Lancelot (22 page)

He was hers now, hers alone. She smiled, drawing out the moment, tracing a fingertip down his sweat-slicked cheek and drinking in his groan, ripped from the very depths of his soul. He would wait. No matter what it cost him, he would wait, for he existed only for her command. Each bead of
sweat upon his brow, each shaking breath was new proof of her power. At last she moved her hips upward, taking him inside her with a cry of mingled pain and triumph.

He thrust deep within her, so deep that she feared that she would shatter, and her triumph turned to fear. “Shh, Elaine,” he murmured against her hair, “don’t be afraid, I would not hurt you—” He thrust again and she stiffened, her fists clenched in his hair. “Oh, God, Elaine, I cannot—yes, love, yes—”

For a moment she was certain she would die, then abruptly he relaxed, lying like a dead man with his cheek against her breasts. Was it over? God be thanked, it was. He wasn’t moving, and she had no intention of disturbing him just yet, lest he start it all again. She was quite sure she could not survive a second bout.

She hardly dared to breathe until he slipped away from her, and she was certain it was finished. Relief washed through her, though it was tinged with disappointment, too. She must be one of those women who did not take pleasure in physical love. She’d never expected to be one of them; was, in fact, surprised to find herself in their company, for she’d always imagined that the difference lay in choice. She’d chosen Lancelot. She had certainly desired him. But it seemed desire played no part in satisfaction.

Still, it was rather pleasant having him so close. She felt an uprush of tenderness as she smoothed the hair back from his brow.

His beard rasped painfully against her skin, but his lips were soft and warm when he kissed the sensitive underside of her breast, his mouth lingering against her skin as it traveled upward to the nipple, which tightened almost painfully. She shivered, moving restlessly against him, the ache between her legs pulsing in rhythm to her heartbeat as he tongued her nipple, then took it in his mouth. She cried
out, arching upward when she felt his hand caress her inner thigh. When his fingertip traced the soft folds between her legs, she went very still, incapable of speech or movement.

Please,
she thought,
please,
though she had no idea what she longed for—until he touched the throbbing bud at the center of her being. His touch was delicate, and now his lips were on hers, his tongue delving into her mouth and out again, echoing the rhythm of his fingers, quickening in response to the movement of her hips.

“Please,” she cried quietly, “please, please—Lancelot—yes!” her words taking up the rhythm, urging him on and on until all her words were lost as her world exploded in a burst of white-hot flame.

“And to think,” she said dreamily some time later, when she was capable of speech, “that I had just decided I was incapable of physical pleasure.”

He laughed softly. “I don’t think we need worry about that.” Raising himself on one elbow, he looked down at her. “Will you marry me, Elaine?”

“Oh, yes.” She traced the outline of his lips. “You have such a lovely mouth. Did I ever tell you that?”

“No, you must have forgotten. Your breasts are beautiful,” he said, bending to kiss them each in turn. “And I’m quite sure I haven’t mentioned
that
before. But I’ve often thought they would be. When you would sit by my bed and put cool cloths on my head, I used to wonder what you would look like just as you are now.”

“You
did
?”

“You didn’t guess? I thought you must have, I was always—well,” he said, guiding her hand downward. “Every time you touched me, it was difficult—impossible—not to respond.”

She laughed, looking down at him. “As you are now?”

“Just so. A bit embarrassing.”

“I never noticed,” she said, then dissolved in laughter at the pained expression on his face. “I didn’t think to look. Even if I had, I wouldn’t have known what I was seeing. It’s quite extraordinary, isn’t it?” she added, reaching out to touch him once again, “the way it . . . goodness! No wonder it hurt.”

“I’m sorry. Was it awful? I’ve heard the first time is painful for a lady—”

“Mmm. But what of you? What was it like?”

“Not painful. Just . . . oh, God, Elaine, wait, you’d better stop.” He caught her hand and raised it to his lips. “There was a moment when I did think I might die, but honestly, I didn’t care. Did you feel—was it anything like that?”

