Knights of de Ware 03 - My Hero (31 page)

“Nay,” he growled.

He’d fought that lusting animal before and won, just barely. But it had grown since then into a snarling, raging beast, blotting out the quiet voice of reason.

He was powerless to resist.

With a groan, he sank to his knees before her. Furrowing both hands into her hair, he surged forward to claim her mouth.

Her gasp of pleasure fed his passion. He answered her with hungry grunts, nipping at her parted lips. His hands moved over her with a will of their own, finding every part of her soft and warm and supple.

He kissed his way toward the shelter of her neck, a starving man who’d dreamt often of this feast, and she eagerly bared her throat to him. He whispered wordlessly against her ear, and she shivered in his arms, clutching feverishly at the front of his cassock. With deft fingers, he threw back her cloak and loosened her surcoat.

His groin tightened with need as he reached tenderly inside her underdress and found the precious curve of her breast. It was like velvet, its tip puckered into a tiny rosebud. He freed her from the dress’s confines and let his mouth take suckle at the sweet flesh.

She moaned in encouragement, letting her hands move down over the woolen folds of his cassock. He gasped as she discovered what she sought through the wool, fully erect, throbbing with a burden of seed. And at last, the pressure of her fingers against him shocked him to reason.

“Nay!” he cried, pushing away from her, stumbling back against the punishing stones of the garden wall, one hand holding his cassock closed, the other across his sinning mouth.

Cynthia staggered, trying to catch her breath. Her gown hung off one shoulder, her breast bare to the breeze. But, reeling from the heady drink of passion, she was past care.

Aye, she belonged to another. Aye, she was breaking her sacred oath to God. But she longed to have Garth for her own, whatever the consequences. She’d pay, even if it meant the damnation of her soul, if he would only hold her in his arms again, kiss her, and admit his love.

But he slouched against the wall, clutching his cassock to him as if it were a talisman. His face was a study of suffering. His eyes blazed with anguish, with desire, and with something more.

Victory.

He thought he’d won the war over his emotions. He thought he could simply withdraw from the battlefield and win.

But she’d come this far. She’d risked telling him the truth, bared her heart to him as well as her body. And she had no intention of giving up the fight.

“What is it you fear?” she whispered, taking a step toward him.

He pulled back, stiffening against the wall.

“Why do you resist what we both desire?” She took another step.

His jaw tensed. He looked as wary as a cat cornered by a mastiff.

“You want me,” she murmured, moving close enough to catch the compelling scent of vanilla and wood smoke on his skin. “And God knows I want you.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, as if he could block the truth by blinding himself to it.

“You’re not a monk anymore. What wrong can there be…?” she said, clasping his forearms lightly.

Cat-quick, he turned his hands to trap her wrists away from him, searing her with a fiery glare.

“Leave me!” he hissed.

“Why?” she demanded. “Why?” She was so close to hurt now, she could taste it. But she had to know. She searched his eyes for the answer. “Is it…Mariana?”

“What?” he exploded. “How do you know about—“

“You cried out her name before.” She felt the painful prick of a blade at her heart, but she had to discover the truth. “Is it Mariana? Is she the one you love?”

“Nay.” He scowled at her as if she were crazed. “Nay.”

“Then why do you turn me away?”

“Leave me,” he snarled. “Go to Philip…or another. It’s no matter. But I have nothing to give you. I have nothing to give any woman.”

His voice was harsh, and his hands were uncompromising on her wrists, but as she gazed into his eyes, she saw something entirely different.

A plea…a desperate plea. He wanted her to prove him wrong.

“Nay,” she breathed. “That isn’t true. You have enough for me. You’ve always—“

“Nay!” he said, shaking her once. “You don’t know. You can’t know.”

“Can’t know what?” she persisted. “That you suffer pangs of desire? You tell me I must not refuse the gift that God has given me, and yet you refuse the manhood He has given you. Would you deny that you feel the cravings of any mortal man?”

“But I’m not a man!” he blurted, turning with her then and pinning her against the stone wall, his face contorting in anguish. “I’m only half a man!”

