Knights (19 page)

She rose to meet him, thrust for thrust, crying out in joyous, pagan abandon as he drove her higher and higher. She was not subjugated, but glorified, and as she arched beneath Dane, sweetly frantic, Gloriana discovered that womankind was made for the receiving of pleasure, as well as the giving of it. She surrendered, trembling, to the demands of her body, and heard Dane’s low, ragged shout of triumph as he joined her in their secret place beyond the stars.

W
hen at last their desire had been spent, Gloriana slept, curled against Dane’s side. He was content to simply lie there, holding her, listening to the deep, even tempo of her breathing, watching the daylight reach its crest and then begin to recede back and back across the tower room floor, like an ebbing tide.

She stirred, in the grasp of some dream, and Dane soothed her with whispered words. Then, finally calm and free of distractions, he allowed his very disciplined thoughts to turn to the marvel he had seen earlier, before their chess game.

Gloriana had been sitting at the table, nibbling at a honeycake, while he’d reclined in the bath, watching her, mentally framing the words to tell her that he had been a fool, that he wanted her to bear his children. That he might even love her, though he hadn’t been at all sure about that part. His feelings for Gloriana were new to him, full of tumult and pathos, darkness and splendor, sunshine and laughter, and he had yet to make sense of them.

Before he’d been able to declare himself, Gloriana had disappeared—simply vanished, between one moment
and the next. There was no other way to describe what had happened, to himself or to anyone else, should he ever be foolish enough to try. What troubled Dane even more than that bit of magic was the fact that Gloriana had not worked it on purpose; she had been snatched away, against her will, by a force neither of them could even begin to understand. Which meant she might again be taken from him, at some unguarded moment.

For how long would Gloriana be lost to him if that happened—an hour, a day? Forever?

Dane shivered, then turned on the overstuffed mattress and, although he did not want to awaken Gloriana, held her a little more tightly. He had never known such intensity of feeling or such fear. To think that all these years she had been growing and blossoming at Hadleigh, a spirited flower, waiting for him, and he, the fool’s fool, had deliberately stayed away.

What precious and mysterious stuff time was, more worthy of cherishing than gold or gems—and so much had been wasted.

He raised his head, the better to look at Gloriana. Her face, translucent in slumber, ivory-gold flesh flushed with faint pink from their passion, seemed beautiful beyond bearing. He, who prayed only by rote when forced to attend mass or vespers, offered a silent, eloquent prayer that he might be a worthy husband to this woman, bringing her honor and giving her naught but joy.

As if she’d heard his unuttered plea to heaven, Gloriana’s lashes fluttered and she opened her eyes. “I hope we’ve made a child,” she said.

“So do I,” he answered gruffly.

“What will you say to Mariette? She has come so far—”

Dane touched Gloriana’s nose with a fingertip. “I will say, dear wife, that I am sorry, and offer to send her back to her home in France. With a suitable escort, of course.”

Gloriana rested her head on his shoulder. Her hair, a wild tangle of gold-tinged copper, felt like silk against his skin. “It may be that Edward will court her. My handmaiden, Judith, told me that she fancies him.” She paused, then looked up at Dane in a parody of guilelessness. “Mariette, I mean.”

“I know whom you meant,” Dane replied with a grin, giving her a painless pinch on the backside. “Mayhap losing me will not break the mademoiselle’s heart after all.”

“Mayhap,” Gloriana teased, batting her dense lashes.

He raised his eyebrows and tried to look fierce. “Impudence,” he accused. “I shall have amends for that, milady.”

A fetching blush heightened her color, but the look in her eyes was, beyond doubt, saucy. “How may I appease you, my lord?” she asked, in a voice no less impertinent for its dulcet tones.

For an answer, Dane gripped her by the waist and, moving swiftly, raised her up and set her down again, astraddle his hips. Her glorious eyes widened as she felt his manhood beneath her, swollen to the size of a pillar in a Druid temple and ready to conquer. The tips of her succulent breasts turned hard as brook pebbles.

“Are you contemplating your fate, milady?” Dane asked.

She nodded, biting her lip, and shifted slightly, as if to take him inside her.

