The Wedding Night (29 page)

And she took him just inside her. Just. A suckling pressure around the end of his penis that overwhelmed him and shattered his resolve to take his time.

He hauled her into his arms and propelled himself into her until she sat astride him, her legs hitched up around his waist. He was deeply engulfed, struggling to keep his sanity and his seat, while her muscles played him as her fingers had.

"Oh, that's much better." She trembled like the willows that hid them as she gripped his upper arms, rocking on his lap, arching backward and then pitching forward, as though he were a swing and she had plans to soar to the moon.

He wanted this ecstasy to build forever, to fly on the same trajectory as his love—preposterous, then undeniable, then absolute and timeless.

"I want your skin against mine, Mairey
. "

"In our wedding bed." She was clinging to his neck, breathless and sweat-slick, whimpering against his mouth.

"Oh, yes." He found her with his fingers, feverish and damp, her portal filled with his thickness. Her eyes got
smokey
, her voice sultry and low.

"Oh! Jack! I'm—oh!" She drove against him, arched like the pale crescent moon, her hair streaming silver down her back, her gaze fastened to his. His nymph, his naiad. "I love you so!"

"Ah, wife!" Jack came unraveled and his release thundered through him along the length of his rod. He thrust deeply, and Mairey took him to the shank. He cocooned her in his arms as he pulsed into her, gushing out his passion.

Mairey felt every long and straining inch of him. Peace came as deeply seated as he was, and all she could do was cling to him, hoarding the last of his shuddering, already feeling the loss that would come when he wasn't inside her.

"The happiest night of my life, Jack."

"And mine." He held her tightly as he kissed her, rocking gently with her in the moonlight, whispering of all the many nights ahead.

He was just beginning to harden again when something rustled in the brush.

"What was that?" Mairey hung on around Jack's neck, and he closed his coat over her. He pulled out of her and half stood, lifting her up with his arm beneath her backside.

"I am Viscount Rushford, the master here. Come out of hiding, immediately!"

"Blazing toads, Jack! What if it's the girls?" she whispered.

"Impossible—with all their chattering, we'd have heard them a mile away." He pulled a coin out of his pocket and hurled it into the underbrush. "Show yourself!"

A great fluttering and flapping shook the brambles, and a blurring phantom launched itself out of its shadows right at them.

"A hawk owl!"

"Bloody hell!" Jack clamped his hand over
Mairey's
head and dove to the tight, pitching them into the stream.

Jack shifted as he fell to take
Mairey's
weight, landing with a growl on his back. Mairey bounced off his chest and then rolled into the calf-deep icy water.

"Heavens, that's cold!"

"Mairey, are you all tight?" Jack sputtered, reaching for her as she clambered to her feet in the gravelly bed.

"I'm fine. But you're going to be sore."

"God, you'll freeze, wife. From lack of clothes, from this water—what's so funny, madam?"

But Mairey was laughing too hard to reply. He was hardly more than a shadow in the pale twilight, and shaking off the water like a hound, hitching up his trousers and fastening them when they wanted to cling to his knees.

He lifted her off her feet and sloshed to the pile of clothes she'd left near the tree.
Their
tree. "Do you often sport about naked in the woods, madam?" He draped her shoulders with his coat, wet but still warm from his heat.

"Only the occasional bath in a stream when I can't get a room at an inn. Why?"

"I thought as much." He found her shoes and stuck one on her foot. "But no more stream bathing, Lady Rushford, unless you're with me."

"It wouldn't be fun any other way." Mairey stood up when she had both shoes on and stepped into her petticoats and skirt, her hair dripping all over the ruffle like little faucets.

Jack displayed her drawers and then stuffed them into his pocket. "I like the idea of you without these under all those skirts." His grin caught the moonlight as he lifted her into his arms and carried
her the
rest of the way to the front steps of the main house.

His hair was wet and his clothes were still dripping water and flecked with moss.
Mairey's
own hair was twisted ropes and leaf-strewn.

"Welcome to our home, Lady Rushford."

Jack carried her through the door to
Drakestone
with pomp and majesty, and a whole lot of kissing.

They met Sumner coming down the stairs, frowning at them like a disapproving father. "Good evening, sir."

"You mean good wedding night, Sumner. I'd very much like you to meet the Lady Rushford. We were married today."

"Well, finally." He winked at Mairey,
then
wrinkled his nose at their clothes. "I shall have bathwater drawn."

* * *

Jack left Mairey to their chamber and bathed in the laundry. "Much quicker," he'd said, "and I welcome the cold water, madam."

Mairey soaked up the heat in her bath and scrubbed until she was glowing and scented with orange blossoms. Then she tucked herself into their huge bed to await her husband.

His counterpane was lush, and the pillows, deep. She was warm and sleepy and so contented that she could feel her thoughts drifting toward dreams.

A dragon lived there. A man-shaped one, but with a dragon's heart—as impenetrable as it was predatory. She'd cowered from him at first, afraid that he would tear her family from her. Instead, he held her as though he thought her infinitely precious. He had kind eyes, and an honest soul, gave her his child to care for. And when the child came, he would be there to soothe her, to call her name—

"Mairey." Mairey, Mairey. He seemed to like her name, liked to whisper it against her mouth, to follow it with his tongue, in the same way he liked to kiss her.

He was big, weighty like sunlight on a wheat field. And his hands were so able. Oh, yes, able to,
liable
to, do most anything. He could turn a hillside to rubble with a simple gesture, and that still frightened her. But most of all he loved her, loved her family, and gave her children.

Mairey's
dream fused seamlessly with her waking.

