Margaret Moore - [Maiden & Her Knight 03] (25 page)

S
he returned his passionate kiss with fervent and desperate need. She wanted to share his strength, to feel his muscular body holding her, to know that she was safe.

His hands caressed her, stroking away the worst of her trembling. As he continued, his mouth still moving over hers, her panic dissipated, replaced by a yearning different from the need for comfort and protection. His body and his kiss promised so much more than that…

Unable to resist, not wanting to fight anymore, she gave herself up to the passion he inspired. Leaning into him, she, too, stroked and caressed, and parted her lips, opening herself to him as a flower opens to the summer sun.

His tongue slid inside her mouth, swirling about hers and enflaming her more, calling forth the torrid craving she had tried for so long to bury and deny.

No more. Not now. Now, she was aware only of him, this man who had summoned forth all the longings of her woman’s heart, who had become not her captor but her savior.

The man she wanted above all others.

As she moaned softly from the excitement he created, the blood throbbed through her, the rhythm primitive and vibrant and demanding. His hand moved to cup her breast, and her breath caught as his thumb brushed over her hardened nipple thrusting against the rough wool of her gown. With his other hand, he pressed her buttocks toward his hips, so that she was against him even more, feeling the length and strength of him through his clothing.

He aroused her in ways she had never dreamt. He was pure male, and in his arms, she was a woman to be desired. Passionately. Completely.

More, he made her feel absolutely necessary, like air and sun and food.

She slipped her hand beneath his wool tunic and up the bare skin of his back, the rises and valleys of his muscles a terrain she had to explore. His skin was hot and tight, and his muscles rippled with every move.

Leaning into him, she brought her hand forward and stroked his chest. Her fingertips discovered the hairs encircling his nipple, and she lightly brushed the pebbled nub.

He groaned. She leaned farther, grinding her hips against him. Responding, he pressed harder, so that it felt as if no clothing existed between them.

Clasped against his powerful body, tension built within her, a tension she had never felt before—a wonderful, tight anticipation that compelled her to thrust against him, while his long, lean and supple fingers continued to pleasure her breasts.

And then he stopped kissing her. He pushed her bodice aside, so that her breasts was free. Bending, he sucked her nipple into his mouth and swirled his tongue around the tip.

With a cry, the tension within her exploded. Her knees buckled as wave after wave of incredible release throbbed through her. In all her life, she had never felt anything like this. Never.

A thought skimmed across the surface of her pleasure-clouded mind. If he could do this clothed, what would she feel if they made love?

Alexander continued to hold her close as the waves of blissful ease receded and died.

“Oh, Allis,” he murmured as his lips trailed across her cheek before capturing her earlobe.

He had said the name that was not hers, and she was called back to harsh reality.

She pushed him away, then backed up until she hit the side of the hole in the wall. She was not Allis. She was Isabelle—and he was the son of Rennick DeFrouchette. He had abducted her. She was his prisoner still. He was her jailer, her guard, the man responsible for her captivity and she must
not
forget that.

No matter what her heart desired, and even if she never again felt such intense, burning passion for another man, this could not be. She was Lady Isabelle of Montclair, and he was the son of their enemy.

She could not love him. She must not love him. She was wrong to love him and to be in his arms like this.

The cold, wet air brought her more to her senses, and she saw his tunic damp where she had pressed her shameless body against it as if she were one of the whores in the hall below. “What are you doing?”

He blinked, like a man dazed in brilliant sunlight after coming out of a dark building.

“Get out.”

Lightning flashed, and she saw his face fully. He was shocked and uncertain, taken aback by her action and her words.

The thunder rolled up in the hills as he took a step toward her. “No.”

She must and would conquer her traitorous body, her traitorous heart, and him. “You took advantage of my weakness.”

“I would never call you weak.”

“I nearly fell and was grateful that you saved me.”

“So your response was mere gratitude—or was your embrace another attempt to win my assistance? Perhaps you will now ask me to find you a stouter rope.”

Her hands splayed against the walls, she inched away from him. “No! I told you, I was overcome.”

“As was I. Obviously.”

With quick, agitated movements he gathered up what was left of her rope and untied the knot holding it to the bedpost. “My heart nearly stopped when I entered this room and saw that hole. I was sure you had plunged to your death, until I realized the bed had been moved and saw this. You are a very clever woman, but this would never have held your weight.”

He surveyed the stones she had taken out of the wall and piled on the floor. “You are even stronger than I thought.” He crouched down and pinched some dust on the side of one of them, then rubbed it between his fingers. “I should have guessed. This mortar was poorly mixed. This wall could have fallen in at any time, if the wind was very strong.”

He straightened and dusted off his hands. “You gave me your word that you would not try to escape again. You could have broken your skull had you fallen onto the wall walk.”

He came to stand in front of her. “There was no need for this desperate act, my lady,” he said, his intense gaze searching her face, her eyes, as if he was trying to penetrate her mind. “Your husband will pay and you will be returned to him. Or is there some reason you think your husband may not pay the ransom?”

“Of course he will. He loves me.”

Alexander took hold of her shoulders. “Say that again.”

“That Connor loves me? Of course he does.”

He shook his head. “No, he does not. You know it as well as I, for I hear your doubt in your voice. Your husband may have loved you once, but no longer. There is something between your sister and your husband, something far too intimate to be the love between a man and his sister-in-law. I saw it when I was there.”

She had to maintain the ruse. Who could say what he might do if she told him the truth now? “He does love me!”

