By Possession (15 page)

“Right now I want only to sit with you in this perfect
night under this glorious sky. It has been a lifetime since I have shared such peace with a friend.” He angled back a little, relaxing against the hay. She could not see his face now, but she felt his warmth a mere two hand spans away from her back.

“When I was in the Baltic, I would sit under skies like this, knowing the same moon and stars shone above England. There was both comfort and pain in the notion.”

She could well imagine the loneliness he had endured there and empathy twisted her heart. “Does it work the other way too? Both comforting and painful to know that this sky looks down on those people?”

“A little.”

She had surmised as much. “They enslaved you.”

She felt the slightest pull on her scalp. He had found one of her errant strands of hair falling down from under her veil and must be touching it. She could not feel his fingers, but their casual movements prickled up to her head, causing tiny shivers to echo through the skin there.

“Aye, and it makes no sense. It is a strange thing, what happens to one in that situation. The first year my whole being was full of hate and anger and scorn. I planned escape after escape in my mind at night. I saw only their barbarism and all of the differences from us. But one can live like that only so long. In time, the strange becomes familiar. Life finds a pattern. I never surrendered to the slavery, but I could not remain separate and angry for six years. The similarities started becoming apparent. We have our barons, they have their
bajorai.
We have our priests, they have their
kunigai
. We burn our heretics, they burn their sacrifices.”

“We have one God, and they worship many.”

“Their gods and our saints have much in common. The distinction we make is lost on them.”

“And on you? That is heresy, Addis.”

“I merely came to see it how they saw it. Oddly enough, it is coming home that has made me understand them more clearly. I find that I walk through the land of my birth much as I did at first through that land, like a stranger encountering odd things. Customs and ideas that I took for granted I suddenly see afresh.”

He still absently fingered the hair. Her neck had become alive from the emanating sensations. His pulse had met hers now, as if their blood beat in time together and the whole night joined in. The intangible connection was more dangerous than a caress and its compelling power mesmerized her. “And you, Moira. What of your life during those years?”

“My life? What a question! No adventure there. I lived a typical life, not at all notable.”

“Raymond said that you married a gentry knight.”

Still that gentle play. Her shoulders quivered from the subtle contact. She felt an appalling urge to circle her head and purr like a cat. “You knew him. Sir Ralf, who had a minor holding from Bernard. Bernard arranged it so I would be cared for. He even gave me a dowry. Bernard got it back, of course, in return for my swearing away the widow's dower. It was only right to handle it thus, since Ralf died at the wedding banquet, so it had not been a true marriage.”

“Did Bernard also give you to the second man?”

“Nay. That was after he died. Raymond was lord then, and … well, I decided it was best to leave Hawkesford, although Raymond permitted both my mother and myself to stay. Edith was sick already, and my own place there had become awkward. James was a wool merchant from Salisbury. He would come after the sheep were shorn every year. He seemed a decent man, and demanded no dowry, although he knew about Edith's house and field and expected it to come to him through me. He had a
grown son, so the contract left little for me if he died and I was childless. Still, with no dowry …”

“Raymond said that you were not married long before he also died.”

“Aye. He fell ill a month later and died soon after. I tried to mourn him and felt guilty that I could not, but he had been much a stranger still. And if my motives had been practical, his had been more so. I think that he had calculated that the cost of keeping a wife was cheaper than the hiring of a servant and the buying of whores. But for the fact I wanted children, I might have found a way for him to continue doing the latter.”

“Did he hurt you?”

“Nay. He bored me. What a terrible thing to say of the dead, but it was true. He sought to be a very pious man. He would pray all evening and then come into bed determined not to succumb to the sins of the flesh but his piety sometimes failed him. Sharing his bed was not loathsome, just … tedious.” Why was she telling him this? Now she was the one being tedious. And yet, somehow, in this night with the rhythm of the whole world tying them together, it seemed natural to speak of it.