“Well,” she said, lying back against his chest, “I thought I would die, too—but that was because it seemed impossible that you could . . . fit. But after, when you—” She buried her face against him. “It was more like flying,” she mumbled against his shoulder.

He laughed and kissed her hair. “That’s something to go on with, isn’t it? In time we will fit more easily together. And we’ll have all the time we need when we are wed.”

When we are wed
. She shivered as she lay beside him, gently tracing the scar beneath his ribs as his breathing slowed and deepened. Had he really asked her to marry him? It seemed so natural at the moment that she’d accepted him without thinking. It was only now she realized what that meant.

She sat up, her legs crossed beneath her. Lancelot lay upon the grass, one arm crooked beneath his head, moonlight bathing the hard contours of his body in a silver glow. A smile still lingered upon his lips, those precisely chiseled lips that she had always so admired. Impulsively, she
leaned over and kissed them lightly so as not to wake him.

His brows were thicker above his nose, tapering as they arched. The left one had a tiny scar running through its outer edge, marring their perfect symmetry. She kissed the scar, as well, and then the tip of his nose, and then his lips once more because she could not resist them. Sitting back, she admired him shamelessly, her eyes tracing the bold contours of his wide jaw and high cheekbones, lingering on the deep, enchanting hollows in between.

Would she ever grow weary of looking at his face? In ten years, twenty—no, even then she could not imagine such a thing could ever happen.

A rustle in the wood behind her shattered her reverie. She shook her hair over her shoulders, shielding breasts and belly before she turned, blushing yet defiant, to face whoever had disturbed them.

Only to find the glade empty. She could still hear muffled sounds, yet she could not see what might be making them. She gasped aloud when she saw the high grass bend as though beneath a footstep. For a moment it seemed someone was there with them—she had the impression of the hem of a glittering gown sweeping across the grass, a high-arched foot encased in a jeweled slipper. When she tried to see more, the image wavered and was gone. All that remained were two patches of flattened grass, a swirling darkness between her and the trees, a rustle in the undergrowth and the occasional green glint of eyes, as though a score of tiny animals had gathered at the clearing’s edge.

“Who is there?” she cried, her voice high and thin with fear.

Lancelot started awake, lifting himself on his elbows. “Elaine? What—” He looked past her, and his eyes widened.

“Who is it?” Elaine cried, turning to search the empty clearing. “What do you see?”

“Nothing,” Lancelot said. “There is no one there . . . now. It is all right, Elaine. I swear it.”

When he drew her to him again, she went, trusting him completely as she lost herself in his embrace.

“
B
UT what if it doesn’t stop?” Elaine asked, peering from the doorway of the barn as the rain beat upon the fields beyond. “We’ll have to bring the hay in—”

“Nay, lady,” Will Reeve said decidedly, dragging a bony wrist across his streaming brow. “That’ll mean fire sure enough. Damp hay—” He shook his head. “It just won’t do. We can only hope this rain don’t bide.”

“My scar was a-paining me yestere’en,” Lancelot said suddenly from her other side, in such a dead-on imitation of the reeve that Elaine was forced to manufacture a hasty coughing fit. “And thass a certain sign of rain. ’Twere but a middling sort o’ pain, though, nobbut a shower’s worth, I’ll vow. But then,” he paused dramatically, “this morning I found a spider in my porridge.”

“I hope you didn’t kill it,” Elaine said severely, giving him a sharp dig with her elbow.

“Nah, lady, not I!” Lancelot declared. “’Twere a rare fool—”

“—that’d kill a spider at hay-making time,” Will Reeve finished flatly. The two men eyed each other over her head. “Well, lad, at least ye listen.”

“Always,” Lancelot assured him.

“Even if ye are a scamp,” Will said, his face lighting with a rare smile.

“I am,” Lancelot said humbly. “And I’m sorry for it.”

