By Design (37 page)

“One day, then another, and another … It will be no easier to leave you a day or a month hence. The sooner I get to Nottingham, the better chance this will unfold as planned.”

His calm resolve made her frantic. “You do me no honor with this.”

“And you do me no honor in trying to dissuade me.”

“I do not want it from you.” She tried to make her voice cold and firm, but it came out a whimper.

He looked at her and smoothed his hand over her cheek. “It is not just about you, Joan. That is a part of it, but it is not all of it.”

“That does not reassure me. If it were just about me, I might be able to stop you,” she muttered miserably, wiping her eyes.

“Do not waste the night that way. It will not happen.”

She heard the decision in his tone. Recognized it. Nay, it would not happen. He stood where she had recently stood, and his path would not be diverted.

Rhys waited as she had, for the dawn. He faced an ordeal, and knew its potential cost. He had been savoring the breeze and the night when she entered, and dwelling in that poignant present that only exists when one anticipates no future.

The light showed enough of his intensity for her to know where his soul was tonight. She remembered her
own dark vigil. Empathy stirred her love, and her heart swelled with the desire to protect and comfort.

She looked at him. All of him. Slowly and carefully, so that she would always remember. He appeared so splendid to her. Handsome and hard, hewn with dignity and strength. His chiseled expression showed no weakness, but his humanity still had its needs.

His words made it explicit. “I thank you for trying, Joan. I will cherish the evidence that you put my life above your quest. But I do not want to speak of this anymore. Nor of the parting that awaits. Nor of anything but love.”

He stepped behind her, and began untying the lacing on her back.

He worked the lacing slowly, enjoying how his slow progress made her tremble, like a murmur whispering through her body and the night. He might not have noticed but for his raw alertness to everything. And so he also felt the sadness in her, and her aching awareness that this would be the last time.

“I wish that we were still in London. Or at the pond behind the pines,” she said wistfully.

He smoothed his hand up the gap he had made, and relished the warmth beneath the thin shift's fabric. She arched ever so subtly to his touch. “Aye. But this is where we are now, and we can not change that.”

He eased the gown off her shoulders. It slid down her body into a heap on the floor. He went to work on her braid. She did not turn. She knew that he wanted to savor every moment.

“I will always regret that I brought you into this, Rhys. You were content before you met me. And safe.”

“Not so content. And maybe too safe. I was lacking purpose, and envied you yours, whatever it was. Protecting
you gave me one. Regret nothing, pretty dove. A man who has nothing worth fighting for is not really alive.”

He set her hair over her shoulder, and bent close to kiss her nape. Then her shoulder, while his fingers slid the shift off them. It skimmed down. “Do not move. You are so beautiful, and I want to look at you in this moonlight.”

The moon gave her a pale glow in the darkness. Lovely. Ethereal. He would worship this image of her forever. She stood as still as a statue, but it was not stone that his hands glossed while they followed her curves. Her warmth spoke of her life and spirit and need, and her skin quivered beneath his touch, as if her pulse responded.

She was so beautifully formed. He kissed her back, to honor all that she was. Joan, daughter of Marcus de Brecon. Joan the tiler. Tonight she was still both those women. For the next few hours, at least, she was still in his world.

He kissed lower, along the entrancing, delicate bumps of her spine. He sank to his knees as his kisses descended. He took the softness of her hips in his hands and pressed his mouth to the round swells.

She wobbled. Her stillness disappeared and her body flexed with her response. The softest moans mixed with her breathing. She grasped the window ledge, bending slightly, steadying herself. He licked and nipped the tops of her thighs. With a gasping “aye” she parted them, and he let his tongue flick and explore.

Her scent made the sweet mist of desire cloud his head. The demand for more pounded through him.

He caressed her legs up to her hips. “Turn, love. I want to taste you fully.”

