Juliana Garnett (22 page)

Tré bent, touched the tip of his tongue to the small pulse that throbbed in her throat. Her hand stilled in his hair when he moved lower; her fingers convulsed. His weight pressed her down, held her without effort. Magnificent male, splendid in his potency, terrifying in his anger—beguiling in rare restraint. She felt his hands at the laces of her bodice in efficient seduction, then a brief hesitation.

Unexpected tenderness rocked her at this glimpse of uncertainty. Black lashes lifted on emerald fire, a hungry glance that stole her breath. She felt deprived of air as her undergarment slid free. A chill draft puckered her nipples. Her breath escaped in a long sigh of pleasure when his lips claimed first one, then the other.

Fervent heat pooled in her belly, spread lower, an aching throb between her thighs. Irresistible lure kept her eyes open, watching him. Long lashes shadowed his cheeks as he glanced
up with a fierce smile, recognition of her need and her surrender marked in his eyes.

Blood rushed to her face, a scalded flush. She would have turned away but he trapped her, hands a light pressure on her shoulders.

“Too late, m’lady. Too … late.…”

He was right. She recognized it, knew it had gone too far to end now. And did she really want to end it? Delicious sensations, exquisite violation—long anticipation answered.

His kiss was harsh, but hot need swelled at his touch. Bare breasts were against his chest, abrasive wool scouring sensitive nipples already hardened into peaks. It made little difference that he accused her of betrayal—she recognized it for what it was. A reason to erect barriers between them, the ploy of a desperate man. But the truth was revealed in his eyes, in the urgency of his hand on her, and all else faded away. All that mattered now was the bruising pressure of his body against hers, the taste of him.

Her hands splayed across his back, fingers curved into black tunic. Yearning drove her, the need to cherish and hold him, to burn under his caress. The secret pleasure that blossomed between her thighs moved her hard against him, as if they could become one.

She felt him groan; powerful muscles shifted beneath her hands as he pushed away from her, braced his arms to stare down at her.

“Curse you … I should arrest you and end this.…”

But he did not stop; he pressed his mouth over hers again. Her lips opened, tongue meeting his, tasting wine and need. His hand found her breast and teased the nipple between his thumb and finger, summoning urgent sighs from her. The kiss deepened until even the tumult outside the chamber faded to nothing, until not even the winding of a horn penetrated the draperies around the bed.

Impossible to think, to reason, to do more than
feel
; sparks ignited wherever he touched her. She tried to catch her breath. He released her mouth, a sudden desertion; her hands stretched, closed on air, then curled into fists.

His fingers splayed over the swell of her belly. Flesh quivered beneath his palm; he dipped a finger into the dent of her navel, worked the heel of his hand down to press against the crevice at the juncture of her thighs. She caught her breath as his hand tangled in soft, silken curls, a gentle tug.

“Beautiful lady … sweet mystery.” A hoarse sound, words cracking on the last note. His gaze lifted with a probing question that she could not answer. Then his hand moved lower, slipped on damp folds, stroked her until she writhed and arched upward.

For Tré, this was illumination, a discovery of emotions he yet resisted. Tenderness was unfamiliar to him; the lady’s surrender unexpected. Raw lust had become aching need.…

He felt the trembling in her, the vibration of flesh and muscle as he held her thighs apart with his hand and body. Still kissing her, he slid a finger inside her; warmth closed around him, deliciously hot and inviting. He raked his thumb over the top of her cleft, relished her shudders as she clutched his hair, her hips pushing into his stroking hand.

The ache consumed him, mixed with anger at her betrayal—a confusing mélange that drove him to possess her. He lifted his tunic, jerked at the tapes of his chausses and braies to release himself. Throbbing, urgent, he replaced his hand with his rigid member, poised for a moment at her entrance.

She gave a little gasp that he quickly smothered with his mouth and a hard, savage kiss. A swift thrust and he slid inside her; her delicious heat threatened to take him beyond control. His breath came in harsh pants as he restrained the urge to surrender only to his own need.

“Sweet lady,” he breathed against her shoulder when she twisted beneath him, “do not move … not … now.”

Resolve weakened, frayed, wobbled; he held tight to it. He cupped her hips, fingers on soft flesh. Excitement surged through him, tempered with hard-won restraint.

He lifted his head, stared at her through his lashes, formed a silent, desperate prayer for the strength to resist the new, raw emotions that surged through him.

Tré lost himself in her body, touching her, tasting her, sliding into her bit by bit, slow, erotic anticipation. He wanted ardent
response from her, wanted her pleading for what only he would give her—he wanted her all to himself, now and always, an unformed resolution that had eluded him until now.

Her head tossed on the fur bedding, hips shoving toward him, taking him in, an urgent, silent plea for it all … her soft, strangled sighs escalated into urgent cries.

He drove into her harder, each thrust a shuddering ecstasy that took him ever closer to his goal. He used her body to ease his own torment—the fierce desire he had denied since the first day he had seen her in the rain-drenched middle bailey.

It was all swept away now, caught up in this maelstrom of physical hunger—and an emotional need he could not escape.

She strained beneath him; her legs curved over his back and she lifted into his powerful thrusts. His head lowered, arms braced to bear his weight, tension drawing tighter and tighter until his face ached with the strain. He breathed through his teeth, harsh pleas for air. She cried out softly, her back arching, head tilted in a shimmer of gold and silk, lips swollen from his rough kisses now parted in ragged gasps.

Beautiful lady … elegant and sensual … lovely sweetness and surrender.…

This time, when he rocked against her with growing urgency, she met his thrusts with her own. She gasped his name and her body jerked; he drove into her, a fierce thrust that ended in a heavy tremor and groan of ecstasy torn from his throat. It washed over him in a drowning wave, then gradually subsided.

