By Design (32 page)

He kissed her and the force broke loose with a fevered gust. Her need met his in a passion made desperate by the impending loss of each other. The hunger in her soul matched that of her body, and both were eager for all that this could be.

His hot, biting kisses promised that they would finally have that. They warned that there could be no holding back. Her fears and his decency had respected barriers for too long, but it would not be like that tonight. Finally.

Her senses filled with him. Her skin felt the textures of his skin and hair and clothes in a cascade of alert, novel sensations. His breath warmed her neck, and the touch of his tongue shot pleasure into her blood. Her arms embraced the need rising savagely in his frame, and her own desire reveled in it, soaring triumphantly, urging more and more.

It turned mad and impatient and wild. He kissed and held and touched with controlling mastery, as if he wanted to absorb her. Consume her. Her heart begged him to take all of her. Her soul longed to be joined with him.

She needed more closeness, more connection. She clawed at his clothing, anxious to strip away the interfering barriers. Somehow they got the tunic and shirt off. She pressed her palms and her lips to his bare chest and lost herself in the taste of his skin and the beat of his heart.

He lifted her into it. Held her to it. Kisses pressed to her hair and hands caressing lower on her bottom, he encouraged her wandering, circling tongue. She loved what it did to him, how his body tensed and his breath shortened. She itched for his stroking fingers to find their goal. She smoothed her palms lower to urge him on, and the muscles of his torso tightened beneath her hands.

He took his time, tantalizing her need, making her wait. Her body pulsed with craving. The need unhinged her. She looked up to find him watching her rocking body with dark satisfaction.

“Please. Touch me there. I will die if you do not.”

His hand moved. Eyes alight with a new kind of passion, he watched her reaction. She let him see it. Let him hear it. Limp in the support of his embrace, she submitted to the torturous pleasure. Welcomed it.

He lifted her, and settled back on the bench below the window. “Here. Now. It can not wait for the bed upstairs.”

He pulled her onto his lap, with her knees straddling his hips as they had under the hawthorn tree that Sunday. He eased her up so his mouth could reach her breast. Arms braced on the sill behind him, breeze titillating her hot skin, she hovered there while his tongue flicked and licked and his hands loosened the rest of his clothing.

Her breasts had never been so sensitive. The luscious torment left her shivering. She reached down and stroked him while he kicked off his garments.

He let her for a while. In a sweet unity of sensation they explored the pleasure. Tongue and fingers circling and smoothing at her nipples, he played with her madness until cries sighed out with each of her gasping breaths.

He removed her hand and placed it back on the sill. “No more. It is not your hand that I want surrounding me.”

The position left her poised over him, vulnerable and passive, hungry and waiting.

His mouth and hand aroused her more specifically. The need centered low, where he had caressed before. She imagined that touch again, and more, and needful pleas breathed out of her. Begging words and declarations of desire poured out with abandon.

His other hand caressed her inner thighs with commanding firmness. Anticipation consumed her mind and she cried with impatience. His caress lined higher in response, and stroked deeply. Relief groaned through her. Out of her.

It was only a brief respite. His slow, knowing touches made her body come alive. The focus of her pleasure pulsed with astonishing sensitivity. It quickly turned frantic. The hunger possessed her until her legs wobbled and she cried from the intensity. All of her, her body and soul and heart and mind, all of the alertness and awareness and experience of the present, joined in a totally consuming, desperately insistent craving.

“Now,” she begged. “Now, like this, do not wait. I want you now. Now.”

“Aye, Joan. Now.” His low voice sounded as tight as hers, and his breath as ragged and short. He took her hips firmly in his hands and lowered her.

There was the briefest hesitation just as he entered her, as if he checked her body's reaction. The pleasure did not die. She knew it would not, but tenderness poured through her at the sign that, for all his warnings, he still worried for her. She did not doubt that he would have stopped if he had sensed the old fear.

She nestled lower, absorbing the wonderful fullness, floating in the sudden calm in their passion. It still cried for fulfillment but they both waited, motionless, entwined in the closest embrace, savoring what this finally was.

Finally. Aye, that colored it. Deepened it. Her heart absorbed the mutual sorrow that made this night more important than it should be. She sensed his determination to know it all with her, since there would be no other chance.

He kissed deeply. He lifted her gently, and showed her how to move. “Now come to me, love. Let me feel you lose yourself in it. I want to be buried in your body like this when your passion sets you free.”

It began slowly, a luscious savoring of their unity, a joining of more than their bodies, and saturated with connections so profound that her heart almost burst. Love and joy and sorrow and regret poured through her. Out of her. Into her. Their hearts journeyed together, and the fullness and friction and building need only brought them closer.

The pleasure grew anxious and demanding. Her senses soared and flew away until only one remained. All of her consciousness centered on him and an aching, searching reach for completion. She lost control of her body, but he did not. He held her hips, stopping her abandoned rocking, forcing her still just when she thought she could not take the torment of need any longer. And then his passion demanded more from her. The power of his desire sent her higher, pitching toward the freedom he spoke of. The pleasure tightened painfully, deliciously, and his thrusts pushed her the rest of the way. Screaming and begging, she clawed onto the reality of him as the ecstasy broke through her.

He joined her there, in the ultimate freedom. Together they knew all that this might be.

Finally.

He held her to him, in a floating, blissful world of contentment. His sated breath poured in her ear and his firm embrace bound their bodies in the glory. She experienced
him very specifically, very alertly. Peace drenched her heart as she gave thanks for the gift of knowing him.

