My True Love (26 page)

Slowly he inserted a finger within her. She was wet and hot. Her fingers splayed across his chest, combed through the hair there. He chose that moment to withdraw his finger. She closed her eyes, breathed one long gust of a sigh when he began to stroke her softly.

The sight of his tanned hand buried between her white thighs was impossibly sensual. So much so that he didn’t chastise her when she closed her eyes again.

He bent forward, sucked at her nipple. Gently, slowly, elongating it as he drew back then let it escape from his mouth. His mouth was so hot that it felt he might burn her. He repeated the gesture over and over, all the while slowly slipping his finger inside her, teasing her with his fingers.

She began to tremble. A shimmering tension that radiated from the core of her, one that he felt and recognized. He slowed his movements, not willing to end it yet. He wanted to keep her on a precipice of arousal. So that she would sob for it, cry for it. Scream for him.

“Is it nice, Anne?”

The sound she made was neither assent nor denial, but almost a moan.

His smile had long since disappeared. He was concentrating on her, the flush of her breasts, the gasping breaths she made. It helped to keep his mind from the almost pain he felt at the moment.

“Do you want me in here?” He accompanied the question with a long slow slide of his finger inside her. Her thighs clamped against his hand, trapping it.

“You must say, Anne.”

“Yes,” she said, opening her eyes. Her fingers trailed up the length of him and down again. In the soft, lambent glow of her eyes he saw a challenge and a surrender. Both equally wished for and as earnestly felt by him.

“I want to be right there,” he said, demonstrating exactly where in one protracted stroke of finger. She trembled even as her legs widened.

The expression on her face was the same as that night they’d loved. Interest, curiosity, and something learning to be lust. In the faint light it was more than that. It was a woman’s look. A fascination with the beast that showed itself so eagerly, bobbing in the air for a chance to bury itself in the soft heat of her.

He reached down and stroked himself. His finger was wet with her, and he anointed the head with it. Once more he inserted his finger. Once more pulled it out and bathed himself with her wetness.

“I want to be in you,” he said, his own voice a rasp of sound. “But not yet. This will have to do.”

He pulled himself back and squeezed himself with both hands. It was exquisite torture. “You are this tight,” he said, closing his eyes as he spoke. He rocked his hips forward in an instinctive thrust. His body wanted release even as his mind declared he wait.

He opened his eyes.

“Do you want to touch me?” he asked, a smile curving his lips.

“Yes.” A soft and breathy response. Something like greed in her eyes.

“Not now,” he said softly.

“Please.”

“If you are good,” he promised.

“Come inside me,” she whispered. “Now.”

How quickly she’d learned the power of words. Of looking at him with hunger in her gaze. He wanted her to touch him, wanted to be inside her.

Instead he smiled.

“Do you want my finger in you again?”

“No. I want
you
.”

He leaned over her, braced on his right arm. His fingers speared into her hair, kept her anchored there. He leaned down and kissed her. Soft, darting kisses that left both of them hungering for more.

“You’ll have me, then,” he said, the pain of needing to be inside her almost too much.

He arranged her at the end of the bed, stood between her thighs.

She lay before him like a pagan offering. A woman glowing in the light of the candles. She was, simply, perfect. A surge of possessiveness nearly knocked him to his knees. His. She was his. Only and always.

He watched her as he entered her slowly. So slowly that his mind screamed at him to hurry, that his blood pooled in his loins and the world stilled and nothing mattered but the feel of her around him.

He inserted himself an inch inside her. “Are you sure this is what you want?”

Her arms lay outstretched, her hands clasped the sheet between fists. Her eyes opened, her gaze met his.

“Yes,” she whispered. A sound as loud as a shout.

He moved an inch. His palms stroked her thighs. She lifted her hips in an effort to get him to move, closed her eyes.

Another inch.

“Don’t be greedy, Anne.”

She bit her bottom lip. He wanted to lick it.

His hand pressed against her abdomen, his thumb pressed into the furrow protected by the delta of hair. She turned her head, her eyes clenched shut. But the hands that gripped the sheet did so with increased ferocity.

