With Her Kiss (Swords of Passion) (5 page)

He smiled at her as she held him, then pressed a kiss into her palm. “I am real, and you are alive and improving in health, I see, by the minute.”

Swallowing hard, she fought tears. Pride would not let her show him such weakness. He was her saviour, but to what end? He was at core, by lineage and temperament, John’s man. Despite occasional breaks with their Sovereign and frequent stays in the dungeons of the White Tower, Geoffrey had pledged his fealty to John Plantagenet. How could she believe Geoffrey’s words that she was safe? And how long did she have before he changed his mind and ransomed her to his ruler?

She leaned away. Tried to sit. To stand.

He pulled her back. “Kat, to test your strength is not wise. Nor even necessary.”

She elbowed him. To no avail.

Grasping her wrists, he bound her arms across her bare chest and clutched her to him. His words blew hot against her ear. “Stop this! We have no idea how strong your bones are. You are not whole, not yet! Do not fight me!”

She writhed.

But he clamped her to him. “You have no need to run from me. Do you not see that I have condemned myself in John’s eyes by abducting you?”

“Or you could ransom me.”

“Bah! If you fear I took you only to offer you up to him, I ask you, what folly would that be? John would not pay me for such a service.”

She was too weak, too weary to argue.

“I am not your enemy, Kat, nor ever was.”

Fatigued beyond words, she shook her head to object.

“I know you think otherwise. Let me prove my devotion. We’ll start with the fact that I have you here with me safe, and soon you will be wholly returned to health. For me, with me, you will eat and drink and indulge in this water. I will talk with you. Tell you tales of my life without you. And I will wash you and savour you, here, naked in my arms the way you should have been from the age of sixteen, when three men ripped us apart. And now, two of them are dead. The last, my King, is now my eternal enemy for what he has done to you.”

He ran his fingers along her jaw and tipped her head to give him access to the tender flesh behind her ear. “You are mine.”

“Never,” she whispered.

“In spirit, you always were. You cannot run from me. And have no need to go. For where you are, there I am also. You are mine, Katherine.”

He bound her to him, one arm around her waist, tucked tightly beneath her breasts. With his other hand, open and warm, he lifted her jaw and encircled her throat. “You live because of me. I yearn to make you live for me. And I will.”

He pressed his fingertips to the pulse points along her neck. “Your heart beats a hot rhythm. If this is fear, you have no cause from me.”

He traced lower, spanning from clavicle to clavicle. “You are so lovely, still.” His deep voice hushed, as if he were in church worshipping at some altar. “Flawless. Perfect. Katherine, Katherine,” he crooned. “You are my beauty.”

He skimmed over the sensitive skin of one breast and lifted it. “Heavy and full.” With his thumb and index finger, he rolled her nipple. Squeezing, pinching, stroking, he made her tingle and pulse.

She sighed, closed her eyes and blended this vibrant reality with her remembrances of his touches so long ago. Then the two of them had taught each other the bliss of arousal, the torment of unfulfilled desire and once, just once, the rapture of union. She undulated, wont to forget it all and failing.

“Christ, my darling. Your body hardens for me, as mine for you.” He shifted, his cock an iron rod along the crease of her buttocks. “How fortunate I am to witness how you still want me.”

She lifted her hips, as much to ease her want as to escape him.

His huge hand pressed against her stomach. “Lie back. Here, against me, you can witness how I want you. How I have wanted you all my life.” He planted a kiss against her shoulder while his hand drifted lower, his fingers sinking down further into the bath water. There, he splayed his fingers to weave into her nether hair, cup her mound and hold. “I shall have you again. Now, here in this tub, every day. Soon, in our bed, every night.”

She cried out against his possession, her desire for him rising, swelling, belying her body’s weakness.

He breathed heavily, his lips curling in a smile against her skin. “This hunger I have for you has only made me more determined to please you and keep you and—”

“Keep me? Nay. You cannot!” she rasped out her age-old pain that she could never have him. He had always been too poor, too new to his lands and titles to be a proper match for her wealth and her lineage. Or so other men had decreed. Now, for more than six years a widow, she had learnt to stand alone. She liked the freedom, even if she had not properly nourished a fear of John. “No one owns me.”

“Own you, no. Possess you, yes.”

“I will have no man.”

“Your body, my lady,” he said as his fingers plied her cunt with tender care, “says you welcome me.”

“You have me at a disadvantage.”

“Aye. Good for me.”

“Cur.”

