Awakening His Lady (5 page)

She pressed her finger to his lips. “Shhhh,” she commanded, sinking to her knees.

She held him in her hands; she touched him with her tongue before she took the whole of him into her mouth.

Thomas sucked in his breath, his hips thrusting. “God in heaven, Meri.”

At the sound of her name, Meriom stopped and pulled away. “Meri” he'd called her, and only
he
had ever called her Meri.

She choked back a sob. 'Twas hard to believe he was alive! How could he toy with her? What excuse did he have for this charade?

She felt his hands beneath her arms, lifting her, drawing her to her feet.

He cradled her nape and stared into her eyes, his own belying what he wanted, peering at her from beneath his mask. “You are temptress, driving me to madness. If you want no more of this, then tell me so now. I will leave you.”

Meriom clasped his face in her hands, her breath rushing from her mouth, her lips wet and swollen. “Stay!”

 

Her words were stronger than his will. By the devil, he'd spent nights beside the campfire in France dreaming about this moment and days on end thereafter, laid low on a cot with just a thread of breath connecting him to life.

Here she was, his Meriom, living and breathing, and asking him for more.

He pushed her gown from her shoulders to her waist, baring her breasts, covering her nipples with his mouth. She smelled of lavender and thyme, her warm skin was smooth beneath his tongue. She gasped when he held her tips between his lips and gently sucked.

“By the saints, I've longed for this,” she whispered, her voice raspy.

His blood coursing through his veins and pounding in his hears, Thomas pressed his damp cheek against hers. With his good arm against the wall above her head, he braced himself, and with his free hand, slipped his fingers into the slippery cleft between her legs.

“Let me,” he whispered, his chest heaving.

She was warm and wet, and when he rubbed her small mound, she groaned her acquiescence, the throaty sound buried in the fold between his neck and shoulder.

She writhed against him, riding his hand as he moved in tune with her rhythm.

Thomas shifted, her weight braced against his good hip, though at the moment, he felt no pain on his bad side, as if the old wound was never there.

He lifted her legs around his waist, pressed her back against the wall and plunged deep inside her.

She cried out. He paused to give her time to adjust, then he raised her up to lower her down again. And again, letting her ride him slowly at first, then quickening the pace. He could feel her tighten around him and quivered.

Blessed saints, 'twas nothing better on earth than this. This was worth living for; worth the pain he'd endured this last year, recovering from his wounds—fighting to stay alive for her.

The thought of what they must look like together—she against the wall with her legs wrapped around his waist, and he pumping hard against her—drove him on, kissing her with passion, thrusting until his body shook, until at last blessed relief spilled forth. “Meri,” he murmured, his body arched against her.

Meriom shuddered and gripped him down below, clenching around him with one final spasm before she released him. She let her legs fall away from his waist, her skirts dropping down as she came to her feet.

Breathing hard, she tipped her head back, resting against the wall, her mouth wet and swollen. Her gaze never left his, her eyes, cloudy with passion.

Thomas struggled to find the words he wanted to say, to tell her he had dreamed about this moment in his darkest hours. The days and nights so black with pain, only dreams of his Meri and their passion had sustained him.

He kissed the tiny bites on her breasts and on her neck, and rested his forehead against hers. “I am sorry,” he said, quietly, pulling up the bodice of her gown.

She shook her head, dismissing his concern. Her hands moved beneath his tunic. God in heaven, she was pulling up his braes, adjusting his hose, putting him back together, tending to him.

Thomas smoothed her damp hair from her flushed face. She was still breathing hard, and the look in her eyes was impossible to read.

“My lady, I should not have—”

She took one step and stumbled, her legs giving way. “Help me into my room, good sir.”

Thomas scooped her up and kicked the door open to her private apartment. He limped, his bad leg straining, his good arm bearing most of her weight.

He set her down amongst the furs and downy linens on her bed. She lay there still and quiet, staring at the ceiling.

Thomas stepped away and poured wine from a ewer into her cup. “Drink this. 'Twill restore you.”

Meriom sat up and waved the cup away. “Take off your mask.”

Thomas eased down on the bed beside her. “I think you should know—”

“I know who you are,
le broyeur
. You called me Meri. No one calls me Meri but you, Thomas. Take it off.”

Thomas balled his hands into fists. Hell, he could not hide behind the mask. He would not. But if his Meri went running from the room at the sight of him, he'd not blame her. He was not the handsome boy-on-the verge of manhood she loved two summers past, a proud, young knight eager to see the battlefield and prove his mettle. He was a different man, on the inside and the out. The brutal things he'd done in the name of the king he could shield her from, but she would bear witness to the whole of the Frenchmen's work on his body before she declared her love.