She didn’t know what he meant. But she could see pain in his eyes as profound as the sea. And she wanted nothing more than to ease that pain.

“Then let me make you whole,” she whispered.

The tiniest flicker of hope entered his eyes before he lowered his gaze to her lips, focusing there with the savage hunger of a wolf. His tongue flitted quickly over his lower lip, and his nostrils flared.

“Let me make you—“ she repeated, but already his mouth had found hers.

He kissed her ravenously, fiercely, as if he feared it might be his last chance. Groaning, he swept his tongue fully across her lips, parting them. She moaned as he released her wrists and tangled his fingers in her hair, tilting her head to gain entrance to her mouth, plunging his tongue inside to mate with hers.

Lord, he was strong, stronger than John had ever been, stronger than Philip would ever be, so strong that a thrill of something akin to fear coursed up her spine.

Suddenly, her limbs felt worthless, and she grew as limp as a cloth doll. Somehow, she clung to his cassock as he laid siege to her lips, but how she stayed on her feet, she couldn’t tell. The place between her legs swelled with yearning, as if she might burst. Once, his thigh brushed against her there, and she gasped with the painful pleasure of it. Vaguely, she grew aware of the pressure against her belly as Garth hardened.

She let her fingers slip down then to scrabble at his belt, but she was too distracted to untangle the knot. She murmured a curse against his mouth.

He untied it himself, his lips never leaving hers, and when he opened his cassock, she let her fingers drift through the crisp curls he revealed. There she discovered, with a hushed gasp of wonder, his hard, warm staff, almost menacing in its size. With a shiver, she enclosed him gently in her palm. He drew in a rough breath, and his fingers tightened on her shoulders. She closed her eyes and nearly swooned, imagining that silken length inside her.

Then, with a soft cry, she hiked up her skirts, laying her head back upon the stones. He heaved one awe-filled sigh and lifted her up, bracing her against the wall. His well-muscled thighs felt like fire as they spread hers. His breath rasped against her ear, murmuring endearments, begging entrance.

She sighed in answer.

And then he was there, impossibly huge, impossibly hot, poised to penetrate her.

She couldn’t wait. Inch by slow inch, she sheathed him herself, reveling in his low groan as her skin pulled taut and her muscles strained to contain him. Dear God—she feared she might explode. And yet, there was something about the tightness, something about the way he slid against her…

“Oh!”

He pressed deeply up into her, and she shuddered with pleasure, her fingers digging into the thick muscle of his shoulders.

“Oh, God,” he growled. “Cynthia.”

To her astonishment, tears gathered in her eyes. She wanted to stay here forever, joined with this man, filled by him. She wanted to bask in their completeness.

But such was not the way of things with men, in her experience. This sweet lethargy wouldn’t last long. She had to work quickly.

She drew away, biting her lip at the exquisite friction of his flesh gliding against hers. Then, ignoring her selfish desires and that instinctive, languorous rhythm that called to her, she initiated the brisk pattern of motion she knew well.

Garth clenched his teeth against the incredible sensation. It had been four years since he’d been enveloped by warm womanflesh. And yet mating with Mariana had been nothing like this. Cynthia was far softer, sweeter, comforting. Faith, if she didn’t slow down…

“Wait,” he managed to gasp.

Everything was happening too fast, with too much intensity. He’d be spent in another instant, leaving her behind, if she continued moving so quickly.

“Wait!”

Using sheer willpower and against all his instincts, he stopped her frenzied thrashing, hoisting her in one easy movement from the wall onto the grassy bench carved into the sod. He swooped down upon her, trapping every silky, lissome, soul-wrenching bit of her beneath him. Then he plunged with languid grace into her wet, welcoming haven.

This was where she belonged. Here he was master. Here he could pleasure her at his own pace, as long as he could control his own seething ardor.

“Aye,” he sighed, trembling with the restraint of four long years. “Aye.”

Cynthia arched up in a tempest of confusion and ecstasy. This was wrong. She was supposed to sit astride
him.
It had always been thus before. But Garth had her pinned like a moth under a cat’s paw. He blinded her, blotting out the moon with his great bulk, so that she could see only him. He smothered her so she could scarcely move. Surely she’d be crushed beneath him.