“I take my opportunity,” he insisted as he found her clitoris and rolled it so that she bucked. “You would not come to me of your own accord. I know it.”

“You use what you have learnt,” she said, arching, breathless and jealous, “with other women.”

Sighing, he pinched her and slid a long finger down her slit. “What I know of passion I learnt first with you.”

“Then others,” she shot back, squirming to get away from him.

“Was I to be a monk? Aye, I had others. They were but sport. Not this,” he whispered, his fingers weaving magic as they slipped along her cunny lips, opened her wide, and delved into her. One finger, two, he slid inside and stroked her sensitive channel.

Filled by him, enraptured, appalled at his arrogance and thrilled by it, she moaned. She writhed, a wanton under his ministrations. She opened her thighs, welcoming and not this invasion from this man who had saved her from death.

“My dearest woman, you are so warm and here inside wet with desire for me. This is not sport. Never between you and me.” He found her clitoris again, circled it, patted it, tweaked it and pinched. “This is more.”

She lolled her head against his chest. “Mere lust.”

He growled, but ministered to her cunny with tender vigour. “There is nothing
mere
about this between us.”

She whimpered, tears brimming at her conflict. She could not fight him and her body’s lush response to his seduction.
Lust, aye.
“A beginning…that takes us nowhere.”

He spread her nether lips, stroking her more deftly and sending the water slapping at the sides of the tub. His cock pressed up between her thighs. He was so rigid, so huge that his rod tantalised her. She gasped, reaching to wrap her fingers around him. Shifting, teasing, he moved and deprived them both of her touch.

“You are mine, here,” he crooned, his hot mouth against her nape while his talented fingers worked a magic she had long forgotten could come from a lover. “These silken lips are swollen and drenched for me, as ever they were when we were young. This gate to heaven,” he said as he thrust blunt fingers inside her vaginal walls and drove her to cry out, “is mine alone now. God, how you clutch me close. How long has it been since a man enthralled you?”

She groaned, hating to tell him.

He nipped her earlobe. “How long?”

“Years.”
You. Only you gave me ripe release.

“While I have made love to no woman since the last day I spread your pretty thighs and lost my seed inside you,” he rasped as he lifted one breast, pinched and stroked her nipple and left her cunt to yearn for the return of his fingers. “Twenty years, it has been. And Kat, the memory of that last time lives in me still.”

Tangled in the web of his desire, her injured pride fought at her bondage. “Not in me.”

“No?” He turned her face up to him. His brow arched high. “Well then, we’ll make new memories.”

In a swift move, he rose to his feet, then hauled her up out of the tub. Dripping, splashing upon the Turkish carpets across the floor, he strode with her to the massive bed and put her to the linens. She stared up at him, entranced, appalled, delighted, as he crawled over her, naked and mighty, to pin her to the mattress with his huge hands upon her thighs. And there with a sorrowful grin he sank over her to scrape her aching breasts with his teeth, then kiss his way down her ribs and loins to part her dripping cunny lips with deft fingers. With a growl, he sank to her
chat
and lapped at her folds like a man starving. His torrid tongue teased her length and speared her cunt.

Shock shimmered through her. Savage desire set her ablaze. This was what she had craved since the day he had left her arms twenty years ago. Her ravenous hunger consumed her and she tilted up her hips to offer him more of her, all of her.

Groaning at her move and her clear surrender to his ardour, he parted her cunny lips wider and devoured her flesh with avid kisses. He was careful, licking at her, laving every bit of her and finding her bud. There, he nibbled at her and sucked her into his mouth. As if hit by a thousand arrows of lust, she lay open to his passion.

She trembled with her ardour. She quaked with raw need and plucked at his shoulders knowing full well that she encouraged him to ravish her.

Her body, traitor to her intent, blossomed with his affection. She grasped at his arms, cried out for more of his kisses and hated the weakness that melted her resolve. But she had not known such rapture in decades. And her mind had rejected the very possibility such consuming need might be hers again. Certainly never with him.

So here at once, to miraculously have him again, to hear his desire declared for her, to have his fingers and his lips and his tongue proclaim her as his own was paradise.

So when she burst into a thousand stars of delight, she shook with the erotic joy. She clutched him close with the turmoil of her fulfilment, her nails digging into the meaty flesh of his shoulders to inspire him to fill her with his cock.

