Awaken My Fire (19 page)

Shrouded in a tousled mass of long auburn hair, the bright, wild eyes darkened with passion as he laid her to the ground, his own gaze drinking the pleasure of the naked beauty before him: her thin arms reaching out to him, her rounded breasts tapering to a small, thin waist, the impossibly long lines of her slender legs. He took the rosy tip of her breast into his mouth, drawing small circles there. A small cry of pleasure issued from her lips before he parted her thighs and mercifully sank his sex into the sweet moist—

"No! No! Oh, God, please, have mercy! Have mercy!"

A hand snaked around a dagger even as he woke with a start, bolting up to seize his assailant with a harsh hand. Instantly he pushed her backside to the bed and came partially on top of her, the sharp point of his dagger at her throat. Only to have his mind come fully awake to perceive the would-be attacker. For several long minutes, he struggled to make sense of the situation, just what the girl was doing beneath him in his bed as he slept.

A sleep filled with lusty dreams, dreams made by a patently unwanted appetite for this very package somehow lying beneath him now, his entire body hot and hard with naked desire. His next breath greeted her very real presence with a potent jolt of it, a thing felt through every fiber of his being, worsening as his senses filled with that maddening, sweet scent of hers, the feel of her breasts pushing against his arm with each breath she drew, the spill of the long hair across the bedclothes. He tried to concentrate on her terror-filled eyes, but even that didn't come close to tempering the wild race of his pulse of blood. "An answer to a carnal dream or my next nightmare, which is it?" Then more to the point, he demanded, "What the devil are you doing here?"

She tried to swallow but could not. She felt fairly certain he would be killing her now before she could plead for the others. The terror of a slit throat filled her eyes and seized her physically as she took in the sheer size and shape of his naked body, then the strong, pronounced features of his face. His eyes were dark and menacing, filled with suspicion, animosity and something else she didn't understand. She studied his thick dark brows and fine large nose, the cruel curve that sat on his lips, not a smile, but not a frown either. A two days' growth of beard darkened the sun-washed skin, making him look even more threatening somehow.

Yet as menacing and dangerous as the handsome face appeared, the shocking heat of his body on her sensitive skin felt more so. A curious tingling rose in her chest from where his arm crossed her breasts, somehow causing the unnaturally slow thud of her heart. She could hardly breathe, her neck arched dramatically and she bit her lip, managing a desperate "Please."

Her blue eyes dropped from his face to the strong hand that still held the dagger to her throat. Vincent's gaze followed. He tossed the dagger to the floor, as if realizing he did not need a weapon in order to kill her. He made no move to ease his weight, and this confused her. Almost as much as the sight of his bare arms and the wide breadth of his chest and shoulders. He seemed nothing but muscles and more muscles, all tightly encased in taut bronze skin and marked with a curious map made of athletic veins and battle scars—

"Yes? I am waiting."

Breathlessly, not understanding what was happening, she said, "I can't speak like this." As if to add credibility to the complaint, she squirmed and twisted beneath his weight. Only to realize it was absolutely the worst thing to do. Her every nerve ignited with his heat and she gasped, suddenly aware of every place their bodies touched. He felt hot and hard and—

She felt it, him, the threat of his body through the mercilessly inadequate cloth of her gown and the thin cotton bed sheet. Her eyes flew to his face. Only to find a curious amusement there.

"A virgin's response," he observed. "Like the idea that you would interrupt a man's sleep to have a conversation. And these pleas of an innocent are uttered from a twice-married woman."

The criticism registered but vaguely on her dazed wits. Dazed by the queer serums heating up in her body and in the most unlikely places, the discomfort mounted and made her want to writhe and squirm. Yet the slightest movement, her every breath, seemed to shoot more of his heat beneath these serums. Desperate, frightened by it, she reached her small hands to his biceps to push him away. "I came only to beg you! 'Tis true I can hardly plead innocence—I will not try! Take me if you must—"

"Sweetling," he interrupted with a deep, husky chuckle. "Innocent or no, you can dispense with the melodrama, though I do like my woman eager. I assure you, your very presence in my private chambers makes your, ah, desires all too clear."

A small bewildered cry escaped in a heated gasp as his bearded face brushed across her breasts, where he breathed deeply her tantalizing softness and scent. While her thoughts spun, her nerves leaped to greet him. "My God, you are so deceptively sweet," he whispered as his arm reached under her to pull her small body into a tight alignment against his hips. The slow bang of her heart dropped to her loins. A rush of heat shot between her legs and she gasped.

All confusion lifted in that instant.

"Oh, no. No." She shook her head, her small hands still braced against his arms, as if that might hold him back. "You cannot do this! You—"

"Indeed." A brow lifted over fine dark eyes, he might have laughed. "With each passing second I become ever more convinced I am capable of doing anything. Anything," he said with feeling. With that he gently took her lower lip between his, kneading it softly until he heard her release a small, pained gasp. She turned her head to escape with a frantic no, but his hand steadied her as his tongue lightly brushed over her lips. Tingling shivers alit there, and then, then he was kissing her.

His mouth took hers with violence, a barely restrained force, a kiss given with as much pain as pleasure. Yet it changed. Against his will, one taste of the incredibly delicious spice and softness of her mouth, and it changed. Dear Lord, she tasted like late-summer strawberries, sweeter than life itself, and he groaned, the sound dying in their joined mouths as he brought her head back even farther to drink deeper still.

The shock of it went through her like a lightning bolt and she froze, her thoughts tumbling in a sudden panic. Panic that exploded in a warm sea of hot, bright colors and she was drowning, melting beneath his weight, the hard press of his warm, firm lips. The sinking heat turned to a pulsating warmth in the deepest part of herself.

