Where Love Has Gone (34 page)

She opened her lips, hoping he’d do what he
had done once before, and thrust his tongue into her mouth. He did,
and the heat of it left her weak. She responded by letting her
tongue slide against his until she felt herself melting into him.
She was aware of her feet leaving the cold wooden floor as he swept
her up in his arms and laid her on the bed. She opened her eyes to
see him above her, his enveloping cloak gone, only Desmond and his
warmth surrounding and enclosing her. When she glanced downward the
size of his manly part took her aback.

She wasn’t sure how he would fit them
together when their sizes were so disparate, but she trusted him
completely. Desmond would never hurt her, of that much she was
certain. The hard evidence of his desire for her prodded at her
thigh, the sensuous touch creating a surprising pool of heat deep
inside her. She shifted a little, trying to get closer to the
jutting object of her desire.

To her despair, Desmond drew back. Then he
kissed her again, a long, slow, deep exploration of her mouth that
only increased the heated ache deep within her body. She cried out
in soft protest when he ended the kiss, but he began to nuzzle at
her neck and her breasts, where his fingers were working the most
amazing magic.

Elaine surrendered, offering herself to his
pleasure and her own, letting him do whatever he wanted. After a
delicious few minutes, compelled by an increasing restlessness, she
began to touch him, caressing his shoulders, reaching around to his
solid back to stroke the hard muscles there, trailing her fingers
along his spine to the cleft of his buttocks. Desmond groaned.

“Are you in pain?” she whispered.

“Yes. Dreadful pain,” he answered, laughter
mingling with another groan as her fingers pressed deeper still.
“If you don’t stop at once, I will either die, or ravish you in the
most barbaric way.”

“Does that mean you like what I’m doing?” His
only response was another groan, which encouraged her to continue
stroking him, for her awakening senses recognized the sound as an
expression of pleasure too intense for mere words. “Perhaps I want
you to ravish me.”

“Believe me, my sweet, you don’t. Another
time, perhaps, but this is your first experience with a man and you
need gentleness and care.” His hand drifted slowly downward along
her flank and back up the inside of her thigh.

“I’m not feeling particularly gentle,” she
gasped, writhing under his intimate caress. “I feel like groaning,
myself. I want something, but I don’t know what it is. Oh, Desmond,
do please stop touching me that way!”

“Does it hurt?” With the lightest of touches,
he caressed a part of her that she had never suspected was so
sensitive. Just a quick touch and then his questing fingers were
gone, leaving her in a state of longing and emptiness.

“No, it’s just that – yes, it does hurt! I
ache. I’m burning. Help me.” She did groan then, reacting to the
sheer pleasure of it when his finger returned, pressing more firmly
this time, easing her rising discomfort. But not enough. She had to
have more.

“Is that better?” His mouth was at her
breast, his tongue teasing her nipple, so she wasn’t sure she heard
him correctly. She was finding it difficult to keep her thoughts
clear.

“I want – I need -” She lifted her hips,
eagerly pushing herself against his hand. She sensed, rather than
actually felt, a moistness in that part of her body. Liquid heat,
pooling between her thighs, waiting for Desmond to make her his.
She had heard that possession by a man hurt the first time, but she
knew no pain, only an ache that cried out for his manliness. He
took his hand away and raised his head from her breast. “Please! I
don’t know what you are doing to me.”

“I’m trying not to hurt you.” He sounded as
if he was the one in pain.

She looked up to see his jaw clamped grimly,
his face tight. Then she felt the hardness of his manly part
pressing where his hand had been. Slowly he began to ease into her
and she relaxed, wanting him, longing for him, certain he would
resolve her longing for something more. When he pushed against her
most heated ache, she pushed back, seeking the relief she was sure
only he could provide. She gasped at a sudden stretching sensation.
Then Desmond was completely inside her, filling her.

“Elaine, my dear, are you all right?” Still
that pained, tortured voice.

