Wolf Bride (39 page)

‘Letter?’

‘When I came across you in the tower room, you had been writing a love letter to Margerie, had you not? I saw her name on the paper.’

He stared, remembering. ‘That was no love letter. It was . . .’

She raised her brows, watching him coldly. Was that hatred in her eyes?

‘A farewell,’ he finished awkwardly.

Eloise said nothing, but he saw incredulity on her face.

‘Since she rejected my suit, I have been writing letters to her. Not sending them. Merely writing out my . . . my dark and twisted thoughts, then later throwing them on the fire.’

He swallowed hard, a sudden heat in his face. How to persuade her that he was speaking the truth when she still thought him a liar and an adulterer?

‘Do you not see?’ he asked huskily. ‘If I had not found some way to write out my thoughts, I would have run mad. What you saw that day was my last secret letter to Margerie. A final farewell.’

‘Why?’

Pain twisted him in helpless desperation at that one icy word. Her body was frozen beneath his hands, as though it meant nothing to stand so close to him, when his whole soul was on fire for her.

Was there no way to rekindle the ravening heat that used to flare so intensely between them?

‘Because it was time to let go of that boyish memory,’ he told her, not caring if he exposed his failings as a man with this confession. ‘I have since burnt that letter. It is over and done with. Margerie was a dream, a shadow of love. Not love itself. Trust me when I say she is no longer in my soul.’ He stared down into her face, willing her to believe him. ‘There’s only room for one woman there, and that’s you, my Wolf bride, my Eloise.’

He bent his head, driven by a frustration that was killing him, and took her mouth. Let her push him away if she must, tell him she did not want him, had never wanted him. He could not keep his hands off her a moment longer, his desire for her was such exquisite torture.

But Eloise did not reject him. Her lips parted beneath his and he slipped his tongue inside, tasting her sweetness, the delicious warmth he had been denied for so long.

She gave a little cry, her fingers slipping restlessly through his hair, stroking and gripping as he kissed her.

Encouraged, he pressed closer, his body suddenly alight with fever, his cock hardening inexorably against her belly. There was pain from the scar at his groin, but it was bearable. And the pleasure of their coupling would soon chase it away.

‘No,’ she suddenly gasped, pulling away, panic and guilt in her face. ‘We must not. Your wound . . .’

‘Is healed,’ he finished for her silkily. Their eyes met and he almost grinned, abruptly understanding her hesitation. God’s blood, had she truly thought him incapable? If only she knew how he had woken that morning, gloriously erect, more than willing to perform his duties as a husband, but with no wife by his side.

He drawled, ‘You do not believe me, dear wife? Give me your hand.’

She shook her head, starting to back away. ‘My lord, no, in truth I dare not . . . If you were not able to . . .’

He grabbed her hand and pressed it hard between his legs, his bulge only too apparent without a codpiece, and saw her eyes slowly widen . . .

Eloise could not believe it. After everything the physician had said, all his dire warnings about destroying Wolf’s manhood by visiting his bed, one touch told her that her husband was far from rendered impotent.

Indeed, he was more rigid than she had ever known him, his cock hard as wood beneath her hand. It jerked as she stroked down its impressive length, then stiffened still further when she curled her fingers around its girth and squeezed.

‘Did you fear I would never fuck you again, Eloise?’ he mocked, though his smile warmed her heart even as he teased her. ‘That would be a privation of the most fearful kind indeed. But I assure you, my beautiful temptress, I am very much capable of mounting you. Yes, and of planting my seed in your belly. Which is precisely what I intend to do now. It is time I begot an heir.’

‘No need,’ she murmured, loving her husband with every bone in her body, and burning with pleasure that she could finally tell him what she had suspected for some days now. ‘The deed is done, my lord.’

He stared, his eyes locked with hers. His whisper was hoarse. ‘What are you saying?’

‘Give me your hand,’ she ordered him, deliberately echoing his own words.

Slowly he obeyed, his eyes questioning hers, and she pressed his hand against the gentle swell of her lower belly.

‘I am with child, Wolf. Your child.’

He seemed to be having trouble breathing, his blue eyes very dark. Then Wolf dropped to his knees before her and rubbed his rough cheek against her belly through her gown.

‘A child? I am to be a father?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it . . . is it safe to . . .?’

