By Possession (37 page)

He pulled back with a frown. “I can see that I have some explaining to do.”

“Not at all. You need explain nothing.… Oh!”

She confronted his face one moment and his back the next as he lithely scooped her up and slung her over his shoulder. They had entered the kitchen before she realized what had happened.

“Put me down, Addis!”

“Nay. I can see that we will talk in circles and if we do, it will be in a chamber where there is a hearth at least.”

“I will walk.”

“You will argue.”

“This is embarrassing.”

“This is efficient.”

He strode through the hall and she closed her eyes against the stunned looks on the servants and knights. Jane scooted close behind and stuck her face up.

“Matthew said you be wanting a pallet in the kitchen.”

“Aye.”

“She will not,” Addis said, not missing a step.

The man had forgotten who owned this house. “Make one up.”

“You waste your labor,” Addis advised.

“Do it.” Moira commanded, attempting to rise so she did not dangle so ignominiously.

Out in the yard now. The new groom and cook stared gape-mouthed. “Water for a bath,” Addis ordered while he breezed by.

Up in the solar he dumped her on the bed. “That is more like it. If this city did not close its gates at night I
would have arrived while you were abed, naked as my mind saw you all during the last days of riding.”

“Perhaps you would not have found me alone.”

It was a spiteful thing to blurt, revealing that maybe she did blame him for those duties in the west after all.

Well, damn it, she did!

His expression hardened. “I would have killed the man, Moira. Do not doubt that. If I learn that some lover has been stealing what is mine I will—”

“I have not been unfaithful,” she admitted miserably.

The servants arrived with buckets of water in time to see his anger flickering. Henry smiled a nervous welcome, glanced at Moira for reassurance, and quickly supervised the preparations. They couldn't get out fast enough, and left some water heating by the roaring hearth.

Moira began to rise.

Addis unbuckled his sword belt. “Stay there.”

“You will not,” she announced testily, very annoyed by his assumptions. She had expected him to argue against their agreement when the time came, not simply ignore it as if he held some lifelong right to her. Letting herself blame him for not delaying Wake helped her maintain her anger. And ignore the simmering excitement of lying on this bed with him standing over her.

“Not yet. I am befouled with a week of horse and camp life. I will bathe and then I will take you.”

Just like that.

In a pig's eye.

He stripped off his cloak and tunic.

Three months' abstinence and multiple memories and the hidden happiness of seeing him again combined to shudder desire through her. She mentally caressed the exposed muscles of his back.

He stretched his hands to the fire. “I am not betrothed, Moira. I did not visit Wake to make the marriage.”

Relief burst. Love broke free of the restraints she had carefully forged this last month. Only a reprieve, but she welcomed it with giddy exuberance.

“He agreed that the girl should not be bound before I take Barrowburgh. Even with his help I might fail. I went to discuss and plan that help, but before that I visited Darwendon and Hawkesford. I spoke with Raymond.”

“How is Raymond?”

“Angry. I told him about us. If he joined me on the field, I did not want him to learn it there.”

“And will he join you?”

“I do not know. When I left it did not appear so. In fact, it would not surprise me to find him under Simon's colors.”

“I doubt that he was as angry as that, Addis.”

“He has wanted you for ten years. The youth's lust turned into something else long ago.”

“Not love.”

He shrugged. “He would never call it that.”

“Nay, Raymond Orrick would never call feelings for a serf-born woman that.”

“I cannot speak for his heart. Only my own. If he feels only one tenth of what I do, then it is love whatever he calls it, and he may not forgive me.”

“It would be a pity if I caused you to lose his friendship and its aid.”

“Not your fault if it happens. Anyway, we will see.” He lifted a bucket and poured its warm water into the tub. She made to go and help him.

“Stay there.”

Making a face of demure obedience she kept her place. He emptied the rest of the water, glancing to her in a considering way. “I cannot decide,” he said, laughing.

“Decide what?”

“Whether to have you serve me in the bath or lie on that bed where I can watch you.”