"I love you, Mairey." Jack was leaning on his elbows, claiming her leg with his, tugging at her breast with his lips—little nips, little tugs, and she was making little whimpers to match his rhythm, circling her hips to bump against all his astonishing nakedness.

"You are particularly pliant when you're asleep."

"And you are ever-hard, husband. Ever ready."

"Are you?" He found her slickness with his fingers. "
Mmmm
, you are." He parted her legs with his hands and caressed her until her breasts were ripe and wanting, her hips riding the clouds where Jack's tongue played her, sought her. She rose with his tides, joined in his joyful, raucous surges, until they were both wild and straining against each other and the world was spinning.

Yes, this was life and hope. Jack was her fairy
tale come
true. She lost herself in the bliss of their wedding night. Her husband pleasured her for hours and gave her fathomless peace and the whispering of his heart in the quiet.

It was in the deepest night, while she was cocooned within his
arms, that
Jack shot up on his elbow, a wild rejoicing in his eyes.

"Bloody hell, Mairey! I forgot!" He kissed her soundly and leaped off the bed. "I can't believe I forgot!"

"Forgot what?"

"Where the devil did I put it?" He took a twice-around tour of their wedding bower, lifting damp clothes and sorting through the mess they had made in their abandon.

"What are you looking for?"

"Ah, yes!" He was a hunter sniffing the air as he started toward the dressing room. "My wedding gift to you."

"You're wearing it, Jack." She couldn't help but laugh when he stopped mid-stride and turned a crimson-cheeked grin on her and then on his own half-risen penis.

"That'll have to wait, Mairey." Though that didn't look as though it was of the same opinion. "Don't move, wife."

Mairey fell back against the pillows, deliciously married, profoundly in love, and admiring her husband's flanks as he bounded into the dressing room. Hard-shadowed flanks and
all that
masculine equipage. No wonder it was so difficult to keep her hands off him.

He burst back into the bedroom a moment later, stabbing around in the pockets of his soggy jacket.

"I've had no time to wrap it up in a velvet bag, Mairey."

"Your wet jacket will do—though I can't imagine how you slipped away from me today to find a wedding gift. Unless you divined our baby and planned our wedding for today."

"My hindsight is excellent; I should have seen the signs: my rosy wife and her ripening breasts and a waist which is just a bit thicker than I remembered."

"I was neither your wife nor amenable to your fondling."

"Ha! Not amenable? That's not my recollection."

Mairey blushed, aching for him, because everything had turned out so very right.

"However, Mairey, my stupendous divination talents do run to coal and lead, and, with your help—" he pulled a wadded handkerchief out of his pocket, tossed away the jacket, and planted himself in front of her on the bed, a huge, astounded grin on his face.

"Give me your hand, Mairey."

A wedding ring? The absolutely dear man—it must be. Though the object wrapped up in his wet handkerchief wasn't at all wedding-ring shaped … more like a small, thick saucer. The gladness drained out of her heart for a moment and flew away in fright, leaving her stomach flipped on edge and her head light. Her palms were damp and fisted into her lap.

The baby again—already making
itself known
as forcefully as its father, interrupting her every thought.

"Your hand, my sweet wife." Jack was jubilant, his dark eyes gleaming the brightest she'd ever seen them while he waited impatiently with his gift.

"All right, Jack." Mairey smiled back at her marvelous husband and gave him her hand, trusting him. He took it to his lips, kissed her fingers and her palm,
then
held it flat against his bare chest, where his heart pounded as though it would fly away from her.

"Full circle, Mairey. We were meant to find each other."

She hoped so; prayed that she hadn't stolen this moment of happiness. "I love you, Jack."

"
Which makes me the most fortunate man in the world.
" He put the kerchief and its weighty contents in her palm and closed his hand over the gift.

This odd prickling across her scalp
wasn't
a manifestation of her pregnancy. It was fear, dark and cringing; an inexplicable foreboding having something to do with Jack's wedding gift.

"For you, Mairey. For us."

It came again, a great winged terror that swooped over her head and made her flinch, made her clutch her fingers around the round object. No! Not a disk. It couldn't be!

…
one
silv'red
disk, anciently ornamented…

"Jack!"

His eyes were so guileless and proud, so eager with his harrowing secret. "Open it, Mairey."

No, please. Not the
Willowmoon
. Impossible! She didn't want to risk it all, didn't want to know. They could throw it into the fire, and it would be gone.

The piece in her hand was unbearably heavy, a murky darkness inside the crumpled linen. Her fingers shook in her dread, though she tried to hold them steady as she peeled back one corner and then the next, catching the sob in her throat before Jack could hear it.

"A crest of silver knot-work, Mairey," he breathed. "No larger than my palm."

The linen fell away like the petals on a spent poppy. It was beautiful and wicked and molten hot in her hand.

The
Willowmoon
Knot.

She would know it anywhere. The sweeping spirals of willows and the cycles of the moon. The shale slopes of
Nevisfell
and the meanderings of the
Stoney
, the heart of silver and the tiny valley where her village slept. As fine a map as any that
Moule
could have drawn.

Oh, Papa, what have I done?

"Of course, my love, the achievement is yours." Jack was bent over the Knot, his cheek next to hers, grazing her with his mouth and his fine whiskers. "You
led,
me right to it—I merely picked it up. Though I haven't the faintest notion what all those markings mean."

The end of us, Jack
. Not a disk, but a lethal arrow, pointed directly at everyone she loved. Aim it anywhere and precious blood would spill. Mairey wrapped the hateful thing in the kerchief and set it on the bed beside her.