Without answering, Thomas rose from the bed. Slowly he drew the mask from his face, staring past her, looking into the darkness beyond her bed. He could feel her eyes upon him, but he heard not a sound, not a gasp, not a whimper.

He slipped his tunic from his head and his padded shirt. The skin on his wounded arm puckered at his shoulder, making it a struggle to remove the garment. The dull ache in his ruined hip joint plagued him less now, but he untied his hose and his braes and removed them all, baring the crooked, red and purple scars from the stitches that had been hastily used to sew him back together.

He stood there, naked in the firelight, waiting for Meriom to run from the room.

 

Meriom fought back a gasp. God in heaven, what had they done to her Thomas? 'Twas a miracle he lived!

She swore an oath beneath her breath. God rot the French bastards.

Thomas held his fists clenched at his side, thrust his chin up, but she knew him well enough to know that he worried he would frighten her, and most of all, that he feared rejection. He was proud of his looks in his youth, and he was a good and noble knight, but not the victor. The war had turned out so differently from what they had imagined their last night together. They had both lost so much.

She made no sound, her face stoic, but she rose from the bed and stood before him, one hand tenderly tracing the scar on his injured shoulder and the other on his hip.

“Does it hurt, Thomas?”

He showed no emotion, as if he waited to be sure she would not turn away. He kept his hands at his sides. “Not as it did.”

Hot, wet tears trickled down her face. “Why did you not send word? I thought you were dead. I could not marry someone else as I'd promised. I vowed to take the veil.”

She leaned her head against his chest, her arms thrown around his neck. Only then did she sense the muscles in his back and shoulders relax. He brought his arms around her. “I did send word, my love, when I was well enough. I hired a runner, paid in gold to get my letter to you—”

“Your man was errant or a thief. I got no missive. Had I known I would have come to you—!”

He set her from his arms. “Meri, you have to know I've seen and done things I am not proud of. I am not a hero.”

“My spirit died when I learned you had been killed. Life seemed pointless. My soul has been empty. The war has taken its toll on both of us, Thomas, but I love you no less now than I did three years ago.”

“As soon as I could ride, Meri, I made my way home. You, my Meri, are the only reason I am still alive.”

More tears. Meri wiped them on the back of her sleeve and moved to the edge of the bed. “I was lost without you. You think I could be happy with Lord Leeman, or any of the other fifty suitors who've come sniffing, bartering for me likes beads at a bazaar? In a few weeks, I am to enter Rotham Abbey. I could not marry anyone if I could not marry you.”

A slow smile spread across Thomas' face. “You? A nun?”

He crossed the room and knelt before her, unabashed at his nakedness, undeterred by the cold. “Marry me, my Meri. Bring a dead man back to life.”

Meriom bolted to her feet. He expected she would throw her arms around him, and sob with happiness.

But what he got from Meri was never what he quite expected.

Her open palm smacked his cheek—his cheek, the only part of his body that didn't already hurt.

“You oaf. Why the disguise? Did you think I would stop loving you because of this?” She swept her hand skimming over his scarred and battered body. “I loved you from the day I'd fallen off my pony and you picked me up and dusted off my muddied skirts and wiped my bloodied chin like I was the Queen of England. How could you think for a moment that scars and broken bones would matter?”

Thomas rubbed his cheek. “I—”

“I'll show you,
le broyeur
, a woman who was crushed to think you dead, who'd rather sleep alone in a nunnery for the rest of her life than live without you.”

She jerked her gown and chemise over her head and kicked off her shoes. Standing there with her hose around her ankles, she was as naked as he was. Beautiful and luscious in her fury. “Now, come to bed, Thomas Addecker. We've three years of practice to make up for before we are married. You are well enough recovered.”

Thomas laughed, a deep, hearty laugh, the kind of laugh he'd not experienced in years. He raised Meri's hand to his lips and kissed each fingertip, pausing to examine the gold ring on her middle finger.

Sadness filled her eyes. Her voice cracked. “When the picker man brought it to my father, my heart broke in two…Thomas how…?” She raised her gaze to him in quiet appeal.

“'Twas the night before Bouvines…” he said, pausing, searching for the words, thinking of Galvon. “A frightened, desperate thief. May God forgive him.” he added softly.

The tears he had been waiting for finally came pouring forth, streaming down her cheeks in rivulets. She lowered herself to the bed, drawing Thomas down with her, pushing him to lie on his back. “Enough of the past. Tomorrow morn, I wish to reawaken free of grief and sorrow, filled with love and hope instead. My Thomas lives, and he's been too long from England.”

Thomas smiled. “And here I shall stay, with you, my love, forever.”

Meri straddled him, the look in her eyes anything but sleepy.

He leaned his head back, joyous with the rapture imparted by his Meri's kisses.