She nestled against him in the feather bed where he had eventually carried her. They had made love in the garden, under the hawthorn tree, and again on the workbench. He had led her to the places that mattered, to complete what had started at each of them, to finally know fulfillment of what had been shared.

She did not sleep, and neither did he. They did not speak, though. Their embrace held back the waiting world. She was more grateful for that than he could guess.

He turned silently, and pushed off the bedclothes that warmed them in the cool night. He moved on top of her and bent her legs and entered her again.

Weight braced on his arms, shoulders and chest hovering above her, he looked down in the flickering light of the gutting candle. She saw his expression, and knew that his mind had not been restful this last hour.

He spoke while he slowly stroked into her. “You will not leave at dawn. You will not run away. You will stay with me for whatever time we have left. I will deal with this man now, and the rest will be resolved soon.”

He was not making a request. She was grateful that she did not have to respond. She did not want to speak of the dawn, and of parting, and of how thoroughly she would leave him. She did not want to think about just how little time they had left.

She encouraged his passion so that he would not guess what her silence really meant. She urged him with her touch and words to let the pleasure obscure the truth a little longer. She lost herself in the pure freedom, and lured him to do the same.

Rhys slept after that. She lay turned into him, her face
pressed to his, swallowing his breaths. She filled the last hour with the beauty of this night, and drew strength from her love. It filled her heart, swelling it with joy and sorrow and gratitude and poignant regret. She lived as completely as she ever had. A whole lifetime passed in that feather bed.

She sensed when dawn drew near. She eased from beneath Rhys's arm, and savored a long look at his face. Anguish washed through her, but the fear revived to give her courage.

She dressed silently in her simplest garments. She pinned a wimple and veil around her head in the hopes the obscuring fabric would help, even though it would not. She turned one last time to the bed, and brushed the gentlest kiss on his cheek.

Walking away proved much harder than she had ever imagined. She had to tear herself from the bed, and a part of her refused to go. It ripped from her soul and stayed there, to remain forever in that sweet unity.

The pain vanquished her composure, but not her strength. Blinking back the sorrow, embracing the empowering fear, she turned away.

She left him, finally, to go and do what she had to do.

C
HAPTER
22

J
OAN MIGHT HAVE BEEN
invisible, so easily did she move through Westminster. Her visits to the palace with Rhys had made her a familiar enough figure that she raised no notice.

She pretended to head to the King's chambers, but darted in a different direction when the way was clear. Holding her basket close to her body, keeping her head lowered, she made her way to the little garden.

Mortimer's garden. His private retreat where he plotted his ambitions, and met with spies and messengers. And masons, sometimes.

She peered through the portal. A silk canopy stood in the center, to protect the great man from today's hot sun. Colorful flowers spread out in spokes, and all paths led to the cushioned chair on which he would sit.

He was not there yet. But he would come. The day was fair, and he would seek out this place.

The lush beauty disturbed her. Evil should recoil from the bountiful goodness found in nature. Its private places
should be dark and gloomy. This garden suggested that Mortimer's soul was not all bad.

For a moment her resolve wavered. She reminded herself of the stakes. Her brother's life and future, and maybe those of Rhys, too. The barons of the realm might be too weak to stand against this man, but she dare not be.

She spied a tall hedge where she could hide and wait. She eased the portal open wider.

For Mark, and for Rhys. For her father and Piers. For all of the lives trampled and crushed these last few years. For herself.

A hand slid up her back, shocking her. Fingers closed on her shoulder, stopping her. She froze, staring at the flowers.

She scrambled to find an excuse for why she tried to enter this garden. She clutched the basket harder, praying this guard would not look inside.

“Are you lost, sweet lady?”

The voice turned her blood to ice. Not just because it belonged to Guy Leighton, but because of its dangerous resonance.

She would have preferred being caught by Mortimer himself.

She pulled her composure together. She dare not let him see her terror.

She slowly turned. Guy appraised her suspiciously.

“Aye,” she said, feigning relief.

“I have been following you, Joan, while you skulked about. Whom do you seek?” His lids lowered over ominous fires. “The King?”

Saints, he suspected that she had come to demand justice. He thought that she sought out Edward, to pour out her story and beg his intercession.

“What would I want with the King? He would just think me a servant, trying to claim the place of a dead
woman.” She forced a sweet smile. “In truth, I was looking for you. A page directed me to your chamber, but I lost my way. I thought this garden might offer a short path to the part of the palace beyond it.”

The danger dimmed a little. Just enough to give her hope. “Why did you seek me?”

“I thought about our conversation in the market, and was sorry for how we parted. The shock of seeing you unsettled me, and I was not myself. I came to thank you for forgiving my rashness, and for offering to continue to protect my brother. You risk much in doing so, and I wanted you to know my gratitude.”

Her faced warmed while she said the words. She prayed that Guy assumed it was feminine delicacy that caused her to blush, and not the inner disgust that she battled.

His vanity responded as she hoped it would. Different fires ignited in his eyes. Bile rose to her throat as his lust began burning.

He had a hungry look, like that of an animal spying prey. So different from what she had recently known. So ugly compared with the beauty of last night.

She would not think about that now. She could not afford to. But the comparison caused a touch of pity to poke into her terror. Guy, for all of his power and beauty and wealth, would never know what might be.