Scoundrel's Kiss (11 page)

Gavriel looked around but could find no
cup. He dipped a new cloth, not bothering to wring out the excess. He supported
the back of her head and brought the cloth to her mouth. She sucked greedily,
eyes drifting Shut. He did the same, closing his eyes against that erotic and
vulnerable act.

When he opened them again, he found her
watching him with the smallest smirk, their faces nearly touching. She blinked,
parted her lips. "More."

"Please."

She looked away. "More,
please."

Nodding once, he dipped the cloth
again. He felt like celebrating a tiny victory, but any victory was tainted. He
used the same techniques against Ada that had been used against him in his
youth, forcing obedience. The realization sat heavily on his upper back,
pressing on his conscience. But he did it for her own good, not to turn her
into a broken and compliant slave.

He touched the water-laden cloth to her
lips and she sucked again, covering his hand with one of hers. She twined their
fingers and held fast The air thickened between them like a hot, sticky summer
fog. All he could think was that, without the cloth, she would be pressing her
lips to his palm. His skin. Suckling and teasing him, flesh to flesh.

He unwound their fingers and eased her
back into the pallet's softness. A cat's grin shaped her mouth.

"The boy, Jacob," he said.
"He mentioned a promise you'd made and broken. What was it? Did you
promise him not to use the tincture again?"

"No, nothing so grand." She
licked her lips, eyes closed. "I—I promised that I would refrain
when he was not there to care for me."

The tension in his shoulders doubled
until the muscles felt hewn of rock. "He gave you permission?"

"No, no." Ada reached for the
linen, dipping it and sucking her fill. "Do not disparage Jacob or his
efforts, please. I've done too much of both. He does not deserve it."

"He could not stand up to
you."

She nodded slightly. "I
know."

"Yet you pressed the
advantage?"

"I worked at Dona Valdedrona's
palace where he could watch over me. He made sure I never consumed to excess.
He kept me safe from people who would harm me." She slumped back onto the
pallet, her chin wet. "Perhaps that's why I thought myself more in control
than I am. He protected me."

Gavriel pressed the heels of his palms
together, wringing his fingers until his mind registered pain. "Did he buy
it for you? Did he hand you the bottle?"

That little nod. "On
occasion."

"Merciful God," he said on a
quiet exhale. "He was in love with you."

"Yes. Has been for years."
Tears gathered at the corners of her blue eyes. She looked away from him, a
blush darkening cheeks already beset by fever. Her full lower lip trembled,
whether from the withdrawal or emotion he could not be sure. "I took
advantage of his affection to get what I wanted."

"And with this tearful confession,
you think to manipulate me as well."

"No. I'm being truthful. I'm
simply... tired."

"I don't believe you." He
stood and ran his hand over his good forearm, unable to banish the strain of
being in the same room with her. She wove under his skin like a needle and
thread. Every joint stiffened against the need to leave her, to abandon his
responsibilities. "You must trust someone to believe them,
inglesa.
And
I don't know you. I don't trust you."

She doubled over suddenly. Anguish
blended guttural cries with her native English and its clipped sounds. Unable
to stay away in the face of that pain, Gavriel knelt beside her. Her neck was
slick with sweat, and he bathed that fiery skin with the damp cloth. She
groaned, a low and wrenching torture.

"Should I stop?"

"No," she said.

He continued to bathe her heated body
until the pain relented. She lay on the bed like a crushed flower, her
red-rimmed eyes unfocused and staring at the low, cobwebbed ceiling. Her voice,
when it returned, was like that of a woman twice her age, all misery and
resignation. "All of two evenings and you expect to know me?"

"You could be in my company a year
with no alteration— as long as the opium yet claims you. No amount of
time would make a difference. It will always speak for you."

He laid a hand on her forehead,
smoothing, trying to say with his touch what sounded so awkward from his
tongue. She met his eyes with a directness that stalled the breath in his
chest. For a moment, he glimpsed who she must have been. Stubbornness shone
like a hot blaze, but a deep intelligence tempered it and gave it strength.