She faced him, leaning against the wall, looking down with glistening eyes. The light from the window and the candle played over her breasts and arms and legs, creating fluid, mysterious shadows. He raised his hands and
caressed as softly as the night air flowed. He glided his touch over her chin and down her neck. A flush warmed the path, and a lively pulse beat through the connection. He glossed lower, to the full softness of her breasts, and reveled in her sharp intake of breath. He eased her toward him, bending her until he could kiss her lips.

Her hungry response said where she was. She clutched his shoulders and kissed back more aggressively than she ever had before. Her little assault sent desire on a rampage through him. He moved his mouth to her neck and then to her hovering, beckoning breasts.

He teased at her with his tongue, and her sounds of pleasure filled his ears, his head, his blood. She arched and pressed forward, begging for more, her fingers clawing his shoulders, her head thrown back in abandon.

He leashed the raging impulse to rise and immediately claim what waited. Removing her hold, he set her back against the wall. Kneeling closely, he kissed lower. Over her stomach, around her navel. Lower still.

He reached down for her ankle, but did not have to guide her. She pressed against the wall, and looked down with smoldering eyes. “Aye, fully,” she whispered as she bent her knee and rested her foot on his shoulder.

No thought. No restraint. Cradling her hips in his hands, he kissed up her thigh to his goal and licked. Her ascending cries and pulsing flesh absorbed his consciousness. She rocked slowly, rhythmically as he explored deeper and the hunger turned primal. He kept her on the edge, frantic with a need that aroused him more than her taste, before he finally sent her screaming into a glorious release.

He rose and crushed her to him. Her scent and gasping breaths immersed him in a cloud of sensation. Her feminine softness yielded limply into his clasping hold.

He took her hand to guide her to the bed. “Come lie
with me now. Let the husband of your heart love you while he can.”

To his surprise, she resisted and stood her ground. “We will love each other, not just you me.” She caressed down to the closure of his leggings. “After such a start, my blood is up. Do not expect me to be shy.”

His garment loosened and she brushed it down his hips. She looked him in the eyes with a new confidence. Desire scorched through him like a brushfire.

She stepped back and regarded his body frankly. There was a promise in that inspection that stunned him, and also pushed his craving higher. The memory of being inside her swept him, and he almost pinned her against the wall to make it real.

Her gaze dropped to his phallus. She reached out and gently ran the fingertips of both hands up and down. She had touched him before, but not boldly like this. It made the pleasure maddening.

She smiled impishly. Seductively. Her finger circled. “I am wondering if I might yet be able to convince you to stay.”

“If you plead your cause like that, you are welcome to try.”

She laughed. His heart leapt at the sound. He had expected a soulful night, imbued with her sadness. And his. He was grateful for the sign that there would be joy, too.

And then she surprised him further. She bent to offer something that she had not done before. Her crown dipped. Time slowed. His body silently begged for it with a pounding anticipation. The sensation of her lips kissing him, and of her tongue slyly flicking, almost undid his control.

It was just a taste, no more. A torturous promise. She kissed up his body, and offered her lips to his. “Not now, I think. Not yet. I want to play first.”

He grabbed her in a hold too rough and kissed her with a mouth too hungry. “It might be a dangerous game for you, pretty dove. Especially tonight.”

“You can never be dangerous to me. I want us to feel everything together and be alive in each other. I do not think it will be dangerous at all, only delicious and deep.”

“If we are to feel everything together, I have some work to do, since I am crazed with the want of you but you are already content.”

“Not so much work. I find the contentment passes.”

He would make sure it did. Quickly. He wanted her vulnerable to the pleasure. He wanted her shaking from passion as he now shook, and full of the silent howl that demanded more and more.

He lifted her and carried her to the bed and laid her down. The sight of her there, naked and willing, made his desire tight and chaotic.

Her arms rose up to receive him in an elegant gesture of invitation. He joined her, and their closeness soothed his hunger a little. The unity of skin and warmth enchanted his soul.

He wanted the night to last forever, and he tried to slow time. He caressed her smooth skin until he felt her rising to his hand, impatient for more. His touch circled her breasts eternally until her sighs grew fretful. Even then he gave her pleasure with grazing strokes and tantalizing touches, and waited for her to again reach the intensity of need that obscures the world.

