The Spymaster's Protection (27 page)

Lucien took the reins of her piebald horse from her and guided
the animal to a spot at the back of the cave where some sticks and a bundle of
hay had been left. “We’ll have to take the horses out to the stream to water,
and I’ll bring back some more wood when I return, but you should have enough
here to enjoy drying out by a small fire.”

“You’re leaving?” she asked, unable to mask the alarm in her
voice.

Lucien nodded. “Just for a little while,’ he informed her,
taking her hand in his free one. “I need to scout the area and make sure we are
secure here, as well as bring home a rabbit or a quail for dinner. Which would
you prefer?”

“Either,’ she said dismissively. “Be careful.”

“Would you like me to unsaddle your horse for you?”

“No. I can do it.”

Lucien looked down at her wet slender form and hooked an arm
around her shivering shoulders. “Don’t be afraid. I will not be gone long, an
hour, two at most. Get out of those wet clothes and beneath a warm blanket
before you catch a chill. Take a nap. You look tired.”

Gabrielle hugged him to her tightly for a long moment. “You’re
wet, too.”

He rubbed her back and pressed his lips to the top of her
head. “I will dry out quickly in the afternoon heat. And there is another small
entrance to the cave that avoids the waterfall, at least partially. With a
quick kiss to her forehead, he turned and left by way of another passage.

+++

Gabrielle spent the next two hours drying her wet clothes over
a very small fire. Constantly turning them helped accomplish the task before
the low heat. She could not sleep, though, as Lucien had advised. She was too
anxious. The cave was a pleasant enough place, with its rocky walls and soft
sandy floor, but it was way too lonely without Lucien. Sitting on a flat-topped
boulder near the fire pit someone had built long ago¸ she leaned back on her
out-stretched arms and stared overhead at the hole in the granite ceiling of
the grotto.

The sun was moving quickly to the western horizon, leaving
long shadows in the forest. She wondered what she would do if Lucien did not
return by nightfall. She had plenty of food and several gourds of water, but
she shuddered to think she might have to spend the night alone in the cave. She
had extinguished the torch he had lit earlier because it was unneeded in the
cavern during the day, but she would have to relight it as it got darker in the
cavern. She’d already used the small supply of wood, and unless Lucien
returned, she’d have to forego it’s meager warmth after the sun set.

But despite all that, it was not her own discomfort or fears
that truly worried her. It was Lucien. She had fallen in love with him, and he
had become everything to her. She could no longer deny it. She’d come to depend
on his strength and steadfast protection, but she needed him for a lot more
than protection. His melting tenderness turned her inside out. He held all her
hopes and dreams now. There was nothing else she wanted but to be with him. He
had become her best friend, and she thought that maybe soon he would become her
lover.

While she was still afraid of the physical union between a man
and a woman, she wanted Lucien to make love to her. She was sure he would be
caring and gentle. She had no reason, no reason at all, to fear him the way she
had feared Reynald. He would never hurt her, and she wanted to experience once
again the incredible pleasure he had given her the other night. It was the
inevitable next step in their relationship. Her only real fear was that once
she let Lucien into her body, she would never be able to release him from her
heart.

Her marriage to Reynald wasn’t annulled yet, nor was Lucien
truly free of his vows. And they were a hairbreadth’s away from war. Lucien was
a warrior. He would fight alongside his fellow Christians, which meant he could
also die doing so.

There was much that could tear them apart in the coming
months. After years of misery and persecution, she had finally found happiness,
and it could all be snatched away in a moment’s time. It all seemed so
precarious, and at times, so overwhelming. And yet Gabrielle knew she could not
turn away from her feelings for Lucien de Aubric. He simply had become
essential to her.

As if her thoughts had conjured him, he came walking into the cavern,
leading his horse in one hand and carrying a dead rabbit and a quail in the
other. “We will dine on both tonight, my lady,” he greeted her with a broad
smile, placing just the slightest emphasis on his use of the words “
my
lady”.

Gabrielle pushed to her feet, ran to him, and impulsively
flung her arms around his neck, startling his horse and him.

“God’s bones, lady, is aught amiss?” he asked as she hugged
him tight, refusing to let go.

