The Protector (28 page)

The walls shattered. The intensity coursed out from its center through all of her. For an instant she wasn't alive at all, but existing only in a dark point of perfect pleasure. It continued to flow through her in slower waves. While she floated in the sensation, Morvan eased on top of her.

She wanted the closeness and the fullness and even the pain seemed a part of that and so she didn't mind. She held on to him as his careful but relentless press claimed her to an intimacy that would be his alone. She knew when the virgin tear was coming from the way he paused and captured her gaze with his own. She knew that he did it to brand both of their minds with the memory, but also to distract her. Even so it was a burning tear, and he stopped, buried inside her.

Morvan closed his eyes to the overwhelming pleasure and fought a brief battle for control. She was beautiful. Beautiful in her abandon, in the silent scream of her ecstasy. In her eyes, still dark and liquid with her passion, he saw the desire that he filled even as her body wanted to rebel against this invasion.

He briefly lost himself in the soft warmth, and felt her sheathing him tightly, accepting him slowly, opening to him. Her fingertips lightly stroked his back and his breath caught in his throat.

“Is it done then?” she whispered.

It was easy to forget how little she knew of these things. “I will finish quickly. I know that I have hurt you.” He rose up on his arms and moved carefully inside her.

She smiled at the sensation, drew a hand between them and placed it on his chest. “I am not one of your delicate court ladies, Morvan. Stay with me.”

The request surprised and disarmed him, since he knew that she must be sore. An unfamiliar emotion poured through him, and his chest clenched. He slid his hand down and closed on her leg. “Then bend your knees up like this, Anna.”

He moved in her accepting body again, deeper now, and the well-known pleasure flooded him. But that new emotion joined it, transforming it, making it something stronger and more than physical. He felt as raw and exposed as he had that first night with her, and the connection spread like a river undammed. He looked in her eyes and saw her awareness of the intimacy claiming them. He also sensed her fear of it. With the thrusts of his body and the gaze of his eyes he commanded her to accept this other thing, this total joining that had been waiting for them since that desperate November night.

He knew when she succumbed to it, when the power vanquished her guarded separateness, when she gave herself to him. He felt the walls crumble, sensed the sweetness flow through her and into him, saw the wonder of it in her eyes. In the small world where they joined, nothing existed but the two of them wholly together.

He reached down between them to bring her with him to the end. Soon her frenzy began forcing him to fulfillment. She clawed at his shoulders as the release climaxed through her again. She screamed this time, pulling him
into her and crying his name. In the echoes and eddies of her ecstasy he came to her hard, the profound emotions splitting his mind, the intensity making his soul shake.

“Aye, my love,” he said, breathing out the last of his passion.

Anna held him, her arms and legs wrapped around his body. She was afraid to let him go, afraid that the feeling would go with him and never return. And she was terrified of the emotion itself, and of the vulnerability it contained.

He had been waiting for this, she realized, since that first night. It was what he had offered her in the shelter, what she had refused. It was why he had stayed, why he protected her, why his will kept reaching out to her in that almost physical way.

He had called her “My love.” Did he know that he had? Perhaps in the space and time of this bed he had meant it. But he had no doubt known this before with other women, and probably better and stronger. It was something that he controlled, and accepted or rejected at will.

What now? He had used their bond to bring her to this. She had felt his spirit demanding it, absorbing her into him, forcing her to acknowledge her love for him. Was that love supposed to change everything? Change her? Would refusing such unity be the ultimate unnatural act?

He took her face in his hand. His gaze met hers, and she knew that he read every thought. “Do not be afraid. I have always known that this would be the easiest part of our marriage.” He pushed some pillows against the
board, then rolled over to them. “Come and lie with me now. Sleep in my arms.”

Unaccustomed as she was to sharing a bed, she woke after a few hours. The candles still burned, and she raised her head to look at him propped on the pillows. She could imagine that handsome face as it had been as a child and a youth and a newly dubbed knight.

Her gaze dropped to his chest. It was bared by the sheet crumpled at his waist, and she traced the angles of his muscles with invisible fingers.

He took her hand in his. He raised it to his mouth and kissed it, and then placed it on his body. “You can touch me if you want. I am yours as you are mine.”

“I thought that you were asleep. Do you always know when I look at you?”

“Always. I feel you just as you have felt me.”

She let her fingers drift over his chest. He might not, Anna realized, be in love with her the way he had been, and perhaps still was, with his Elizabeth. But he did love her. Their bond gave them that. And the desire, for as long as it lasted, was undeniable.

She gave him a kiss as her fingers found the ridges of his abdomen. His hand closed over hers and held it still. He had not opened his eyes. “I should warn you that this is going to get you into trouble,” he said, smiling.

She laughed and raised up on her elbow and deliberately stroked him again. She watched the subtle signs in his face and muscles which told her that the power did not just go one way in these things.

He took her hand again. “If you are determined to seduce a man, you must show some courage, Anna.” He guided her hand lower.

She was fascinated by the controlled but distinct reactions she was able to get from him. A lighthearted inspiration struck.

“Look at me,” she whispered. “I want to see your eyes when I touch you.”

His eyes flashed open in shock at hearing his own love words spoken back to him. Laughing, he threw her down on her back. “Another time you can play at controlling me,” he said as he came over her. “I will even teach you how. But this night is mine.”