Dane was as eager as she, but he knew, if she didn’t,
that pleasure was heightened by anticipation. He had taken her quickly the first time, and there had been several skirmishes after that, but now he wanted to savor every sensation.

Gloriana cupped her hand under her breast and bent to brush Dane’s mouth with the taut nipple.

“Brazen little tart,” he said, and punished her with a single lap of his tongue, quickly withdrawn. “Where have you learned such wanton ways?”

She groaned, disappointed, and tried to get him to take her breast. “In your bed, my lord,” she answered breathlessly. “Please, Dane—”

“What?” he asked, running his hands from her shoulders to her buttocks, which he weighed and then squeezed between his fingers. “’Please, Dane’—do what?”

Gloriana had started to squirm a little, and he hoped she couldn’t guess what she was doing to him. “You are a wretch.”

Dane brought one hand around and spread his fingers over her belly, while his thumb delved between the moist lips of her femininity and found the small, hardened bit of flesh where her passion was centered. Plying that nubbin, he watched with enjoyment as Gloriana arched her back and whimpered, thrusting her wonderful breasts forward, tempting him almost beyond his capacity to endure.

With his free hand, he squeezed one of her nipples lightly, preparing it. “I am waiting, Gloriana,” he said, “for you to tell me what you want.”

She flung herself forward, with a little cry, burying her face beside his head in the pillow, wriggling moist and hot on the pad of his thumb. “Ooh—I would have—I would have you take suckle from my nipples,
my lord, and—
oooooh
—I don’t know what to call it—to have you inside me—”

Dane found a breast and drew on it hard with his mouth, though he had ceased working her womanplace with his hand, lest she find an early, lesser release before the more acute and enduring one he planned for them both. Gloriana grasped his face in her hands, as if she feared he would break away and withhold the attentions she wanted so feverishly.

In truth, he could not have turned from her, except to scramble for the other breast, because he needed to take, in those moments, as much as she needed to give.

Gloriana reared back when they were both gasping, riding him as he heaved beneath her. But they were still unjoined, and Dane, though near the breaking point, was not willing to surrender so soon. He pushed her backward, onto her heels first and then onto her back, and thrust his face between her legs as he wanted to thrust his manhood. Knees drawn high and wide apart, Gloriana gave a lusty cry of exultation and welcome, and he followed every rise and fall of her hips, every frantic twist and turn.

When Dane sensed that she was ready, he drew back, though she clutched at his head and hair and sobbed in protest. Kneeling between her thighs, he looked down into her face, silently asking permission and at the same time giving warning. Then, arranging her, he found her moist entrance and, after teasing her briefly, eased inside. His need was savage, but Gloriana was tender yet, having been breached for the first time just hours before, and he would not hurt her.

Trembling, her pink-and-gold flesh shimmering with perspiration, Gloriana arched her back to receive him and made a low, keening sound in her throat. Her
hair fanned out around her on the bedclothes like an aura of fire, and Dane was stricken by the sight of her, by the sweet torment of possessing her. For a moment he believed his calloused, soldier’s heart would truly break, like some fragile trinket bought at the fair.

Gloriana’s thighs tightened rhythmically against his hips as he probed her, deeply, slowly, over and over. Her hands were never still upon his back, now caressing, now clawing, now grasping his buttocks, now trying to part his shoulder blades. Pain and pleasure encompassed him, until he could not discern one from the other, and still he moved upon her, in and out, in and out.

Dear God. How long could he bear such ecstasy without perishing of it?

“Dane,” Gloriana whispered, as one in a fever. Her fingers trailed down his face, over his chest, making circles around his nipples, playing upon his taut belly as he strained.

She quickened under him and then flexed, her exquisite body like a fine bow drawn taut, and he felt her small, hot muscles constrict where they sheathed him. While she shuddered, gasping his name as though it were a litany to save her from the splendid suffering of climax, Dane erupted inside her with a low sound from deep in his belly, more like the growl of a mating wolf than the moan of a man. He held himself rigid, spilling his seed into her—once, a second time, a third. When she had wrung the last of his essence from him, he collapsed and lay trembling in her arms, his head upon her breasts.

She murmured to him, comforting him in that ironic way of lovers who, having roused the fire in the first
place, would douse its blaze and salve the burns as though in recompense.