And yet, it felt so right. She could breathe after all, enough to relish the intoxicating masculine scent of him. And she felt no desire to look upon anything other than his face. His flesh melded to hers like molten steel, and that part of him nesting deep within her…

Ah, God—he moved…slowly, elegantly, like a dance. He forced her to feel every inch of him as he withdrew and then pressed inward again with languorous grace. His hands caught her face with utmost tenderness, his thumb brushing across her lower lip before he bent to steal a kiss.

Crickets chirped lazily in the distance, and the wind soughed through the trees overhead, but all other sounds grew muffled as Garth groaned and murmured against her ear.

Her whole body began to tingle, the way it did when she performed a healing, but the heat centered at the point where their bodies joined and spread inexorably outward like consuming fire. Every stroke was a breath fueling the flame.

There was no room for thought, only perception. It was as if a film of gauze surrounded her, blurring the world, stifling all but the extraordinary sensation building within her. Her nipples ached, and he seemed to read her mind, palming the throbbing buds. Her hips surged upward of their own accord, striving for, for…she knew not what. Her head rocked from side to side, and the moans coming from her were foreign to her own ears. Some delicious demon seemed to possess her, stealing her command, shredding away her gentility like worn linen. Never before had she known such madness, such helplessness, such ecstasy.

And then, rising to a dizzying peak with alarming swiftness, came a moment when nearly everything ceased. No breath stirred her lungs. No word escaped her. No sound penetrated the preternatural silence. Her body seemed to hang in perfect balance between two worlds. But that one spot, the place where their bodies met and merged and danced together, refused to cease. It glowed brighter still, carried beyond the realm of reality, becoming pure spirit and light and sensation.

And then waves of intense pleasure rushed over her like drowning waters, claiming her body, wrenching all will from her. She sobbed out her ecstatic release on the syllable of his name.

Then the ethereal world receded. Slowly, slowly she began to hear the crickets again. Stars glittered between the gray-green branches of the willow. The sod beneath her was damp and fragrant.

Her body, spent and weak as a kitten, felt as if it belonged to someone else. And Garth loomed over her, his flesh still melded to hers, his breath heavy upon her cheek, his male scent strong and virile.

She closed her eyes in horror. She’d done something wrong. She must have. Never had she lost control like that. Never had she surrendered so wholly or felt so vulnerable. What was wrong with her?

She’d completely neglected Garth. She should have helped him find fulfillment. It was her duty. But nay, she’d been so focused on her own thirst that she’d scarcely heeded his. And that focus had proved fatal. She’d had no power whatsoever over her body—not over her limbs, which flailed and clutched at him like a madwoman’s, not over the savage moans and cries she uttered, not even over the gluttonous, self-indulgent thoughts that led her to forget his needs in favor of her own desires.

He must be appalled.

She was like a greedy child. And she’d paid for it. Oh aye, God had sent her soul to the very edge of death.

Unable to restrain himself any longer, Garth had followed Cynthia simultaneously over passion’s precipice, plunging again and again into her sweet body, filling her with his seed, shuddering afterward like a frisky steed.

Now he wished he could stay there forever, sealed to Cynthia, inhaling the womanly scent of her, watching the shadows of breeze-blown leaves dance across her moonlit skin, listening to the ragged sound of her breathing, feeling her heart beat against his. He wanted to think of nothing but the gentle, tempestuous, serene, wanton woman beneath him. He wanted to fall asleep with her there, cradling her in his arms, protecting her from the night, dreaming of jasmine.

But he’d learned the harsh truth from Mariana. The lovely woman nestled under him was far from satiated. It was only the beginning for her. And since he’d come this far, he owed her the best he could offer, even if it couldn’t be enough.

So he summoned up what strength was left him and willed his flagging staff to stand. He ran the fingertips of one hand down past her curving waist, over a perfectly sculpted hip, through the mat of curls still damp from their love. Gently, he spread the petals below, opening her to stroke the moist bud within.

“Nay!” she hissed.

Reflexively, he drew his hand back. What had he done?

“Nay,” she whispered again.