The notion of caressing him with soap sounded like a fine idea to her. “The bath.”

He studied the tub. “ 'Twould be a long soaking but little washing, I think, and it does not look large enough for us both.”

It looked plenty large to her. Now that her misgivings had been vanquished she yearned for his embrace.

He began pushing off his leggings. “The bed, I think. Naked.”

He stripped himself and she watched the hard body emerge, imagining its strength under her hands and over her length. The memories flushed prickles down her limbs.

He settled in the tub and washed his hair. He combed the wet locks back with his fingers and cocked an eyebrow at her. “You are still clothed. I said naked.”

She knelt and plucked out the lacing along the front of her wool gown. Her breasts itched to be free of the garments and warmed by something besides cloth.

He lathered an arm and her senses vicariously experienced the progress of his hand on his skin. The anticipation of touching all of him, of feeling him with her and in her … it was almost too delicious and left her trembling. He smeared soap on his chest. White wetness glistened on sculpted flesh. She itched to draw patterns in it.

She slid the gown down her body and his gaze followed the fabric's journey like a firm caress along her length. She sat and slipped off her winter hose, first one leg then the other, and his eyes slowly traveled the knit stockings' long descent to her feet.

He propped a foot on the tub's rim, not paying
attention to his actions while he observed her. She envied the fingers scrubbing the bent, well-formed leg, moving higher to knee and thigh. Serving him at the bath really would have been very pleasant.

Her hands rose to her shift straps and his lids lowered. She recognized that serious intensity. She surrendered to an urge to taunt him. She removed the straps one at a time so that she could keep her body covered. She lowered the fabric down her breasts as slowly as possible.

“You really can be a vicious woman, Moira,” he said.

She smiled and made no effort to speed the process. Caressing him in the bath would have brought quicker satisfaction, but this distant pleasure was incredibly arousing.

Naked at last, she knelt high and lifted her arms to undo her hair. Her breasts spread and rose with the movement and she took her time, watching him watch, enjoying the effect so obvious in his eyes. The long tresses cloaked her body like a tattered mantle through which her breasts and hips poked. She crawled away for a pillow and her hair swung down, revealing another erotic view. She reached for a pillow, set it on the edge of the bed, and stretched out on her stomach in front of him.

Washing movements ten feet away continued, but his attention never left her. “Have you heard any news of Kenilworth?” he asked as if they did not mentally make love across the span that separated them.

“Rumors of the king's health and spirit. Nothing else. It is said he is in a deep melancholy.”

His gaze meandered along her shoulders and back, over her buttocks, and down her legs. She propped up on her elbows and he did not miss the side swell of breast she exposed.

“At least there are rumors. That is a good sign.”

He wet his chest with a cloth. She fantasized that her
tongue licked along his breastbone. Then lower. “You still worry for his safety?”

“His death would be convenient. Turn over.”

She did, lying out, watching him watch. “What will the barons do about him?” It took effort to maintain a conversational tone. Tweaking tremors of excitement preoccupied her attention.

“That will depend on him, I think. He must be very frightened. I would be. He has no doubt heard how Hereford executed Hugh. It was as brutal as the indignities that Gaveston suffered. The Archbishop of Canterbury has finally acquiesced to the inevitable and thrown his support to the queen. He will not be king a month hence. Sit now.”

She barely heard him but her body obeyed. Her legs dangled down the side of the high bed. He washed the body invisible under water and her mind's eye assisted. Not long now. She did not think it possible to be this hungry without a single touch.

He left the tub and dried himself before the fire. She feasted on the sight of his body glowing beside the hearth and tingled deliciously at the magnificent evidence of his desire. She could tell from his expression that Edward's problems had disappeared from his thoughts.

“In my mind I held you every night while I was gone. I pictured you thus, on that bed, your eyes bright and your breasts full and hard, waiting for me. It did not do much for my rest, but all day I looked forward to it. Did you dream about me?”