Dane, for his part, had no trouble putting a name to the tangle of emotions she had wrought in him. He called them love.

Gloriana slept again, holding Dane close, and awakened at twilight, feeling ravenous. With a gentle shake, she roused her beloved and rolled, laughing, from beneath him just when he would have taken a nipple in his mouth. He raised himself onto an elbow and watched her with gleaming eyes as she went naked to the table and began to eat, grabbing up bits of bread and cheese and cake at random.

Dane got up, as lean and graceful as a panther she had heard about once. Or had she actually seen such a creature, long ago, in the unborn future, in that place called America? She had a vague impression of cages, like small dungeons, a great menagerie full of noise and fury.

But Kenbrook was circling her, slowly, wearing a mischievous smile that set her heartbeat racing, and Gloriana forgot the moment of sadness she had known and laughed again as he pounced and snatched the honeycake from her fingers.

After that, they fed each other, playing at first, then performing their own lovers’ communion. Dane emptied his tub out a tower window, then heated water for Gloriana, with painstaking patience, over a large brazier She bathed by candlelight, while Dane explored the strings of the harp with light passes of his fingers, stumbling across the occasional tune.

When Gloriana had washed, and soaked away the virgin’s soreness, Dane dried her with a soft cloth, and the sensation of being cared for, attended, and nurtured
was so blissful that she was nearly transported by these things alone.

She donned a chemise, which rested whisper-soft against her skin, revealing the shadows of her nipples and the thicket of curls at the joining of her thighs. They ate again, this time with more decorum, and by then the twilight had come. Using a flint, Dane lit the lamps, and they sat upon the great bed, with their backs pressed to the headboard. The master of Kenbrook Hall read aloud, from a script of quaint poetry, to the mistress, who did not hesitate to correct his few mistakes.

When they tired of reading, they played chess, the board perched between them on the feather-stuffed mattress, and Dane did not know victory that night. Finally, he put away the game and doused the lamps. They made love again, sweetly and slowly, without urgency, and then they slept.

When Gloriana awakened, the tower room was brimming with sunlight and Dane was up and groomed, standing at the northern window, looking out. He wore a green tunic and trunks, hose and soft leather boots, and Gloriana felt a twinge of sorrow, for he looked like a man who expected to travel.

As if he’d sensed her gaze, Dane turned and favored her with a devastatingly brilliant smile. “Arise, my lady,” he said, “and make ready. Our captors approach, to confer freedom upon us. Do you suppose an angel told them that we have, at last, sealed the bargain our proxies made so long ago?”

Gloriana could not keep herself from smiling, so engaging was Kenbrook in both form and countenance. “I do not think angels speak of such things,” she said, rising and pulling on a chemise and then the brown kirtle she had worn the day before. She would
have liked to bathe, but she was oddly self-conscious that morning. Besides, Dane had spotted Gareth and a party of men riding toward the hall, which, coupled with the fact that the marriage had been well and truly consummated, meant their time as intimate captives would soon be at an end.

Dane left the window and came to stand before her, resting his hands on her shoulders. “I must contradict you, milady,” he said tenderly, “for angels do surely speak of love. Were it not so, you would not have sworn your passion so fiercely in my arms last night.”

Gloriana bunked back tears. For once, they were made of bliss, those tears, and not of sorrow, but still she refused to shed them. “Flatterer,” she accused, slipping her arms around his neck. “You call me an angel now, but methinks you had another sort of being in mind before, when we were at odds.”

He gave her a lingering, knee-melting kiss. When it was over, he cupped her chin in his hand and smiled into her eyes. “You possess a rare and peculiar grace, milady, in knowing when to be an angel and when to be otherwise.”

Far below the castle window, the hooves of horses clatterd on the ancient cobblestones. Soon, the idyll would be over, for to gain one form of liberty, another must be forfeit. “You, by contrast,” she retorted shakily, attempting to smile, “are never angelic but always ’otherwise.’”

Dane’s blue eyes were bright with merriment and light, but he saw into her heart, however darkly, and narrowed his gaze in concerned speculation. “What troubles you, Gloriana? I see something hiding there, behind that incomparable face.”