Enchanting the King (The Beauty's Beast Fantasy Series) (17 page)

Thomas did not duck inside but hesitated, staring at her. Her cheeks warmed, and she looked away. There was space enough for two in the small room, maybe even three, but somehow being alone together inside felt more intimate than being alone together out in the woods.

“Oh, do come inside, King Thomas,” she said at last, without looking at him. “My reputation is in tatters already, and I don’t wish to start another war with Lyond by letting you drown out there.”

He leaned against the hut’s narrow doorway and looked out.

“You’re not going back to look for Godric, are you? Or the others?” She did not want him to. She wanted his solid, comforting presence beside her.

“No, I don’t like to leave you alone. Besides, I’m an old fool, but I’m not stupid.” He sighed. “Much as it shames me, I truly don’t think I can take on a bespelled Godric by myself.”

“You did before.”

“No. I had you.” His voice was soft, grateful.

Heat pooled in her belly, and she looked away.

“We’ll linger here—see if we can wait out the rain.”

“All right.” Aliénor took off his heavy cloak and laid it out on the straw to dry. She lifted one of the musty—but delightfully dry—blankets off the floor of the hut and wrapped it around her shoulders instead. Her skirt was still soaked and heavy with mud, but her shoulders and chest were instantly warmer. She cast a glance over at the king, watching as his muscles quivered and twitched with the cold. “What if I were to close my eyes, King Thomas? Then you could take that drenched tunic off at least, and wrap up in one of these dry blankets.”

He cast a mischievous glance her way from under his lashes. “No peeking.”

“I would never.” She grinned at him and held her hands up before her eyes like a child.

He laughed, and she heard the sounds of wet cloth slapping against the ground. Something tugged under her hip, upsetting her balance, and she accidentally opened her eyes and looked up at him.

The blanket he’d chosen had had a corner resting under her hip that he hadn’t noticed. “Beg pardon.” He dropped the cloth at once. For a moment his arms bobbed up in the air as if he were unsure whether to cover his chest or brazen out this moment.

Aliénor could be no help to him—she could only stare. He had a marvelous body, a soldier’s body, tall and strong, with broad shoulders and tightly corded muscles in his arms. Something uncurled in her gut, a small feeling almost like the vibration of a cat’s purr.
Mmmmm
. She bit her lower lip to keep a laugh back and finally tore her gaze away from him. Shifting uncomfortably, wobbling her hips back and forth, she tugged the edge of the blanket out from under her bottom and blindly tossed it toward him.

“Thank you.” He wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and collapsed into the straw beside her.

He sat as far away as he could in the little hut, and yet Aliénor felt his presence with an almost throbbing intensity, as if every beat of her heart came from his body. She felt over-hot and all tingly along her arms and chest with a heady kind of anticipation.

Perhaps if the threat of her normal world had seemed more real, Aliénor could have controlled herself better—kept her distance, kept to what was proper and expected. But she had stared death straight in the eye so many times, and that black terror seemed to stalk her now each night in the darkness.

Hard to care what tomorrow might bring. Hard to tell herself
no
when every moment felt like the edge of a precipice. Each second felt precious now, finite. She didn’t want to waste them in gray mourning for her bitter past with Philippe or this dark fear of the unknown. She wanted to coax high that kindling warmth she felt whenever she was with Thomas. If her life was to gutter out like a flickering flame, then she wanted to burn now like a lightning strike, like a falling star.

She tucked herself deeper into her blanket, hunching into its warmth. “Will you think me presumptuous if I ask something, King Thomas?”

“No.”

“Were—were you happy in your marriage?”

“Very.” His voice was rough. “For the little time we had.”

“Was she?”

“I think so. I hope so.”

“With one successful marriage to your credit, why did you never marry again?”

He shifted on the rock, and the edge of his blanket fell across Aliénor’s lap. He didn’t notice. “I never…there’s never been anyone who made me feel the way Rosamund did.” His gaze flicked toward her, and their eyes caught.
Until you
.

Aliénor hissed in a startled breath, her pulse thundering. He had not said the words, and yet the tender warmth in his eyes said everything for him anyway, whether he meant it to or not. He looked away again, but she had seen, indeed she had
felt
those unspoken words deep inside. She studied the line of his cheekbone, the soft curve of his mouth.
I’ve
never
felt this way about anyone
. Her tongue felt heavy with the words, but she swallowed them back.