Another inch.

“Am I hurting you?” A tender question. One that belied his sudden wish to impale her on himself.

She tossed her head from side to side.

His thumb circled and rotated along the swollen folds. She drew up her feet, anchored them behind his thighs. Pulled him to her. Tenacious in lust.

“Is it nice, Anne?”

The only sound she made was a soft hum.

He moved slowly, his hips thrusting an inch at a time until they were pressed together, groin to groin. One more thrust buried him.

“Do you like that?”

She opened her eyes. She looked dazed. Passion could do that. So could longing. It grew until it was almost pain. Until nothing else was as important.

He bent and bit one nipple gently. Her hands fisted on his shoulders, beat at his back.

“Do you want more, Anne?”

Her answer was not a sob. Not even a cry. She reached up and dragged his head down for a kiss. She seduced him with lips and tongue. Her hips arched up and thrust against his. The effort not to spill his seed had him drawing back.

“Please, Stephen.” An aching plea. “Beloved.” A whisper that struck his heart.

He thrust once and felt the earth shatter.

Only then did he hear her scream.

Chapter 22

H
ours later she roused. She had not drifted to sleep so much as had been catapulted there. Wakefulness came with the same suddenness.

Stephen was not at her side. Instead, there was only emptiness. A quick survey of the room located him. He stood at the window, looking out at the view.

He stood before her in unselfconscious nakedness, the only covering the bandage that bound his left arm from elbow to wrist. His legs were corded with muscle, his arms roped with it. His chest plated and hard and dusted with hair.

He stood there, his face set into stern and unapproachable lines. Did he know, for all his severity, that he was more than handsome? She had seen him in all manner of poses from boyhood to now, and she’d never ceased to marvel how princely he looked. It was as if nature, knowing his rank among nobles, had endowed him with extra height and breadth. Given his eyes a more intense hue, dusted midnight with a hint of royal blue. His nose was proud, as a Roman’s might be. A conqueror’s, at the very least. And his lips were full, but not too much so. Perfect, she thought, as she studied him.

“I’ve never realized how truly handsome you are,” she said.

He looked startled. He did not receive enough compliments, she thought, if they made him so uncomfortable. She could think of a hundred things to say. A considerate host. A man of great talent in languages. A magnificent lover. She felt her cheeks warm.

It was his fault. He was not the least disturbed by his nakedness, while it seemed to strip sense from her.

His smile was not untinged by tenderness but blurred by some other emotion. Bemusement, wonder, confusion? She didn’t know.

She wondered how he could not see the words in her thoughts. She loved him. Not an eloquent statement. But simple. Complete. She did not want to surrender this man. She wanted to live with him. She didn’t want to be a martyr to war, she wanted to learn about love and all its permutations. She wanted to be irritated at him, find reasons to dislike him, argue with him, ache to throw something at him at the same time she wanted to worship his body and admire his mind. Salute his spirit and feel awe for his courage. She wanted life with Stephen.

But those thoughts, as many others, went unvoiced.

The candles were still lit. He’d not slept as she had, then. He turned back to the window. She had evidently startled him with her compliment. He, in turn, shocked her with his next words.

“Sebastian was a leper,” he said, his words ad dressed not to her but to the night-darkened window.

She raised up on one elbow, draped the sheet around her.

“You’ve finished the codex.”

He nodded.

“Can you read it straight through again? From the beginning?”

“Now?”

“We have no more time, Stephen.” It was a gentle reminder that even the seconds were precious.

He pulled on his breeches. In moments he was gone from the room, leaving Anne to stare up at the ceiling.

He was a complex man, one she’d come to understand. Not the whole of him, but glimmers of who he was. Even if he loved her, he would never ask her to stay. Not as long as he was going to war. A man of noble purpose.

In that, he had greater resolve than she. She wanted to beg in an un-Sinclair way. She wanted to extol her own virtues and plead with him to offer her a glimpse of a possible future. As leman or friend, lover or wife.

She’d received her wish and learned of the parts of his life she’d not known and heard him tell her what he felt. It would have to be enough, perhaps, to last the rest of her life.