He raised his head, ran his gaze over her expression and nodded in ribald satisfaction. As he put his feet to the floor, she wiggled closer, opening her thighs and encircling his hips to hook her heels into the sinewy power of his buttocks. He laughed, a satyr’s sound of raw delight, then pushed her feet wider as he sank his thick hot cock into her cunt.

She groaned at the glory of possessing him.

He withdrew. She cried out in anticipation of his return, thinking him rearing back to plough into her with renewed vigour. But he froze.

She caught her breath. No, surely, he would not stop now! Her gaze flicked over him. He panted, his nostrils flaring. He was huge, dripping from the bath, the water rippling over planes and curves of massive muscle down his chest and ribs to his cock, long, red and dribbling cum for want of her.

“I am overjoyed to see we are still attuned to each other, though time and tragedy parted us.” He bent and kissed her breasts, her stomach and her clitoris, sucking on her sensitive flesh until she keened.

She shuddered, waves of fulfilment coursing through her cunny even as she sought more and more of his service. “Come inside me,” she could not stop herself from begging him.

“Not tonight,” he said, his harsh voice rasping with his own desire as he withdrew from her, smiling like a cat and licking his lips of her juices.

“
Why?
Why do this? To drive me mad on top of what I have suffered?”

“Have I not proven my devotion?” His powerful hands gripped her thighs.

She shot to her elbows, eager to run, her chest heaving even as her cunny dripped with slick cream to have him fill her. “Like hell.”

“Nay, like heaven. I will have you again. As I wish. Whenever I wish.”

Empty, angry, she jerked backwards from his grasp. “Over my dead body.”

“Over your living, panting, ravenous body, my darling.” He ran a finger along her cheek, his green gaze searing her breasts and her engorged mound. “And this time, no other man can deny me.”

“
I
will!”

“Will you?” he asked as if he were cajoling a wayward child. “Why?”

Then without awaiting any answer, he turned and strode to the door.

Watching him leave her, she worked at words to insult him or refute him.

But she found none as potent, none as brazen as how he had left her so drenched with desire for only him.

Chapter Four

Castle Chepstow

River Wye, Wales

Kat awoke to the chirping of birds greeting the dawn. She lay very still, listening to their trill. She cocked an ear, but no other sounds intruded upon her sanctuary, for her immense bed was surrounded by the thick hangings that she had pulled shut last night after Geoffrey had left her. He was a heathen to leave her so unfulfilled, so crazed with frustration and resentment at his seduction and her own weakness.

She stretched, feeling more hale and hearty than in days past. Her muscles did not ache. Her sight was no longer fuzzy. So too, her mind was clear. No thanks to the sensual haze she’d fought after Geoff’s departure. For hours, she had lain unfulfilled, hungering for him and tempted to bring herself sexual relief with her own hands. Her cunny had pounded with need. Her breasts had tingled, yearning for his hands, his mouth, his teeth. Wild with fury at her desires and his desertion, she had resisted the temptation to pluck her nipples and roll them as he had. She had fought her
chat
’s pulsing demand that she insert her own fingers to fill her and pump her in imitation of his invasions. The release would have been easy, quick.
And hollow for its solitude.
Naked as she was, she had taken from the sheets what rough caress her movements upon them would allow. Never had it been enough.

Tormented, she had rolled about her bed. Oh, how she remembered the thrill it had been to have Geoffrey’s impressive cock inside her body. Just once last night, the invasion had been consuming and stunning for its power. Years ago as a maid, she had enjoyed his fucking once in an intimate coupling of long ecstatic minutes. That union had been the culmination of years of childhood friendship and later as youths, many months of fond caresses given and received by each of them. He had kissed every inch of her skin. She had returned the decadent favour. Together they had explored the wonders of sex, without coitus, lest he deflower her. But over time, their appetites had outstripped their noble intentions and, as her father had announced his intention to marry her off, Geoff and she had abandoned all propriety and regaled each other with an afternoon of unbridled sex upon her virgin’s bed.

Kat smiled broadly at the bittersweet memory of their coupling. Over the years, she had forgotten each move, each sigh, but she recalled the joyful madness of that exquisite encounter. Fevered and eager, Geoff had slid inside her cunny. She had writhed and wriggled and wept, but not from pain. From joy, she had spread her thighs and he had slowly, sweetly led them both to a precipice where her cunt had taken every inch of his cock and milked him dry. He had remained inside her, kissing her mouth and declaring his undying love for her. In those minutes, Geoff had concocted a plan to appeal to the king’s brother John to permit him to marry her. Decades of his family’s loyalty to the Crown, Geoff had claimed, should surely pay benefits to royal and knight alike—and he had never asked for any gift for his unwavering service.