He wasn’t moving, yet he stretched and filled
her until she marveled that she wasn’t split in two from the sheer
size of him. And strangely, considering how huge he was, it wasn’t
enough just to have him inside her. It felt wonderful, but she
wanted more. So she began to move, rubbing herself along his
embedded length, testing the novel sensation of Desmond as part of
her body. It was glorious, it was sweet and tender and fierce. It
was what flying must be, as if she had burst out of herself and
into the air high above. She was a falcon, soaring through the sky,
almost touching the sun.

She felt Desmond begin to move within her,
faster and harder, until the heat between their bodies became too
great to bear. She heard his cry as he, too, touched the sun at the
same instant she did, and they dissolved into each other. Elaine
gave up her heart to him and felt him pouring his essence into her.
For a few, heart-stopping, singing moments, they were one person,
one heart, and one soul.

It was the madness that comes after battle,
the result of facing death and surviving. Desmond had experienced
the exaltation and relief before, and on those previous occasions
he had celebrated his vaulting emotions in the same way, by taking
a woman to bed. He lived by his own definition of honor, so he had
always confined himself to willing widows or women who sold
themselves.

Never before had he taken a virgin
noblewoman. It didn’t relieve his conscience a bit to understand
that Elaine had been suffering from the same post-battle relief and
exhilaration, coupled with an attack of very natural grief at
realizing that she, the sweetest and most innocent of women, had
been the cause of a man’s death. Never mind that the villain who
had attacked her would have taken her life without a second
thought. Without losing his latest meal afterward, either.

As a result of what Desmond had done, Elaine
was no longer innocent. She might even be carrying his child. He’d
been too avid for her embrace to consider the possible
consequences. He had lived for years without close ties or a home
to call his own, refusing to love any man, including his own
brother, or any woman, because he believed keeping his heart
untouched was the best way for a spy to survive. He had resisted
his growing desire for Elaine for weeks, only to give in at last
and take what he so desperately wanted. In the end, Desmond knew in
his heart that all of the excuses he made to himself were
irrelevant. Nothing that had happened gave him the right to take
advantage of Elaine.

The object of his guilt lay curled beside
him, relaxed in sleep, her brown hair tousled on her shoulders,
with the white bandage showing through the heavy locks. She
possessed more courage and far more intelligence than many men. She
had given herself to him with a joy that nearly stopped his heart
to remember. And he had ruined her by roughly seizing a maiden’s
most valuable treasure.

No, not roughly, not entirely. He knew he had
been slow and careful, until Elaine’s eager response had driven him
beyond the borders of sanity into a realm he had never dreamed
existed. The glory of what he had found with her was too much to
bear. She deserved a better man than Desmond of Ashendown. He
didn’t want to think about all the wicked deeds he had committed
during his spying career. Just remembering them soiled Elaine. He
wasn’t worthy to touch her little finger, let alone possess her
sweet, pure body.

But, God help him, he wanted her again with a
hard, aching need that drove him out of the bed they shared to
splash cold water on his face while he wished for an icy pond where
he could stand up to his neck in freezing water until the fever
departed.

“Desmond?”

Elaine sat up, all tumbled brown hair and
sleepy eyes. The blanket he’d drawn around her during the night
dropped to her waist to reveal her creamy skin, her perfect
breasts, and the white bandage at her shoulder, the badge of her
valor. Seeing her thus, Desmond knew the fever would never leave
him. He would want Elaine until the day he died. The way she looked
at him heated his blood until it was all he could do not to return
to their bed and have her again.

Reminding himself sternly that nothing about
his circumstances had changed, that he possessed nothing in a
worldly sense that would give him the right to claim her, he sought
refuge in brusqueness.

“It’s almost dawn,” he said. “We have a long,
tiring, and possibly dangerous day ahead of us. Dress yourself and
let us be gone.”

She didn’t even avail herself of the cover of
the bloodstained sheet when she rose to approach him. Desmond tore
his horrified gaze from the evidence of how much he had stolen from
her.

“Do you regret what we’ve done?” she asked,
her eyes solemn and huge in her pale face.

“Regret?” he repeated, buying time while he
prepared a harsh remark that would distance him from her. The words
never came, for the touch of her hand on his wounded arm reduced
him to honesty. “Never. But you must regret what I did to you.”