F
OR THREE DAYS ANNA LIVED
an idyll of pleasure. Morvan kept her close to him during the revelry and feasts celebrating the marriage. She lived in a state of barely dormant arousal, waiting for the changes in his touch or look that said he wanted her.

He didn't always wait for the night, and their delight in each other became the object of friendly jokes whenever he led her to the stairs on impulse and spirited her up to the chamber. She didn't care about the teasing, but only about the furious excitement he gave and showed her in the dusty afternoon light filtering through her southern windows.

Three nights of flickering flames and passion. Three days of bright colors and tournaments. A paradise of pleasure and laughter.

On the fourth day the lords and vassals departed with
their wives and retainers. Anna and Morvan bid them farewell and watched the long lines file out the castle gate.

The household yawned and found its natural rhythms. Servants removed the extra pallets from the chambers and returned the looms and stools to the sewing room since it would no longer be needed for sleeping. Everyone took their old places at the tables. Carlos left before dinner to work at the horse farm. Catherine resumed her duties managing the women.

Life became normal again. For everyone but Anna.

After the crushing activity of the last month, she found herself suddenly with nothing to do. The abrupt contrast left her restless. In the afternoon Morvan took a much-needed nap. In her bed. In her bower. She called for Shadow, deciding that a good ride would shake the boredom that nagged her.

Her horse arrived at the same time as three mounted guards. “Where are you off to?” she asked as she swung up and fixed her stupid skirt around her legs.

“We go with you, my lady,” one of them said.

“The groom made a mistake. I will return shortly.”

“It is my lord's order, my lady. You aren't to ride alone.”

She stared at them. The one who spoke was Morvan's man, but the other two were her own guards who had obeyed her command for months.

“I need no guard. I am going for a brief ride.”

“It is Sir Morvan's will, my lady. He informed us and the grooms some days ago.”

His words were like a splash of water waking her from a played-out dream.

She could easily outdistance these men and lose them, she knew. Instead she swung her leg and dropped from
the saddle. She marched into the keep and spent the afternoon pacing the upper battlements.

At the evening meal she told Morvan what had happened.

“Aye, I want a guard with you when you leave. It is only for your protection.”

“I do not need them.”

“You do need them. It is no more than most ladies have for their safety, especially in these times.”

“I am not most ladies, and Shadow can outrun any brigand's horse. I prefer to ride alone.”

“You will get used to it. Ignore them. It is how it will be, for I will not risk you. And until Gurwant is long gone and that matter settled, I do not want you leaving the castle at all unless I know.”

Another splash of water. “I do not accept this.”

He smiled, but his eyes narrowed. “Accept it. It is for your protection. It is done.”

Morvan's chests and clothes had been put in her chamber while the guests attended, but had not been removed during the day's rearrangements. That night as he fell asleep, peaceful and sated with their lovemaking, she admitted that he probably never intended to move out. She looked at the handsome face half buried in its pillow just inches from her head. Would he do that, too? Deny her this sanctuary?

He had negotiated with her too well that day in David's house. He had used her ignorance and misunderstanding against her. He had given up very little in the concessions he made, for he'd never expected her to want them in the end. If they kept up like this he would have his pleasure at his will, and even his heir in good time. He planned to tie her to him with passion and a
family so that after six years she would never want to go to Saint Meen.

Did he expect her to capitulate on all points? If she could maintain an illusion that he was in love with her, maybe she would. But he had known this magic before with other women, and most likely would again. He desired her and had called her “My love.” But there was love and then there was love.

After all, Ascanio and Carlos and Josce loved her. She felt sure that Morvan did not face the vulnerability that really being in love held, or the ache that racked her now as she faced her choices. Perhaps he had felt it with Elizabeth, but not with Anna de Leon. Yet he knew love's power with women. He expected her to be absorbed and made docile by it, much as he had tried the night before the battle.

She had not bargained for this. If she let love do this to her, there might be nothing left of her when he eventually turned away from her to desire someone else.

The next day she stayed in the keep, noticing how irrelevant she had become in this household run so smoothly by Catherine and commanded by Morvan. He had married the wrong sister. Catherine was the kind of woman men wanted.

She reminded herself why she had struck the bargain with him. It was time to hold him to it.

When she rose to retire after the evening meal, he came with her. She stopped him at the door to the lord's solar.

“I have had your things moved in here,” she said. “I will sleep alone tonight.”

He looked at her hard, as if trying to probe her mind. “You are serious.”

“Aye.”

“I don't believe this.”

“Believe it.”

He pulled her to him with one arm while the other hand took her face. “You will not deny me and what we have shared.” He grazed her mouth with his. “I have only to touch you and you want me. In this you are mine.”

It was a bold assertion of the naked truth, but it only stiffened her back. “I don't deny what we have shared, but I will not be a slave to it.”

“You speak nonsense. I do not treat you like a slave.”

She felt the heat of his anger, and his desire. His arm gripped her more closely. She remembered that night after Isabella's dinner when he had been like this.

“That remains to be seen, doesn't it?” she said quietly.

That checked him. The dangerous fire dimmed. He released her. “This is madness. Go to your sacred bower. I can see that it is time I recalled the exact details of our agreement.”

She walked away from him and entered her chamber. She dismissed Ruth, and prepared for bed alone. Then she laid out her garments for the morning.

A tunic and hose, and boots for riding.

Morvan waited patiently for the groom to saddle the bay courser.