But as they had lain upon her bed, their legs tangled together, her maid Bess had entered and discovered them. Flying to Kat’s father with the unsavoury news, Bess had hastened Kat’s wedding. Geoffrey was ordered to depart England at once and join King Richard’s retinue sailing towards the Holy Land and a new Crusade. The servant had done her duty as she had seen fit, and years later after Kat’s mother died and Bess became Kat’s chattel, she had ingratiated herself into Kat’s good graces by dutiful obedience and kindnesses to Kat’s two sons. The woman had apologised to Kat for whatever harm she had done her when she had spoken to her father and had begged Kat’s forgiveness.

How foolish Kat had been to grant it. Weeks ago, Old Bess had stood by as Armand Ferrer and his men had subdued her. Not once had the woman objected to Kat’s treatment.
Where are you now, traitor? Serving some other hapless mistress who believes your lies?

What did that matter? Kat sighed, relegating the past to its morbid hole.
I have more pressing matters to attend to now. Like Geoff. And what to do about his
determination to have me at his beck and call. And my shameful enthusiasm to spread my legs for him.

To have had even that quick bit of his cock inside her yesterday with his hands and mouth on her breasts and her cunt had only primed her for more. If she gave in to her lust, her pride would fall first. Soon, reason would follow. Was she nothing more than a wench, panting like a bitch in heat no matter the nature of her mate?

She ran a hand through her hair. She was mad to even consider inviting him to fuck her. She narrowed her gaze at the slit in the bed hangings.

Was he here beyond them? Did he wait to come to her again?

Her blood raced at the heady prospect. Her self-respect abandoned her while her cunt gushed with flowing affirmation that—
oh, yes
—she desired him.
Now. Circumstances and old heartaches be damned.

She yanked back the ruby draperies that shrouded her cold bed.

Her gaze fell upon him there at his table. He sat, facing her, his gaze limpid and focused on her, his expression drifting from satisfaction to raw desire. “Good morning, madam. Did you sleep well?”

Bold as a tart, she rose up on one elbow to let him see her body’s answer. Her nipples puckered in invitation. She glanced down at them and under her lashes, she stared back at him.

With a lingering examination, he crooked a finger at her. “Come here.”

Detesting the command, the power her compliance would give him, she could not deny him or herself the pleasure. Death had been so close. Life offered joys she had not tasted in years. To deny herself seemed folly. She rose, a slow elegance to her movements that her weak, enraptured body allowed her. One foot to the floor, then the other, she stood in front of the bed. At her rise, her cunny cream coated her thighs. Her
chat
throbbed and she walked to Geoffrey, determined to have all of him that he had not given yesterday.

He wore a tunic and braes, a metal belt about his waist, boots and probably beneath, hose. Her assessment of what clothes she must remove made her all the more determined to undress him.

He moved not a finger, but watched her closely. When she stood within inches of him, he examined her lips that opened for the touch of his own. Her breasts flowered even more while her core burned hot as hell to take him deep inside her.

His stoicism roiled her and broke her. She knelt before him. With deft fingers, she uncoiled his belt, letting it clank to the floor. She lifted his tunic, pushed aside the cloth of his breeches and reached inside to capture the iron rod standing tall between his thighs. With moisture pooling in her mouth, she bared it to her gaze.

He was, to be honest, the most well-endowed man she had ever seen. As chatelaine in her own domain, she had glimpsed men rutting with their women. She had even watched two male serfs who regularly pleasured one happy housemaid. She’d assisted men into their armour, breeches and hose. She had nursed sick men, fighting men who had served her husband. She had viewed many men’s pricks to whom she might compare Geoffrey’s. His had always stood above the rest.

Smirking now at her own turn of phrase, she grasped his hot flesh firmly and rejoiced. When he had been twenty, his cock had been longer than her hand, her fingers unable to close round his girth. Her memory served her in a true way, for she saw now that he was quite simply huge. She licked her lips, circling him at his root with one hand and seeking out his two big balls with the other. God, he was enormous and she was so famished to devour him. He had made her so.