When he spoke again, his voice had a hearty cheerfulness she could tell was forced. “Anyway, I was quite spoiled by my love match, you see, and anything less than that, anything based on practical or political considerations, just doesn’t tempt me.”

“
Hmm
. You seem to be an anomaly.” She kept her voice friendly as she said this so he would know she was teasing. “Most men I know of, who have had one happy marriage, are eager to try their luck again. ‘If I had it once, I can do it again.’ Whereas women, widows, they are usually the ones reluctant to try their luck again, to let go of the past to try for present happiness.”

“Or perhaps I’m too old now and set in my ways.”

Aliénor snorted. “Oh yes. That’s probably it. You being so wizened and decrepit with age and all.”

“Anyway, there are women exceptions to your rule. Like your Lady Noémi. Didn’t you say she’d been married twice?”

“Well, yes, but Noémi says she hasn’t yet managed a really good marriage, so she must keep trying her luck until she does.”

“And you?” His gaze flicked all over her face, studying her, a notch between his brows. “What about you?”

She swallowed, her heart hammering. Just the thought of another marriage made sweat pop out along her hairline. To belong to a man again, to be under his rule. No, to try that again would be to break herself utterly. “No. Never again. I am the Duchess of Catarlia once more, and well-contented with what I have. I have no need to marry again.”

King Thomas was quiet for a good long while. She even began to wonder if she should stay silent and leave him in peace, if she had offended him. A black despair loomed at the thought, but then he spoke, and his voice was quiet, sad. She realized he’d only been silent so long because he hadn’t known what to say. “I think your husband did love you, my lady. In his way.”

She winced. “Yes. I think that was our greatest problem. If he’d loved me less, he might have been able to see how miserable we made each other. If he’d loved me less, he might have been able to let me go.”

“Let you go?”

The rain pounded with renewed fury against the roof, and the world seemed dark outside, even though it was midmorning. The two of them were in almost total darkness together in this stormy world. In this quiet, intimate darkness, divorced from real life, it was easy to say these things. Aliénor blew out a slow breath. “I was going to leave Philippe when we reached Anutitum. I was ready to admit my failure as a wife even if he could not. So you see, King Thomas, how unfit and unwomanly I am. No proper wife for any man.”

He shifted in the straw beside her with a small sound of denial. “I do not find you unwomanly. Not in the least.”

His voice felt like a caress against her skin, and she shivered, imagining his touch—his fingertips tracing her skin, his hand against her jaw, his breath stirring on her cheek. The gentle pressure of his mouth against hers. Aliénor exhaled a ragged sigh. “I wish I were a dairy maid.”

“What?”

“And you a simple page or a man-at-arms. A groom in the stable.”

“I don’t understand—”

She let herself lean against him, resting her head against his shoulder, and her skin seemed to catch fire at the contact. A sweet fire, though. Cozy. Caressing. Warming instead of burning. She lowered her voice too, until she was barely breathing the words out. “I wish we were anyone but who we are. I wish I was not the Princess of Jerdun. I wish you were not the King of Lyond.”

He tensed, but he did not push her away. “This is foolishness, Aliénor. We cannot stop being who we are.”

“I know. And yet…” She followed the strong cord of his neck with her fingertips up to his jaw and ran the back of her hand against his cheek, listening to the rasp of his stubble.

“Aliénor.”

“You don’t wish we could be other people? Just for a minute? An hour?”

The silence between them lengthened, pulsing in the air as if it were a living thing with a heartbeat she could count. When Thomas finally spoke, his voice was low and rough. “An hour wouldn’t be enough. I’m not sure even a year would be.” He turned toward her. “But yes, you make me wish I were the lowliest cowherd, and you a simple milkmaid.” His dragged her closer to him, and she lamented the great tangle of blankets between them.