She shook her head against his shoulder, feeling rather
foolish. “I was just worried about you. That’s all.”

Her murmured words were laced with a bit of laughter, but they
were husky with emotion as well.

“I fared well all afternoon, and return dry and hale, lovely
Gabi. Rest at ease.”

She stepped back finally and shook her bent head in
embarrassment. “Forgive my dramatic display, sir. I was being silly.”

“Nay,” he argued gently. “I understand, but come take these
from me so we may soon eat. I am starved!”

She really did laugh this time. “I have never skinned an
animal before, but I will be glad to get the firewood off your horse and
rebuild our fire.”

“Then we shall be at it,” he chuckled as he took his horse to
the rear of the cave and unsaddled it to be with Gabrielle’s mount.

╬ ╬ ╬

The setting sun sent a bolt of crimson gold through the sky
hole in the cave, then disappeared to leave deep shadows in the rock carved
room. Gabrielle packed away the remains of their meal, while Lucien retrieved
their bedrolls and spread them out on the ground near the fire pit. He chose a
soft sandy spot and swept it clean of rocks. Gabrielle noticed that there was
not a lot of space between his blankets and hers.

He turned to her as she was staring at the arrangement.
Because she didn’t want him to think she disapproved, she lifted her gaze to
him immediately and smiled.

“I thought I’d bathe before going to bed,” he informed her as
he lit the hand torch for the evening. “I will not be long.”

Gabrielle did not want to sit alone. During their evening meal
they had shared such pleasant conversation, she did not want the warmth of that
to evaporate.

“May I come with you?”

Lucien studied her for a long moment, then nodded. “Bring an
extra drying cloth if you intend to bathe.”

Together they retraced their footsteps to the entrance of the
cave. He brought the torch, but set it well back from the opening so it
couldn’t be seen from outside. Though the outer cavern dropped down behind the
falls, at night, a light from inside could be detected. The opening above provided
enough moonlight to see by as it was.

Gabrielle found a perch on a smoothly rounded boulder and sat
down. She hadn’t really wanted to bathe in the cold water. She had simply
wanted to be with Lucien. It was a measure of their growing closeness that she
had not thought about needing to give him privacy to disrobe.

“Should I turn around?” she asked him with an impish smile,
feeling just a little bit wicked.

He stared across the cave at her with that penetrating dark
gaze he used so often. Only this time, his eyes reflected the moonlight with a
twinkle of mischief.

“That is entirely up to you, mi’lady. I would not be offended
if you chose to watch or to join me.”

“You try the water, first,” she finally decided. “See if it is
very cold.”

With a nod of assent, he strode to an area a few feet from her
where the spray from the falls created a misty shower and a knee-deep, sandy
pool. Above his head, the water fell off the overhanging escarpment in a
continuous sheet that acted as a veil over the cave’s entrance. Most of the
water flowed into the pool at its base, but some was redirected into the grotto
over a narrow rock ledge that created a gentle shower.

It looked too inviting to ignore, and Gabrielle decided to try
it. She slid off her rock and drew her ankle-length tunic over her head, then
set it aside where it would remain dry. Beneath it she wore her loose pants and
her hip length, sleeveless chemise.

She was so absorbed in disrobing that when she turned back to
Lucien, she sucked in a startled breath, for he too had been busy removing
clothes. With his back to her, he stood in the center of the pool, wearing
nothing but his braies. They were not lamb’s wool, but a lightweight linen
fabric, gathered around the waist with a drawstring. They hung to the middle of
his thickly muscled thighs, and were very loose. The cascading water had
already soaked them, causing them to hang extremely low on his hips. It had
also made them quite transparent.

Gabrielle stared at his tightly muscled buttocks and felt her
mouth go dry, despite the humidity in the little antechamber. The sight of him
rooted her to the sandy floor near her boulder. Rivulets of water poured off
his powerful body as he turned this way and that under the shower, highlighting
every sculpted detail. He held a sliver of soap in one hand and lifted one arm
at a time to wash.