She sank over him, the taste of his musk, the humid fragrance of his sex a torrid treat she had yearned for—
Christ, for years
. She took all of him in her mouth, filling herself with him. He did not move, thank heaven. He might deny her his rod in her cunt, but this he gave without objection. As she swallowed all of him, he nudged his shaft at the back of her throat and she mewled in delight that she could take him. And lave him in avid wonder she did until he shuddered with her ministrations. She wanted his cum in her mouth, down her throat. And she would have him, as much for her enjoyment as to even the score of his desertion last night. Trembling, she worked his cock up and down, up and down. He jerked away, but she caught him. Not so easily dissuaded from her goal, she amused herself by tonguing his slit where drops of his seed dribbled out and proclaimed his ardent response to her loving.

Sinking a hand in her hair, he growled his conflicted approval of her quest.

She glanced up at him to note how his lust thinned his taut mouth. Encouraged, driven, she sucked on the end of his shaft. This she recalled was his most sensitive spot. How often he would ask her to draw deeply on his broad red head and moan, blind with her service. She shook with fervour that she could still please him so after years apart. After all, she wished him as ravenous as she. As lost as she. She teased him, licking up one side and down the other of his glorious rod. She toyed with him, nipping the side of his firm flesh, kissing his bulging veins and pulling away when he objected, only to take more of him.

She massaged his balls, rolling them in her hand and dipping to take one in her mouth. He groaned and she hummed her joy at her success.

Glancing up, she saw him fling back his head, his eyes squeezed shut, his mouth open.

She reached up and took one of his hands to place upon her breast. After last night, should she beg him? Or was that what would bend him to her will?

“Play with me,” she urged him, throwing remnants of her pride away. “I have waited so long for you.”

He looked at her so intently she thought he could read her mind. But then he bent and captured her aching flesh, thumbing her nipple and pinching her so hard that she squealed. One of his legs, he inserted between her thighs and pushed her knees wider. Bending over her, he ran his open palm down her spine and patted her asshole. There, with one finger, as she reclaimed his cock with her ravenous mouth, he sank inside her and worked her tight sphincter. As she sucked him, up and down with famished strokes of her tongue, he finger-fucked her until she whimpered.

Wanting more, she inched closer to him. This possession—new and debauched and still not quite what she needed—drove her to adore his cock with more furious love bites and tender kisses.

Suddenly, he withdrew his finger, grabbed her about the waist and lifted her from his shaft.

“No!” She squirmed. “You cannot leave me.”

He caught her mouth in a mad kiss, even as he drew her legs over his lap, positioned her above his rod and lowered her to sink over him.

Oh, God.
She stilled, her
chat
stretched gloriously wide.

He bared his teeth, pushing her hips down so that she consumed his cock and he filled her—
dear Lord
—to the quick.

He drove up inside her with a delicious rhythm that invaded and retreated, claimed and withdrew. Bewitched, she followed his lead, wrapped her arms around his shoulders, caught in the undulating surge of his possession. Her eyes closed, her body aflame, she went with him as he rocked her to a furious, snarling need for release. Her nails dug into his back. Her jaw set. Her head lolled, her mind emptied while he fucked her with a precision that forged her body to his as mightily as he had forged her mind to his in the tub.

She bore down as she reached for completion and urged him on with a feral keen.

He cursed and withdrew his cock completely from her body.

“No!” She punched him in the chest. “You cannot go!”

Laughing, he stood with her writhing in his arms. “I do as I must. You will know me as your master.” Then he took two steps towards the bed.

“You bastard,” she seethed, as much a plea as a demand. “You need to fuck me as much as I do you!”

“Aye,” he growled, while he battled her flailing arms, then clamped them to her side.

She leant forward and bit his shoulder.

“You dare too much,” he said, chuckling, and bent to pick up his belt.

She spun from him, her intent to run, naked or not.

But he seized her by the arm and flung her over his shoulder. “You may wish to have your way with me, my pretty cat, but I say what goes here.”

She pummelled his well-muscled back as he stepped across the room. “Like hell, St Claire. If you do not let me have my own satisfaction, I will not let you touch me.”

He dumped her face up on the bed and grinned down with salacious joy. Climbing up, he crawled between her thighs.

She bucked against him. How could he accept her mouth upon him in the most intimate of relations and yet he would not allow her any full pleasure? “What kind of man are you to do—?”

“This?” He cupped her wet hot cunt. There, he thrust two fingers up her
chat
and lodged there to caress that sweet point he could so easily find inside her.

Words deserted her. She struggled to scoot backwards.

He seized her by the knees and hauled her towards him. “I want your legs wide, my cat.”

She tried to clamp them together. “Go away.”

He splayed her inner thighs open upon the linens. “I would see how your cunt flows white with cream and glows red with passion for me.”