His hands carded through her hair, and his fingertips tickled against her skull. He cupped her face in his large hands, his thumb tracing the line of her cheekbone. She made some needy noise and fought her other arm free of the blanket so she could touch him better. Her skin felt alive under his touch. A strange fluttering started in her gut, and her lips ached, burned.
Touch me, hold me
. She curled her hand around his neck and tugged him closer. “
Please
,” she breathed against his mouth.

“Aliénor.” It came out a low groan, a prayer, a breath of wonderment. His lips brushed hers, soft and warm, his kiss better than she’d dreamed. She groaned, rising toward him, reaching, wanting, and he slanted his mouth against hers, swallowing her needy noises.

As he teased her lips apart with his own, she fought back another noise of aching delight.
Yes. Oh yes
. She twisted and tugged and pushed to press every bit of her against every bit of him that she could reach. He knotted his fingers into her hair and kissed her harder, his tongue massaging hers with delicious friction.

Philippe had never kissed her thus. No one ever had. She liked it
oh so very much
. This tense tangle of limbs, the wet press of lips and tongue. The fierce, hot urgency of this embrace. This was how lovemaking was supposed to be. How she’d imagined it. The few times she and Philippe had tried, the act had been cold and painful. Short.

Thomas kissed her like he could go on forever, like she was appetite and nourishment for him smashed altogether, and he could never get enough. Great harlot that she was, she wanted to climb on his lap and fill the ache within her. Fill herself up with this tender, fiery need between them and let the scandalized world think what it would.

Thomas knew he should stop. Had to stop. This kiss was a disaster, a calamity…and the single most satisfying thing he’d done in fifteen years.

She twined her arms around his neck, digging her fingers into his hair. He wanted to savor every moment, experience each discrete touch and stroke of their bodies together, but it was all going so fast, and all he wanted was
more
.
All. Everything
.

A loud cough just outside the shack caused him to jolt in surprise. A chilly fear followed soon after. He broke away, putting Aliénor behind him so he stood between her and whoever might come through that doorway. “Who’s there?”

A strange voice called out something, the words indistinct over the rain.

“It’s probably the shepherd.” Aliénor cleared her throat, then yelled something back to the shepherd with lots of hard consonant sounds.

A grunt came from outside, and their intruder swung through the doorway into view. He was indeed the shepherd. A young lad, short and stocky, and soaked through from the rain as they were. The boy had dark skin, and black hair braided away from his face. The shepherd’s eyes widened as his gaze flicked back and forth between the two of them. A slow smile spread on the boy’s face. He laughed and said something in Tiochene.

Aliénor gasped and made what sounded like a very sharp retort to the boy.

“What?” Thomas fumbled for his damp tunic and shrugged the garment over his head, shivering as the chilled fabric touched his bare skin. “What is he saying?”

“Oh.” Aliénor huffed, glaring at the shepherd while the boy just grinned back. “Nothing. The lad is insolent.”

“How do you know the language?”

“My handmaiden Violette has been teaching us all these past few months on the road. Her—her mother was Tiochene.”

“Ah. So this is the lad’s hut?”

“Yes. But he says we can shelter with him until the rain lets up.”

The shepherd’s gaze lingered on Thomas’s sword, and the boy kept his hands up and visible as he walked farther into the shelter. He settled against the wall across from them. The boy carried a small sack, and he held it out to them with a polite smile.

“He has food in there,” Aliénor explained.

As if in response, Thomas’s stomach let out a loud wail easily heard by all three of them.

Aliénor puffed out a laugh and bumped Thomas’s shoulder with her own. “I’m hungry too.”

Thomas continued to study the shepherd. The lad wore a coarse brown wool tunic, longer than the fashion of Jerdun or Lyond, with intricate red embroidery around the collar. Thomas’s head felt fuzzy of a sudden, clouded. A strange tremor started in his hands and arms.
Perhaps I am hungrier than I know. And yet…something about the shepherd
… “The boy is just offering us his food?”

“Oh no. He’s offering to sell it to us.” Aliénor and the shepherd exchanged a few quick words before she continued, “He says he has some apples, I think, and then a word I don’t know. Some kind of cheese? Goat cheese, maybe?”

As if to demonstrate, or perhaps just to twist the knife, the boy drew a large green apple out of his bag and bit into it. Thomas could hear the juicy crunch of the apple’s flesh even over the still-pouring rain outside.