“You did nothing to me that I did not also do
to you,” she said, still serious. “Don’t blame yourself for what
happened between us. It was the most beautiful experience of my
life, and I thank you for it.”

She left him speechless. All he could do was
put his arms around her and hold her close, while he tried to
ignore the urgent stirrings of his body. They were skin to skin, as
they had been all night long, though he had taken her only once
before they both succumbed to sleep. He brushed his lips across her
forehead and felt her soft mouth against his chest. He wanted her
again – and again.

“We don’t have time for this,” he said at
last. “We must be on our way.”

“I know.” She sighed, her breath a warm
caress on his skin, then stepped back, out of his embrace. “Shall
we take the bread and cheese we didn’t eat? We will want it by
midday.”

“That’s a good idea.” He didn’t say what he
was thinking, that he would want
her
by midday, and by
evening, and the next morning, and the morning after… He allowed
his gaze to linger on her naked beauty for one dangerous heartbeat
before he closed his eyes against temptation. “When King Henry is
safe and the plot against him is revealed and stopped, we will talk
again.”

“You and I know we will never be together so
privately once we reach Caen,” she said with quiet finality. Her
fingers traced the contours of his mouth and when he opened his
eyes, her smile was sad. “One night is all I expected, all I dared
hope for. Now, we must forget ourselves and attend to duty.”

Desmond saw with rueful admiration how she
squared her slender shoulders and began to dress. He threw another
handful of cold water on his face before he pulled on his own
clothes. When Elaine came to him to act as his squire and help him
with his chainmail tunic, he tried not to look directly at her and
he spoke only a hasty word of thanks when she was finished.

They left the room together, saddlebags in
hand, and headed for the stable. The sky was still dark and the inn
was quiet.

A single lamp burned outside the stable door.
By its dim light they found and saddled their horses. Elaine, in
the stall next to Desmond, had finished with the saddle and had
just begun to secure her saddlebag when she heard a faint, stealthy
sound. Desmond was talking softly to his restive horse, calming it
while he finished preparing it for the journey ahead. The sound
hadn’t come from him; it was farther away, near the stable door.
Someone was walking very softly toward them in the darkness.

Elaine peered around the stall entrance. Her
eyes were accustomed to the shadows, so she was able to make out a
bulky, masculine shape lurking outside the stall where Desmond was
working. She saw the faint glint of metal and heard the soft clink
of chainmail. The man was wearing armor and carrying an unsheathed
sword. It was impossible to see his face.

Elaine believed if she cried out to warn
Desmond, the man would flee, leaving them vulnerable to another
attack from him. Whoever was skulking in the shadows must be
stopped before they left the stable and before he could hurt
Desmond.

She reckoned without Desmond’s finely honed
senses. The faintest, sliding whisper reached her from the next
stall. Over Desmond’s continued murmuring to his horse, she
recognized the sound of a weapon being withdrawn from a scabbard.
The intruder heard it, too, for he stopped just outside the
stall.

“Will you meet me in here?” Desmond asked
softly. “Or shall we fight in the stableyard?”

Hoping to divert the attacker, if she could
do nothing else to help Desmond, Elaine boldly stepped out of the
stall just as their swords clashed. To her ears the sound was
thunderous, though likely no one inside the inn could hear it.
Neither man looked in her direction.

The oil lamp outside the stable door cast a
narrow, concentrated shaft of light into the building, allowing
Elaine to see Desmond’s attacker more clearly. He was short and
wide, a typical, heavily muscled man-at-arms, encased in chainmail
and for all the weight of his armor, he moved with deadly
efficiency. She knew the knife she once again wore at her belt
would be of little use against such an opponent.

Elaine looked around in desperation, seeking
something, any object she could use as a weapon. Perhaps a
pitchfork, she thought, or a scythe. Her eyes lit upon a heavy
shovel, the utilitarian tool used by the stable boys for mucking
out the stalls. She ran to it, grabbed it in both hands, and
returned to the stall where Desmond and his attacker were fighting
in a silence that terrified her.