Gabrielle’s eyes followed the path of the soap along his upper
arms, which flexed in a symmetry of muscle every time he moved. When the soap
slid downward, so did her gaze, along his powerful forearms to his thick
swordsman’s wrists, then back up again to his impossibly broad shoulders.

She couldn’t see him
laving
his
chest, but she imagined it, very vividly, before sliding her eyes downward. His
powerful body gradually narrowed to a waist that was lean and trim. When he
turned sideways a little, she saw that his stomach was hard as a rock; flat and
sculpted with muscle that rippled from his hipbones to his ribs.

He was all hard planes and bulging contours. There was not an
inch of him that did not scream virility and heartstopping masculine beauty.
Barefoot and damp now, Gabrielle was too mesmerized to move, either forward or
in retreat.

Lucien solved her dilemma by turning fully to her. Then there
was no thought of retreating, not when she looked upon him fully, from the
front. His hair was plastered to his neck, slicked back smoothly from his face,
and water glistened over every incredible bronze inch of him.

Her wide eyes made a quick inventory, and noted that he was
becoming aroused as he stared at her. Gabrielle swallowed and willed herself to
breathe. Had she not been longing for this secretly for many days now?

“The water is not too cold here,” he informed her in a husky
deep baritone as he held out a hand. “Come join me, Gabi.”

Ah, when he used that name for her, her heart skittered! She
closed the distance between them and found herself instantly in his arms.

All that muscle and strength enveloped her in a mantle of heat
and well-disciplined power as she nestled against his chest and felt the gentle
spray of water flow over their entwined bodies. Her shift was thoroughly soaked
and it provided no barrier between her flesh and his.

Eventually, his hands began to move over her, beginning at her
hair. With gentle care, he unbraided it, raked his fingers through it, then
soaped it from scalp to ends. Gabrielle got a whiff of sandalwood, and knew
when her hair dried, it would smell like him. She smiled against the wet mat of
dark hair scattered across his upper chest. Tentatively, her fingers followed
it down his abdomen, as far as his navel, but she could not call up the courage
to follow it further, where it disappeared below his undergarment.

When he was finished washing her hair, he turned her in his
arms to let the cascading water rinse it clean. It took a while, for it was
very thick and long. Wet, it fell nearly to her knees. Face to face, she saw
him staring at her, from her head to her waist. The moonlight filtering into
the cavern accentuated his prominent cheekbones and all the slashing angles of
his face.

“Remove your shift.” His words were dark and thick, more
request than command.

Gabrielle stepped away from him and lifted her plain linen
chemise over her head. Her hands were shaking. Tangled in the wet fabric,
momentarily blinded by the garment, she heard Lucien’s swift intake of breath.

“My God! You are a vision!”

She heard his husky exclamation as she struggled out of her
tunic. Just as she cast it aside, he crushed her against the hard wall of his
chest. Her naked breasts pressed against wet whorls of hair. His viselike grip
loosened then, and he set her an arm’s length away from him so that he could
stare unabashedly at her.

Her linen pants were as transparent as her chemise had been.
Like his, they hung low on her hips, far below her belly button. She looked
down and knew that he could clearly see the dark triangle between her legs. Her
body was shockingly revealed to him.

Her fingers fumbled with her sagging waistband as she tried to
pull up her pants. Lucien put his hands over hers, stopping her.

“You are too lovely to conceal, my lady,” he whispered in the
moonlit dark. “Let me look and touch and taste.”

With a groan, he reached for her and pulled her back into his
arms. His hands sought her everywhere, learning every curve and slope and
hollow, outlining her shape with fingers that were infinitely gentle, yet
wildly hungry.

Gabrielle had never felt so adored or wanted. She was
mesmerized by Lucien’s devotion and skill. He left no place on her untouched.
She melted against him, reveling in his caresses. It was perfect, until his
fingers found the raised scars on her back.

The instant he touched the old ridges, she gasped and stepped
back from him. Oh God, how could she forget all of the humiliating evidence of
the beatings her father and Reynald had delivered over the years? Her disgrace
swept over her in a fierce wave of agony as she spun away from him, toward the
discarded tunic she’d left on the boulder behind her. Dear God, Lucien must
surely be repulsed by what a coward she had been!