He returned, closed the door behind him.

She raised herself on her elbows and surveyed him. She could almost see him adorned in armor, his hand outstretched, the sword he carried gleaming new in the morning sun. A man not unlike Se bastian. A man of honor and valor, just as his man was. Gentle, for all that he had killed.

“I’ll read what you don’t know first,” he said, moving to sit next to her on the bed. He opened the brittle parchment pages and began to translate.

“‘An accident divulged my lord’s personal secret. He rescued me, and in doing so, I touched him. It had been strictly forbidden between us. I had been a biddable girl, having been raised all these years at the convent. It was not a decree I understood, but I abided by it nonetheless. Sebastian led me to the smith’s hut on that horrible day. I thought that he would thrust my hands into the flames. Instead, he confessed his great secret.

“‘I had come to love him even more than I feared him. But even so, on that occasion, I trembled. I knew that the moment would bring a revelation, and I did not know if I was brave enough to hear it. Sebastian had chided me often for my timidity, stating that it was a habit I had chosen rather than a matter of my character. But on that day, I wanted to claim cowardice rather than to hear his words. I had been right, after all.

“‘Sebastian had been confined to prison after being captured by the Saracens. It was there that he was kept in a dark and dank cell, the only hope for the future his ultimate ransom. But during that long year, my beloved was stricken with disease, the most horrible and hideous fate for a man as strong and vital as Sebastian. He had become a leper.

“‘My lord had feared to summon me to his side because of his disease. But he was pressed to because of the Church. If he had not sent for me, a cleric would have come to Langlinais. The church would have discovered that he was a leper and cast him out, away from home and kin. As it was, he’d hoped to find some solace at Langlinais, to remain secluded from the world and from me.

“‘The Church calls such as Sebastian the undead and speaks the Mass of Separation over them. But he was too alive for such punishment. I was certain he planned to leave me, to go into hiding as a leper, to live out the rest of his life in silence and loneliness.

“‘That morning at Montvichet I viewed the most horrible sight of my life, Sebastian attired in a leper’s robe. They would have taken me away from him, and this I could not allow them to do. I declared myself a leper in order to be with him. It was a decision that angered my lord but gave me peace. Life without him would have been intolerable.

“‘The Templars took our men, even as my lord gave them the Grail. It was evident that they believed it was a relic of great importance. But it was not the treasure of the Cathars.’”

“Sebastian’s leprosy was one secret. The Grail wasn’t the other?”

“No,” he said. “Nor was the Grail the miracle Juliana spoke of.”

She frowned at him.

“Remember the statue, Anne.”

She sat up, draping the sheet around her. “A statue of Sebastian and Juliana,” she said, reasoning aloud.

“One that was carved toward the end of his life.”

She looked at him, eyes wide. “But there was no sign of leprosy.”

He nodded at her. The beginning of a smile appeared on his face.

“There is no cure for it.”

“Exactly.”

“The miracle of Langlinais,” she said, smiling. “But what is the treasure?”

At her look, he bent his head and continued to read.

“‘It is a sorrow that no one will know of the miracle of Langlinais. That my lord was cured of his disease. The danger is too great for Sebastian. But I will know, and these words will speak of it. Of the bright white sun of Montvichet and the moment that Sebastian was no longer afflicted. The leper became a man again and my beloved. The joy of this great miracle will be with us for the rest of our lives. So, too, the gratitude that we each felt.

“‘We went home to Langlinais, Sebastian, his loyal squire now made knight, and I. It was a journey I’d not thought would take place. There was laughter and love to mark our passage home. But there was one more secret. The true reason Sebastian had been summoned to the Cathar fortress. The treasure that Magdalene had left for Sebastian.

“‘I discovered the secret of the Cathars as I read a codex hidden at the bottom of the basket of scrolls. I read it disbelieving and afraid. Not only of its contents, but of its potential danger. It could alter the world as we knew it. It was for our protection that Sebastian brought the codex back to Langlinais. In case the Templars threatened us. But its presence was a danger, and Sebastian and I de cided to send it far from here, with our newest knight.