“I put up with it because I was his wife and because I wanted children. Not because of the security their birth would bring me when he died. I wanted a family. And my own home, I liked having that too. Simple things really, what every woman has. There was little affection between us in so short a time, but I was contented. I should like to know that contentment again.”

So here she was after all, broaching those arguments that would underpin her denial of their passion, and he had led her down the path to do it. It came out easily though, a confidence between friends.

“Caring for Brian made you delay that.”

“Aye, but I do not regret it. I do not resent one whit
those four years. But now it is time to make a life for myself.”

She expected a retreat from him with this more blatant implication, but instead his hand wound more obviously in the long strand of hair.

“With a freemason.”

“Or another such man. A good man, who will be a good husband and father and make a home with me. Such a man will not have me if I have been bedding another.”

It had to be said and faced, but she felt something in the aura behind her change in response to the bluntness of it. A small flaring of power that made his presence surge and surround her, shuddering with … what? Protection? Possession? Anger? She did not understand it, but it felt as if he had thrown an invisible cloak over her. Within that cocoon their mutual rhythm continued, but his beat pounded steadily stronger, taking control, timing the pulse and demanding that hers conform. The sudden shift astonished her and she sought in vain the strength to cast off his effect.

“Not all men are so pious as James,” he said as if nothing had changed.

Why did it sadden her to explain it? She hesitated, reveling for one hungry moment in the way their spirits adhered to each other. “Nay, but all men are proud. They do not want wives whom others whisper about. Do not want a woman who has been the lord's whore. Whoever he is will probably ask about you just as James asked about Raymond. I want to be able to answer truthfully next time as I did with him.”

He straightened and sat flush beside her. The movement startled her and she almost jumped away from the warm body looming tall beside her now.

“And what did you say to James when he asked?” His tone sounded light and curious, but something else was
happening below the banter of this conversation and her body and soul knew it. Wariness swelled, commanding her to get away. Her feet dangled just inches from the ground, and it would be an easy thing to hop down and run. Run to where though? That invisible cloak seemed to swaddle her tighter, holding her in place beside him. She couldn't move. She could barely find her voice, let alone respond in her own casual tone.

“I said that I had never been in Raymond's bed.”

“That sounds very imprecise. An intelligent man will spot the other possibilities. Considering the time we will have spent together, you will have to be more blunt with your mason.”

She felt her color rise. “I will say … Addis de Valence was never my lover.”

He laughed softly. “Still a bit vague, Moira, and in part a bit untrue. Nay, you will have to make it very clear. You could say, for example, that my lord has never had me.”

That laugh heartened and reassured her a little. Perhaps her caution had gotten the better of her. “Or get most precise yet. Swear that I have never fornicated with you.”

“That should do it.”

She laughed herself. “You are a kind man, Addis. To understand and even to jest about this.”

He did not respond. She turned her head to find him looking at her. Despite the dim moonlight she read, nay she felt, his expression, and her heart turned over with an alarming jolt.

“Is that what you think this has been, Moira? A jest?” His arm slipped up her back and eased her toward him. “Nay, lovely lady. It has been a negotiation.”

His lips took hers before she could marshal any resistance. Gentle but firm, that first kiss spoke a determination that said nothing less than a pummeling struggle
would stop him. Weak objections briefly drifted through her mind before she succumbed to the sweet beauty of it. That invisible cloak wrapped them both now, so comforting in its warmth and protection. The delicious connection overwhelmed her, and the careful explanations just articulated disappeared along with all of her thoughts, carried away by the night breeze.

His tongue entered her, probing, savoring, controlling. He dominated that pulse, drawing hers into his. Flushes of heat cascaded through her, burning away any remnants of denial and resolve. She embraced him, anxious for the feel of his solidity, and he pressed her closer until her breasts crushed his chest with tantalizing contact. The speed with which her passion vanquished her solid sense frightened even as it exhilarated. She lost control, helpless to the dangerous sensations and yearnings trembling through her body.