He would die if he tried! Die—

The thought made her go wild, desperate to save herself. She pushed against his arms with all her small strength and wrenched her mouth from his with a breathless, frightened "No!"

Vincent stopped the kiss and lifted partially up, staring down at her lovely flushed face, his mind firmly fixed on the taste of her mouth, the taunting press of her breasts against his bare chest, the small body writhing beneath him. "Oh, no," she said, more frightened than he could know, for all she could think was that burning would be the least merciful end to the slow death by torture demanded when his men found him dead. "You can't do this. I—"

She could hardly breathe, let alone speak. He abruptly perceived the unmasked fear and confusion in her eyes, the extent of her struggle, revealed best in the desperate clutch of her hands on his arms, the small, perfect nails breaking skin. "A lie or an incredibly naive statement. I can, and you can believe I want to." He shifted his weight to catch her hands, pinning them to the bed as if to underline her helplessness.

The move scared her more and with all her strength she tried to twist free. She heard a husky groan as he stifled her struggle by letting her feel more of his weight. Instantly she stopped.

All she knew was that she had to stop him, she just had to! Two dead lords of Suffolk would bring King Henry himself to Reales. With this fear she cried, "Please to God, you cannot do this! No matter what, I don't deserve to be raped—"

"Raped?" The very light of his eyes changed with the accusation. "What manner of child's game is this? You would now cry rape? A young woman appearing in a man's bedchamber alone without escort, neither invited nor announced, to wake him from his sleep—"

"But I did not think of waking you! Even you must admit my impropriety pales against the news that you mean to punish my guards and servants by the unholy terror of the stake! I came to plead for their lives, to beg you: take me if you must, but please to God, let them go!"

His dark eyes stared intently as he absorbed her words. She thought he would be burning her guards and servants at the stake. Dear God—

"You, as the Duke of Suffolk"—she rushed on to seize this precious pause—"you must know that our servants and underlings are innocent in truth, raised from the day they were born to follow their master's every word, that absolute obedience is strictly demanded. They were but following my orders! I am responsible, only me—"

A finger came to her mouth, his expression darkening as he listened to her poor defense. "Aye," he said in a voice made frightening for the control placed on it. "They are innocent and you are responsible. You are responsible," he repeated to underline the sorry fact. "Another being's obedience comes at a heavy price, and damn you, girl, you should have thought of that responsibility before you brought those people into sedition, obeying your reckless, foolish whim. I have no intention, nor have I ever had any intention, of putting the people to death simply because they were idiotic enough to follow a young girl's ridiculous mission to save them from some imagined tyranny." Abruptly he released her.

Released her to keep her safe. For as guilty as she was— exercising the unprecedented conceit necessary to think that she could lead grown men, knighted warriors, no less, into battle, single-handedly causing enough trouble to pull two hundred men from home and country and landing a disaster on the poor people of Reales, and most damning of all, murdering in cold blood his brother—even she did not deserve a raping. And for the first time in his life he was catching a glimpse of the base kind of emotions that led to such violence. He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

In a subdued voice, she stated rather than asked, "So you will not be punishing the people of Reales." Which led her to the obvious conclusion that he meant to kill only her. She had to escape, now, before it was too late.

She started off the bed. Only to discover he had risen and stood up to dress, utterly impervious to his nakedness. She had seen all manner of naked men: bathing, dressing, once she had witnessed the curiosity of a coupling from afar, and even once, disguised as a boy prodigy of Papillion, on a long trip to the Sorbonne University in Paris, she had witnessed the phenomenon of a dissection of a human corpse. As worldly-wise as she was, her eyes widen with the confrontation of the scope and size of the wonder of his unclad body in its present state. He turned to see this. She looked quickly away, color rising hot and fast to her cheeks.

Which only made him laugh, a mean-sounding chuckle edged with some small disgust or irritation. "Holy Mother in Heaven, I have seen everything now," he said as he pushed his legs into breeches. "The very girl who murders men and leads warriors to rebellion is set to trembles and blushes at the sight of a piece of a man's flesh! You missed your calling; you are a natural for the charades of the theater."

Roshelle's mind had stopped on the accusation and with feeling she declared, "I did not murder your brother!"

"So you say. I have spoken to the only other soul alive who witnessed it and he says differently. Considering all I know of you thus far, forgive me if I find your elaborate pretense a good deal less than convincing, to say nothing of growing ever more tiresome by the minute. Which leads me to wonder how the hell you got out of your chambers in the first place. More to the point, where the hell are those guards now?"

Fossy, who always exercised perfect timing, answered the question by opening the doors and announcing, "Two very distraught guards await in the outer room to escort the young lady back, your Grace." The older man stepped back to let the two men inside.

"Distraught," Vincent warned. "Does not even begin to describe their predicament if she ever gets out again."

Not wanting to wait for his threats to turn to her again, Roshelle came quickly off the bed. She moved swiftly to the doors but then stopped. With her back to him, and not knowing exactly why it was so important but only that it was, she heard herself ask, "Did you love your brother very much?"

A long pause filled with the sudden intensity of his emotions. "I suppose our animosity toward each other is common knowledge. The answer, then, is no."

The surprise of this went through her with a small, audible gasp. She nodded slightly, then quickly exited, followed by two contrite guards who would never make the same mistake again. Fossy watched as Vincent grabbed a cloth towel from the chest of drawers and, still half naked, headed toward the doors. “And where is your Grace going dressed like that?"

"Into the cold spring waters of that river, Fossy."