and shivering and defined by firelight until he had her slanted onto the mattress, caught in that position by the tendrils of hair he’d made her loosen. Then he held her in place by one arm propping her up, bringing her nipple up to his mouth. Closer…with the pink gossamer fabric pulled taut and useless as a covering.

Sybil started kicking, pushing and struggling to get away from what he was about to do. He chuckled again, moving her with the motion, while the arm beneath her and the hand clutching one of her breasts into a peak tightened, holding her firmly, perfectly in position.

And then he was suckling, lapping and licking and tormenting, sending her into a realm she’d been told existed but dismissed as too exquisite to be real. The room was too small to confine such ecstasy, too narrow for such dizzying momentum. She felt him move to her other breast, lavishing the same attention and for the same amount of time, and then he was pulling the pink chemise from her, tearing anywhere it fought him.

Sybil was murmuring her satisfaction before that time, and still he continued, bringing her to the brink again and again and again. Before sending her over and making it such a thing of beauty and perfection and radiance that she might as well be glowing. The pink chemise hadn’t been much barrier, but by the time he’d ripped it fully open, it was worthless as anything save a rag.

And everything on her was primed for more. So much more. Vincent had maneuvered her onto the coverlet, in the most wanton position she could have imagined, with her shoulders atop the cool material, her hips and woman-place elevated atop his folded knees, while her heels and feet were just grazing the mattress toward the end of her bed. At first, all he did was look. Then he was breathing more heavily, using his hands to slide all about her, learning her curvature, her inner thighs…the back of her knees…her ankles. And back up.

She should have been shy. Embarrassed. Cringing from his scrutiny. She was the opposite. She was gyrating snakelike atop his lap, alternately lifting and then swaying from side to side, and touching every time at the man-part of him he was denying her. It was a gratifying moment of time whenever she connected, and she knew it by the immediate cringe his entire body made, while his belly went nearly concave with the effort of keeping that solid, firm, and overly large portion of him from direct contact with her.

“Ah, lass. Sweet lass. Impatient lass.”

In reply, Sybil sat up, reaching both arms about his neck with the intention of using her entire weight to bring him back atop her as she lay back down. Nothing of the sort happened, although she was pinioned high atop him for a span, before sliding slowly into the shadowy area he’d made with his bent legs, excess kilt, and what she needed. Craved. Had to have. Now.

“Vincent?” Sybil put sound to the name as she slid, her hair sticking everywhere about them, caressing where she hadn’t enough fingers.

“Aye?”

He lifted his head to say it, and the moment his eyes connected with hers, Sybil’s entire being reacted. Her heart quit thumping, her pulse ceased singing through her ears, and her mind stopped. Completely. Fully. Irrevocably. Vincent’s dark, fathomless, deep eyes locked with hers, gifting her with a breadth of emotion so astonishing, the shock held her immobile for long enough that she had to gasp for the next breath.

And then she knew. Sybil of Eschoncan Keep didn’t believe in love, but that didn’t stop it. She had to look away before he saw the realization as the horrid emotion hit her. Held her. Owned her. Defined her. Forever.

“Ah…lass. Lovely lass. Tasty.”

He was suiting deed to word as slashes of wetness trailed from wherever he put his tongue, crossing it about her rib cage, tempting the flesh just below a breast, cleaving a line directly up her center to the bottom of her jaw. And through that, Sybil was existing on a plane of wantonness, feeling burned and then frozen by just that minute touch.

“I’ll na’ take you rapid, lass. I’ll na’. ’Tis worth too much.”

He was crooning words as she strained at him, alternately bucking her hips upward and then shoving them down into the well of space he’d made with rock-hard thighs, and feeling everything on him react if she made contact. Up again. Slamming down as far as he’d allow.

“Vincent,” she began.

“Your potion has a strange effect, love,” he answered.

“Please?”

“It has given me walls that move, mattresses that do the same, and a vividness to every bit of this, that makes it…more.”

“More?” she asked.

“Much more. Worse. Better.” He was speaking against her neck, sucking on the flesh there and causing a riot of shivers to flood through her.

“Vincent!” It was Sybil grasping for his mouth and making him change the direction of his attention.

“Aye, Sybil lass?” he asked.

He had a lopsided grin on his handsome face, and if she hadn’t been convinced of her love yet, that expression would have done it.

“I need…I want…Please?”

“Aye, love. I ken. Exactly. I’m a bit…worried.”

“What?” she asked, and then said it again in a louder, higher pitch.

“I’ve done many bad things. Many.”

“Vincent!”

“I’m afeared this may be one of the worst.”

“Is it…that bad?”

He turned his head again and looked her fully in the eyes while she suffered every increased thump of heartbeat in reaction.

“Oh nae, lass. ’Tis that good.”

“Truly?”

“Lass. I’m trying…for a bit of honor here. And strength.”

“Honor? Now?”

“Things…are na’ as they seem.”

“Nae?” Sybil lowered her chin and favored him with a lash-shadowed glance such as he used.

He gulped. Looked away for a moment, and looked back. “I’ve near gone too far. I’m na’ certain that once I…we…I’m afeared.”

“Of what now?”

“Pleasure.”

Sybil tried to make sense of that. She tried to get her mind to work. It was useless. She was a liquid ephemeral being, and that liquid was molten fire. Every bit of her was screaming for something, and she didn’t even know what.

“Tell me how, then. I’ll do it.” Sybil was bucking and roving and straining, and he was opening his legs a fraction, letting her touch him more often and with more effect, if the vibrating strength that cleaved her buttocks was any indication. He was also moving. Regardless of his intent, and his words of honor and fear and whatever else he was mouthing, his entire lower torso area was lifting, bringing him closer to her with every plunge she made.

“Now, Vincent! Tell me now!”

“We canna’! I canna’!”

“Blast you, Vincent. Please! Tell me what I need to do. I’ll do it! Please? You’ll be blameless. You hear?” She was sobbing the words, holding to his neck and using her legs as anchors to slide up and down the ridges of his lower belly, and it wasn’t enough. She knew it wasn’t enough. If he didn’t tell her soon, she was going to come out of her skin with the anxiety and strength of need.

Then hard, strong hands gripped her waist, his thighs slackened their cage of restraint, and the very next moment, he was slamming her down and impaling her fully onto what she’d already known was going to be enormous and rigid and strong. She just hadn’t counted on the pain and blood.

“Oh dear God. Dear God. Let me go. Dear God. You hear me? Oh, Vincent. Please?” Sybil felt the tears splashing to her chin more than knew she was weeping them. She’d never cried. It was stupid. She lifted one hand and palmed at the wetness. “Please?”

“’Tis too late, lass. You canna’ change…this…now. Jesu’!”

His answer was garbled and said through clenched teeth. He was shaking, too, until the hands on her waist slipped, but he immediately had them back, holding her in place and not allowing a hint of movement, even if she had wanted to.

“Dinna’ move, lass. Nothing. Not a finger. You ken?”

He wasn’t moving, either. He wasn’t even breathing. Sybil had her gaze locked on the view of Vincent arching backward onto the mattress, holding her firmly latched to him the entire time. The action stretched and pulled and sent more arcing burn to where they were joined. He didn’t know the agony he was causing. He couldn’t, or he’d not be so ungentle. There was nothing about the love act that was pleasant. Nothing.

“Vincent?” she whispered.

Her answer was a huge intake of breath, making her rise with the volume of it, and then he opened his eyes, connected to hers, and at the first instant, her body pulsed heavily, involuntarily.

It was then he moved, grabbing her to him and rolling, flinging her onto her back on the mattress. The entire time, keeping one hand securely at her back and holding her pinioned in place. For him.