He ended the kiss and caressed her face, his fingers drifting behind her ears to the pins holding her wimple. He slid the cloth off and pressed his mouth to her neck before carefully going to work on her veil.

“You asked what I want with you, Moira,” he said while he kissed and bit and licked her ear in ways that made her shake. “I want everything. I would know every inch of you, every part and thought. I want to take you every way a man can have a woman, and I will not pretend otherwise.” His hand moved down her body with a firm caress that articulated his desire. “But I do not seek to seduce you to something against your will. I do not deny that I want you completely, but I will settle for less.”

His bold words summoned shrill streaks of desire. She barely heard the offer of restraint as he submerged her in another kiss. Long. Absorbing. Demanding. His hand pressed her stomach as if it could feel the blood strumming there.

His arm encircled her neck, his hand slipping down to the lacing of her gown, meeting the other at the knot. He kissed her temple and hair while his fingers worked. She looked at the crossing strands being pulled through their holes, level by level, down past her breasts. The memory that she should not permit this flashed and she stiffened.

“Nay, Moira,” he chided, gliding his fingers along her collarbone and down her chest. “I only take what you have already given to me.”

His hand slid beneath the fabric to cover her breast and all of her senses reeled with the warm contact. Engrossing kisses and confident caresses methodically eroded her pitiful defenses. She tensed, struggling not to lose everything in the absorbing pleasure flooding her. His fingers began playing with her nipples in devastating ways. A throbbing hunger awoke between her thighs. A low moan escaped her and she lost her hold then and became cast adrift in rising swells of passion. Only Addis existed in this world of sensuality, his presence more real than her own, his strength a raft to which she tethered herself.

He slipped the garment down her shoulders, easing the shoulder bands of her shift along with it. He pushed the fabric down her arms to her elbows so that her breasts were exposed. The cool breeze tickled her skin like a teasing breath. The garment restricted her arms, binding them against her sides, leaving her to accept his kisses and caresses without a return embrace. His captivity of her body both aroused and frustrated.

He bent low, his body obscuring the night sky. His breath mixed with the cool breeze before his mouth warmed her breast. His arm supported her wanton arch of offering. Her whole body shuddered with indescribable cravings while he licked and kissed and drew on her.

No thought now. No yesterday or tomorrow. No sense
and no plans. Just sweet bonding and high-pitched pleasure and piercing, growing need.

He grazed her nipple with his teeth and her little groan melted with the sounds of the night. He took her in his mouth and sucked and her rapid, frantic breaths filled his ear like an audible voice counting the beat of his heart. The whole night joined in. The sounds of insects, the flow of air, the spirits of the rocks and trees acknowledged their primitive intimacy.

He moved them both, resting against the hay and lifting her onto his lap with her back against his chest so they could both watch the night sky and he could see her moonlit face. He took both her breasts in his hands and her lids lowered and lips parted. He teased at those dark tips and felt every movement of her body's response. The rhythmic pressure of her hips and buttocks. The sinuous stretching that asked for more. His joy in her pleasure astonished him. The comfort and peace of holding her awed him. The stars seemed to sparkle with the pattern of her sighs. Amidst them the half-moon glimmered.
Go find your own woman, Menulius. This one is wholly mine.

Her rising passion produced little groans of need. Her legs had parted and he bent his knee so that she rode his thigh. The intimate pressure completely undid her. The garments still bound her but one hand flailed, seeking contact. She gripped his other thigh while her whole body pressed into his and a begging cry warbled low in her throat.

He wrapped his arms around her, holding her close with his lips pressed to her cheek and his crossed hands still arousing her breasts. Sanity debated with hunger. If he took her she would not deny him now. The soft trembles beneath his arms said that much. It had been his intention, even while he cajoled her with promises of restraint. Suddenly, however, he did not want to mar the
perfection of sharing her passion. He needed her completely willing. He did not want to face her regrets afterward.