He ran his tongue around the velvet tip of her breast. Her arms fell to either side of her head as she arched and offered herself. He flicked and sucked and aroused her other breast with his hand, and reveled in triumph when utter abandon claimed her.

Different this time. She proved that at once. She slid away and pushed him down. Eyes bright with passion and
confidence, she straddled his hips and sat back on his thighs.

She looked glorious and wild and statuesque in her beauty. The light played on her golden hair streaming around her body. Her breasts peeked from beneath the curtain.

She pushed her hair back so he could look. And he did. At all of her, all the parts and lines. The warmest part snuggled him closely, and he could feel the pulse and moisture that his looking created.

The tips of her breasts bid him with tight, seductive promise. He guided her down so he could taste them again. Not for her pleasure this time, but for his.

He lost himself in it. The sounds of her passion became a musical cloud in which he drifted higher and higher. Her body rocked slowly, just enough to brush his phallus again and again. He reached down and stroked her cleft, and her cries grew frenzied. He sensed her need coil and begin to beg.

She eased away, and sat back again. “I said that we would love each other tonight, and not just you me. You tempt me to forget my pledge.” She smoothed caresses down his chest. “I think that I know how to do it. I believe that I can guess what you want.”

She dipped forward, and kissed him, and then moved her lips to his neck. Different this time, since she did not follow his lead. A subtle change quivered through the pleasure. Her boldness made it more erotic—for both of them.

Her kisses moved to his chest, and her tongue to his nipple. All the while her hands touched in tantalizing, feathery caresses over his body.

The desire turned keen and decisive. He reached to flip her and take control.

She retreated from his hold, and sat back again. “You are too hasty. I have promises to keep.”

She looked down at his phallus rising in front of her belly. She gently scratched one fingernail from its base to its tip.

She glanced in his eyes. “Aye?”

“Please.”

Her explorations built a delirium of sensations. Her playing brought him to the brink time and again. When she swung off his thighs, and turned to use her mouth, he thought that he would die from it.

He almost succumbed. He barely retreated from the finish being drawn out of him. The bigger desires of this night pulled him back, and he reached for her.

He laid her on her back and spread her legs and knelt between them. He put his hand to her and slowly touched until her cries filled the little chamber. She bent her knees and raised her hips. “Come in me. Please. Now. I want to feel you inside me.”

He pressed her knees to her chest so that she was open and waiting. He rose up and stroked in as deeply as possible.

The chaos cleared for a moment, and profound contentment glowed like the sun. Nothing and no one intruded on the light. He had worried that their parting would shadow it this time, and was relieved that it wasn't so.

The calm did not last long. A penetrating, incessant desire took control. He rose up on his arms and withdrew, and looked down to watch her body accept him again. He made the thrusts a slow, long, series of joinings, and each one seemed deeper and tighter than the last. He wanted to stroke into her velvet warmth forever, and hear the contentment moan out of her for ten lifetimes.

It turned insane at the end, hard and grasping and noisy. Her clawing hold and crying breaths urged no gentleness, and the power in him overwhelmed all restraint.
The release came like a cataclysm, rending his consciousness.

He experienced nothing physical for a long moment. Not even her body beneath him. Her breath and scent were there, and her heart and love, but nothing that had substance.

Slowly the world intruded. Its forms reemerged. He found himself sprawled on her, wrapped by her arms and legs, her lips pressed to his temple.

A slight moisture slid between their faces. He rose up and looked into her glistening eyes.

Her smile quivered from her emotion. He kissed her, to seal and savor what they had shared. He moved to her side, and tucked her against him.

The passing hours were not desperate. They held each other in blissful silence, and then again in passion. She urged him to take everything he could imagine, and gave all that she could. He had never known such peace as he experienced in that borrowed bed. It was the night's unfettered union with her that caused that. A man can not fear death while he is dwelling in paradise.