“Aye.” She glanced down at the two hard nipples pointing erotically, beckoning him. She cupped her breasts' lower swells, directing their fullness in offering. “I dreamt of you. Your hands, your mouth. Here. Everywhere. I dreamt of everything. All of it.”

He cast aside the towel and walked over.

She still held her craving breasts. He grazed one protuberant tip with his fingers. “Like that, love?”

The sensation almost lifted her off the bed. “Aye.”

His thumb rubbed gently. “And this?”

Warm tension twisted below her belly. “Aye.”

His palm lightly teased while he leaned down to kiss her lips, carefully biting and probing in a display of the restraint he intended. All of this indication of the long lovemaking awaiting only made her arousal spread with a luscious burst.

His head dipped to the uplifted request. “And this?” His tongue flicked over each nipple, then circled one seductively.

She thought she would die. Embracing his waist she urged him closer. “Aye. And this.”

Anticipating her, he stood tall. Still it surprised him when she enclosed his hard desire in the valley between her breasts, holding him next to her heartbeat.

“And this.” Her tongue teased at him as he had done her.

“Ah, Moira, you
are
vicious,” he said, sighing, and he used his hands to show her cradling breasts more attention.

They gave each other pleasure until she was rocking with need. She released and embraced him, rubbing her cheek against his abdomen and splaying her hands over his back. “I cannot wait any longer,” she muttered.

He knelt, spreading her legs so their bodies were close. The exposure of where she pulsed only made it worse and she grasped his head and shoulders in an entwining embrace and ferocious kiss.

“I think you will have to wait nonetheless. I had all these dreams, you see. Months of them. Would you deny me the chance to make even one real?” He cupped her
breasts this time, lifting them to a mouth and tongue that aroused her without mercy. Impatience gave way to a delirious acceptance and she closed her eyes and experienced the sensations for their own sake.

“You are so warm, Moira.” He caressed around her hips and over her thighs, brushing the damp curls almost pressing his chest. “Wet. Ready. Tell me that you are completely mine.”

More than ready. Starving. Her body pulsed with astonishing demand, leaving her aware of little else. She told him, barely hearing her own words.

He spread her thighs wider. “Lie back.”

She gladly did so, grabbing his shoulders, urging him up to her. He laughed quietly and released her hold. “Not yet. Not until you are screaming for me.”

His mouth and hands found the way to make her do so. Soon anxious, needful sounds poured out of her, a chorus of passion muffled by her dulled hearing. Primitive sounds transformed into begging cries. They escalated until he came up over her to give the union for which her body shrieked.

He settled himself and then bent her knees up to her chest. Extending his arms he rose up and looked down the gap between them, watching his entry. Their concurrent sighs quivered their bodies.

“You feel so good, Moira. Perfect.”

Again and again he fully withdrew before penetrating again. Forceful waves of relief and anticipation alternated, driving her close to the edge of endurance. The howling first streaks of release began spreading and she urged him down, wanting more.

“I'm glad you will be with me at the end this time,” he said, his voice low and ragged by her ear. “Complete together.”

His passion broke in a burst of intensity, inciting her own, pulling them into an oblivion of shared sensation.

He stayed on her afterward. Her breasts pressed against his chest and her legs embraced his waist and he savored the contact of her moist body beneath and around him. He made no effort to move off her and she signaled no discomfort with his weight.

He tucked his face into the crook of her neck and breathed deeply, inhaling euphoria along with her scent. This drove his lovemaking as much as the pleasure. It was like a taste of heaven, and the glory of calm and love that the priests said one found there.

He wound his hand in the long tresses streaming over the bed. Love, aye, but with its conditions. He remembered her cool resolve when he met her by the well and felt less peaceful all of a sudden. He had trusted, nay, he had prayed, that she would not be able to turn from him when the time came. Today had shown that she meant what she had said, she would hold him to that agreement she had forced.

He rose on his forearms and looked down at her. Creamy lids fluttered and blue eyes narrowed while she smiled. Her upstretched arms, still encircling his neck, rubbed his jaw. He turned to kiss their soft skin and then stroked his face along the valley of her breasts.