“Bullocks,” Will declared. “But thass all right, we can all use a bit o’ merriment.”

Elaine grinned as Will vanished into the barn behind them, where the rest of the villeins had fled the sudden storm. “Very good,” she said approvingly, “we’ll make a farmer of you yet.”

“You,” Lancelot said, “can make me anything you like.”

He stood in the doorway of the barn with the rain beating down behind him, one hand braced above his head and his damp hair curling about his brow.

“Will,” he called, not turning from Elaine, “what say we give the lads a rest? Say an hour . . . or no, let us make it two.”

Within moments the barn was empty save for the two of them. “I could not sleep last night,” Lancelot said.

“Warm milk is said to be effective in such cases,” Elaine retorted primly, though her heart was pounding so hard and fast that she was certain he must hear it. So it always was when he looked at her that way, as though the world and everything in it had ceased to exist—save her.

“It was not warm milk I wanted.” He lowered his arm and stepped forward until they stood toe-to-toe, barely an inch between them. He tugged the coif from her head and let it fall to the floor. “I lay in bed, watching the moon, remembering sunset at the mill and a certain sound you made . . .”

He deftly unwound her braid and ran a hand through her
hair, spreading his fingers so the strands gleamed against his skin. “Do you know the one I mean? It was when I—”

“Yes, I know,” she said quickly, her cheeks warming as she remembered the flock of swallows bursting from the ruined mill with a clap of wings, startled from their perches by her cry. She had laughed, then, watching the black shapes wheel against the red-streaked sky, her arms wound around her lover’s neck and his breath warm and quick against her neck.

“I liked that sound,” he went on, his face thoughtful as he wound a golden lock about his wrist, “oh, I liked it very much, Elaine. The more I thought of it, the more I longed to hear it once again.”

He tugged her hair, drawing her closer until she could feel the beating of his heart. “Do you think I might?”

“Perhaps. I cannot promise . . .”

“Is that a challenge?”

Before she knew what he meant to do, he bent and seized her about the knees, tossing her over one shoulder and striding toward the wooden ladder leading to the hayloft. “Put me down—you’ll do yourself a damage—”

“Too late,” he said, dropping to his knees and laying her down in the deep straw. He bent to her, and the rain pounded on the roof as he explored her with lips and tongue and hands, greeting each response as a revelation.

“This?”

She moaned softly as he trailed a path of soft kisses from the peak of her breast to her navel. “Or . . . this?” He dipped lower, and when she gasped, he raised his head to look at her through half-closed eyes. “No? Or was that a yes?”

Before she could collect herself to answer, he bent to her again, his explorations growing bolder. When she cried out, her body arching toward him, he laughed aloud. “Oh, that was assuredly a yes. What’s this?” he said with mock
sternness as she clamped her legs together, stammering an incoherent and much belated protest. “No, I will not have it, indeed I will not.”

So it always was when they lay together and with endless patience he sought her deepest pleasure. All he asked of her was honesty, which she could not have refused him if she would.

At last he came to her, and they strained together, rising, rising toward some distant peak. As one they reached it, hung poised for a heart-stopping moment, then her cry woke the echoes in the rafters above their heads before she tumbled headlong into oblivion.

“Mmm . . .” Lancelot murmured sometime later, rousing her from a doze. “Just think, only a fortnight, and you will be mine forever.”

“What then?” she murmured sleepily.

“Then we can make love in a proper bed. With pillows.”

She laughed, remembering their visit to his castle and the hour they’d spent in the lord’s bedchamber. There had been many pillows on the great bed. A tiny cloud of dust had burst from the one she had used to attack him by surprise. What had started as a romp soon took some very interesting turns.

She sighed. “I do like pillows. Yes, we must have dozens. But . . . where are we to live?”

“I had thought at Joyous Gard,” he answered, his hands moving lazily up and down her back.

She smiled, remembering the moment when he so named it, as they stood together on the battlements, her body glowing from their bed play and the wind whipping through her hair.