The compulsion to make her well filed
through his veins. Cured, this formidable woman would put his untoward impulses
in their place. She would stare his unnatural lust in the face and reject him.
Deservedly. And he would welcome the rejection as a return to his chosen life.

"I wonder if you even realize that
you've given it your voice," he whispered. "All your power."

She shook her head to dislodge his
hand. "I'm beginning to mislike when you minister me. You stand on your pedestal
and look down on my mistakes."

Gavriel moved the jug away and
stretched on the floor between her and the door. "I'm not looking down on
you,
inglesa.
I'm trying to do more good than young Jacob did"

"Trust goes both ways," she
said. "I don't trust you because I don't know you. You watch me sideways,
waiting for me to make a mistake."

"How else should I approach this
situation? You're an untrustworthy person. Whether or not that is due to the
opium, I cannot know."

A hearty shrug rumpled her coverlet.
She hauled it back into place. "You may as well tie me up for the month
and have done with it But that would be too difficult for you, wouldn't it?
Tying me up?"

A tingle of lust shot through from head
to feet, gathering halfway between. "I've no notion of what you
mean."

"For at least one year you've been
without a woman in your bed. And the notion of tying me up, having complete say
over what I do or think or feel isn't attractive to you?"

"You think me so cruel?"

"No, I think you so
wretched." Her eyes drifted shut and her throaty voice slowed. "Your
robes fool no one, Gavriel."

Chapter 8

If he stayed in the world for too long,
someone would recognize him.

Lying on the floor, fitfully striving
for sleep for the third night straight, Gavriel faced the unavoidable truth.
Until he returned to Ucles and donned those protective white robes once
 
again, he would be vulnerable to his
father's searching henchmen, to punishment for his part at Alarcos, to
temptation. But
 
with the
Englishwoman in tow, he would remain so. She threatened to tear down the very
shelter he had worked to create. Anew life. A new purpose. A means of
dispelling the murderous need for revenge that burned under his skin.

He closed his eyes. Joaquin de Silva's
image appeared out of the blackness. His father's eyes were ice blue, but they
shared the same hooded expression and grim mouth. Gavriel's dark coloring, from
his hair to his skin and eyes, came from the Berber woman who had never lived
to see his first birthday. A slave raped by her master, she had been left to
die after child
 
birth so that her
son might be stolen, conditioned, and raised to become the family's deadliest
defender. As a slave, he had been denied an education beyond what could be learned
with fists and swords and horses.

He had been little more than an animal.

But he had escaped that spiral of
death, confronting his barbarism and trying to become a better man.

He raised a hand to his eyes and pushed
against closed lids, rubbing until bright blue blemishes floated there.
Breathing slowly, he struggled for calm. Calm heart, calm mind. He was not an
animal but a servant of God. And even more than the need to take revenge on his
father, he feared returning to that violent, mindless way of life. It called to
him, so much easier than the struggle to be virtuous.

Better he should recall the horrors of
two days spent confined with Ada, the screams and keening and mindless
violence. He wore scratches after having removed her torn blue gown, and was
covered in bruises after struggling to dress her in a dark red one—proof
that a woman caught in the throes of such desperation could do untold damage.

Her distress did not prevent Gavriel
from noticing the ivory luster of her skin and the smooth flex and pull of
muscles beneath it Lithe and firm, her flesh awakened a deep and needy part of
him. But indulging those enticing memories and temptations would do him no
good.

She cried out in her sleep, thrashing
again. Another nightmare—a small and deadly beast scratching its way out
of her brain. They occurred as regularly as a muezzin's call to prayer, laying
waste to whatever strength and peace she managed to gather. If they continued,
the dreams would tempt her back to the drug she battled.

With a heavy sigh and a quick prayer,
he crawled the miserable distance between his place on the floor and her
shivering body. Touching her was not as difficult now. He even anticipated the
feel of her skin, a fact that teased him in his own troubled sleep. How much more
could they endure of this torment?