Slowly, he pressed his face into the bed beside her, his breath coming painfully. He felt her legs tremble, knees lifted on each side of his waist. She was heat and softness beneath him; as the urgency drained away, so did resistance. He was strangely depleted of everything that was familiar. Lassitude stole over him; an alien weakness close to tenderness invaded his body.

He did not want to feel tenderness. He did not want to risk emotion of any kind. Never for a woman … but Jane of Ravenshed was not just a woman. She was different from all others he had known.

She had the power to destroy him, and he knew it.

At last, soft sounds from outside penetrated the dark wine drapes around the bed. Jane heard them, muffled and distant, as foreign to her as her own actions. Tré Devaux lay atop her still, his weight resting on his side, an arm still thrown possessively across her. He was silent, awake, eyes open beneath black lashes. She felt him watching her.

She should flush with shame. The hem of her kirtle was up around her waist; her laces were undone to reveal the white linen smock beneath. Shameless … for she did not care.

Wonder seized her instead; a sharp, piercing sweetness that she acknowledged with a sense of gratitude. In the four months she had known Tré Devaux, she had never penetrated the barrier he kept between them. Yet now, in the moment of greatest intimacy, she realized that the barrier was slowly fraying.

He made it so difficult to know him. Now she had lain with him, a mortal sin in the eyes of the church.

He shifted slightly, gathered her body into his. His braies were open, flesh warm and languid against her thighs. As his hand moved, shaping the mound of her breast with light, kneading motions, his body stiffened, prodded against her inner thigh with utter sensuality. Heated flesh rubbed over parts still sensitive and quivering; she moaned softly when he lifted over her.

His hand moved to touch her face, turning her to look at him, and the breath caught in her throat. Dark, wicked beauty; Lucifer’s son. Temptation and seduction.

“You are beautiful,” she whispered, and saw his eyes widen in surprise.

“An unlikely compliment, sweet lady. Sir Guy is known as the pretty knight, with a troubadour’s face and charm. I am too dark, with too many battle scars.”

“Perhaps, to some. Not to me.” She touched a faint scar on his brow, worked her fingers along it in a gentle caress. “It is not the outer scars that concern me.”

A shudder went through him; he took her hand, kissed the fingertips leisurely.

Her lungs ached, her breath emerged in a trembling sigh. He leaned over her, eyes glittering, knees spread between her thighs, stretching taut the wool of his chausses. Her heartbeat loud in her ears, the world was narrowed to the two of them again, closing out the muted sounds beyond the chamber.

His wool tunic was soft beneath her hands as she gripped his arms, her fingers curved over taut muscles to hold him as he moved forward. His head arched backward. Thick and strong, the column of his throat corded with effort as he pushed against her slowly, slipping inside, stretching her until the fullness was almost more than she could bear.

Liquid heat surged through her veins, made her nipples tighten; the muscles in her thighs quivered, and the ache in the pit of her belly and between her legs pulsed with every beat of her heart. Her hands opened and closed, fingers wadding wool in convulsive knots.

He filled her; he filled her body and her world. His dark head bent, face intense and taut, arms shaking with strain as he held her hips steady for his thrusts. His powerful shoulders were bent forward; his fingers tightened on her. A shudder, another push of his body into hers, growing tension and exquisite pleasure. He put a hand between their bodies, raked his thumb over the damp, aching center of her, looked up from beneath his lashes when she cried out.

A faint smile touched his mouth. His lashes lowered again and he slid his thumb over her in dazzling strokes as he moved deeper, a shivering pleasure sweeping through her.

She could not breathe. The air felt weighted, too thick to drag into her lungs. Her body quivered, arched toward him, accepting his hard, savage lunges, seeking the delicious sensation he summoned with his hand, until finally the world wheeled and dived, and she gave herself to the consuming release with a soft cry.

In that moment he held her hard, pinned her with a final thrust that drove them both deep into the mattress in a loud groan of bed ropes. A hard shudder racked his body, he muttered something guttural, and lowered his weight onto her slowly.

Panting for breath, she became aware of his increasing
heaviness, went to push at him just as he rose to one elbow; a faint smile curved his mouth.

“Chérie … sweet little bird … dainty as a jaie.…”

Her fingers dug into wool and flesh. “As a—jaie?”

“Yea.” He traced the tip of his finger over the damp path his tongue had washed around a linen-shrouded nipple, touched her hair. “The comparison to a bird offends you?”

“No.” A soft laugh, her fingers spread against his face to hold him. “It does not offend me.”

Little jaie—as Robin used to call me … “You remind me of a small, saucy bird,”
he had teased her then,
“as cheeky as a jaie.…”

So long ago. Now there was hope for peace in Nottingham but it would come with a price—did she dare trust Devaux? No words of love, no promises offered, only the commitment of his body had been given. Did he yet love his dead wife, the name he had called out when wounded—

“You frown—what has you thinking so hard, chérie?”

His soft murmur caught her off-guard, summoned truth instead of discretion. “I … wondered about your wife.”

Heat scalded her cheeks when he stared at her; his eyes narrowed slightly.

“Old memories need not be renewed.”

Fool, fool to betray myself … I am so clumsy with these unfamiliar emotions.

A shoulder lifted in an attempt to retrieve her dignity as she lapsed into silence. It was an intrusion; the barriers were still between them—frayed, perhaps, but not vanquished.

He pushed a loose strand of hair from her brow, tucked it back into the gold mesh net over her ear, rolled onto his back. For a long moment, he stared up at the shadowed canopy then said in a low murmur. “It was an arranged marriage. She said I—frightened her.”

Hollow tones were carefully devoid of emotion. It must yet sting. Compassion swelled, but remained unuttered. It would be unwelcome. She remained silent, yet it puzzled her, that he would call out for a woman he had not loved.