Alexander’s lips jerked up in a sardonic smile as another bolt of lightning flashed. “I lived with a woman who deluded herself for too long not to recognize that same delusion in another. I thought you were an intelligent woman, but I see now you are all the same—blinded by love and devotion to men who do not deserve it.”

“Of course there is nothing improper between them.” She fled to the center of the room.

“Oh, yes, there is, my lady,” he said, following her, his tread as soft and deliberate as a barn cat stalking a mouse. “So, this is the end of your great passion. This is the kind of man the wonderful, the marvelous Sir Connor turns out to be. Why, your husband is no better than Osburn. You would have done better, perhaps, to marry my father, after all.”

“You know
nothing
of what is between Connor and my sister and me.”

“So you trust him to ransom you?”

“Yes, I do!” she cried. “He loves me!”

“Then why did you embrace me with so much passion?” He circled her like a ship caught in a slow whirlpool, and she was the center. “Your marriage is a sham, and that is why there is such heat and desire in your lips when they meet mine. That’s why you allowed me to pleasure you. How long has it been since he made you limp with release, my lady? How long since he heard you gasp like that? Perhaps he never has and that is why you were so eager for me to pleasure you. Perhaps you would like me to do it again.”

“No!”

He halted in front of her, tall and powerful and certain. “I don’t believe you.”

“I hate you!”

His voice a purr, he ran his hand up her arm. “Do you, when this man you claim to love betrays you for another, and that your own sister? Does he desire you still, the great Sir Connor? Or does he come to your bed out of duty?”

His light touch stirred her as much as his kiss, and it must not—but she could not tell him to stop. He was right; she didn’t love Connor, although he did not know the real reason why. She never had entertained more than a girlish admiration for her brother-in-law that was nothing like her feelings for Alexander DeFrouchette.

Still stroking her, he sidled closer. She closed her eyes, and she could feel his breath warm on her cheek.

Tell him to stop. Make him go
.

I cannot. I want him too much
.

So she stayed silent, while every part of her body tingled and quivered and waited … waited … waited.

“Perhaps he does not even visit your bedchamber at all anymore,” he murmured. His hips brushed against hers, and her whole body wanted to melt against him. “Is that why there have been no children?”

His left arm encircled her waist and pulled her hard against him, while his right cupped the back of her head. His mouth captured hers, his lips moving with sure deliberation, demanding that she respond.

She did, her body firing like dry tinder to an open flame. Her blood sang and every muscle tensed, aching for the release only he, with his lips and hands and magnificent body, could give. “Allis, my Allis, you want me as much as I want you.”

Allis. Not Isabelle
. A reminder that no matter what she felt, this must not be.

“You don’t know me! You don’t know what I want!” she cried, pushing him away.

More lightning flashed, and she saw an expression that would haunt her forever—eyes full of accusation, of sorrow, of loss and pain, as if a trusted friend had stabbed him in the back.

Tell him the truth. Tell him who you are
.

The thunder rolled, another bolt brightened the room, and in that short space, his sorrow had departed, replaced by something dead and cold in the blue depths of his eyes, which became as Rennick DeFrouchette’s eyes had always been.

“Put back those stones, or Osburn may decide that cell is the only place that will hold you,” he commanded as he picked up her rope and marched to the door. He whirled around to face her before he departed. “I hope you are happy in your delusion, my lady, and that your husband will pay.”

“If you do not stop, you are going to wear away that blade until it is nothing more than a dagger,” Denis noted the next morning as he warily watched his friend rub his sword blade with hard, brisk strokes of the sharpening stone.

Alexander’s only response was to frown more deeply and keep polishing, even if his friend’s remark was not without merit. But he had to do something other than think about last night and remember her passion. Her embrace. Her denials of what he knew was true.

His confusion. His pain. His soul-searing realization that he had deluded himself into thinking she was different from other women.

And most disturbing of all, the stunning, horrible conclusion that he had been in a dream as pleasant—and false—as the one his mother had harbored.

All love was a kind of delusion, he snarled to himself, a dream based on hope and desire. He had learned that hard lesson once and for all.

“You look exhausted, too,” Denis noted. “Perhaps you should stop sleeping outside her door. The Brabancons are too afraid of you to go near her anyway.”

Even after their confrontation last night, and although he was rightfully and furiously angry with her, he had still slept outside the lady’s door. Despite what had happened, he wasn’t willing to risk that some Brabancon or Osburn would try to rape her—and he wanted to be certain she put the stones back in place.

He had listened to her do it, the sounds like those that had first aroused his suspicion, the noises familiar from his days as a mason’s helper. Many a time he had helped slowly push stones into place.

She would probably be as tired as he was this morning—a small punishment for what she had attempted to do.

Denis began to fold his blanket. “Well, it is dry there, at least. I tell you, I thought I was going to wake up drowned from the storm. Thank God it has passed.”

Alexander nodded. The courtyard had been full of puddles in the dawn’s light, and there were still clouds, but the sun would soon burn the moisture away.

“Are you going to eat this morning, my friend? If you don’t go soon, there may be nothing left.”

Alexander picked up a cloth and wiped down his blade, finished for now. He would find something else to do, and he wasn’t hungry. “Later.”

“She’s probably eaten long ago and is back in her chamber.”

“Who?” He did not want to talk about Sir Connor’s wife, or admit that he was upset about her, or even thinking of her.

Denis put his blanket down on his pile of straw. “The lady—who else?”