She laughed, running her fingers through his black hair. Her whole body felt so free and alive, it was hard to remember the darkness she had carried in her heart for months now, thinking he would never love her.

Eloise looked down at him with love and joy as her husband knelt before her. She did believe that he no longer loved Margerie. There had been such a shaken look in his face as he spoke of his last letter to her, and their meeting at court. She knew this was Wolf stripped bare of his defences, waiting for her either to destroy him forever or forgive his past sins.

Still, Wolf had not said the words she needed to hear. I love you. But that could wait for another day, if those words ever came at all. She would not spoil things by being impatient. Not this time, when all her dreams seemed to be coming true.

‘I cannot think why it should not be.’

‘Thank God, for I must have you again, I cannot wait until the babe is born,’ he groaned, and pushed up her skirts, expertly finding her slick cleft with his fingers, stroking and pressing inside her until she gasped and writhed with hot ecstasy.

‘Oh, my lord,’ she breathed, already so close to the edge that her legs were shaking with the need to come.

His mouth found her. He sucked hard, and Eloise sagged against him, climaxing with a wild cry.

Wolf dragged her down on top of him, their half-clothed bodies tumbling together in clumsy lust, his cock already exposed, its thick length leaving her mouth dry with sheer need.

His hands seized her hips, then he jerked her forward onto his cock, his head snapping back on a grunt of pleasure as he penetrated her slow and deep. He showed no sign of pain, his eyes closing, caught up in the spell of their lovemaking as deeply as she was.

She cried out too, and her heart filled with love for him, her mouth trembling with joy. She had come to him reluctantly, resigned to a marriage of cold couplings where his need for an heir would leave her unloved once the longed-for son was provided. Eloise knew the child inside her belly might be female, and indeed that she might never bear him a son, leaving him – like the king – without a male heir.

But she had grown to trust Wolf, and knew he would not put her aside for failing to provide him with an heir. Her husband had integrity, something she had failed to see in those early days before they were married. She was his wife now, and she trusted Wolf to keep his marriage oaths as solemnly as he had kept his oath of allegiance to the king, whatever hardship or sacrifices that might entail.

With sensual abandon, Eloise rose and fell on his hard body, aided by his hands on her hips, a heady pleasure spiralling in her body as she rode him. There was no more doubt in her heart, no more fear, no restraint. She was so sure of his steadfastness she was willing to put her happiness in his hands for the rest of her life. And her body too, for him to pleasure like this forever.

‘Jesu Christ.’ He groaned, eyes still closed tight. His strong throat was corded with veins, his body tense. ‘Eloise, I love you.’

She stilled above him, and Wolf looked up at her warily, his eyes guarded, suddenly defensive.

‘What did you say?’ she whispered, staring.

His mouth twisted on a pained smile, a bitter humour in his voice. ‘I said that I love you. Though I don’t blame you for not believing me. I have not been a good husband to you, Eloise. All I can promise is that I will do better from now on.’

She was crying, but they were tears of joy, salty in her mouth as she leant forward and kissed him, sucking gently on his tongue and loving the way his cock swelled inside her.

‘I do believe you, and I love you too,’ she told him softly, and met the blue intensity of his eyes without her usual quiver of trepidation, hands cupping and stroking his stubble-rough face. ‘My dear, sweet lord, my delectable Wolf.’

‘My love.’

They kissed hotly and tenderly, their mouths meeting for the first time in love, revealing their true selves at last.

Wolf drew back a little to gaze at her, a smile lighting up his eyes with a warmth and tenderness she had never seen there before. The sight of such vulnerability on his hard, soldierly face tore at her heart, driving her even deeper in love with him than ever.

‘You have made me a man, Eloise.’

Wolf rolled her over on the floor and began to make love to her in earnest, his powerful arms supporting his weight as he thrust, his strokes fast and urgent.

She remembered the wolf he had drawn on the cave wall, and her heart ached for the boy he had been. She had no wish to replace the mother he had lost, nor the girl who had betrayed his trust. But she could be the woman he would love for the rest of his life, now that Wolf had left the darkness behind and was hunting in sunlight.

She ran her tongue delicately along his lips and heard him groan against her mouth, swelling and thickening inside her. Her thighs locked about his muscular back, dragging him closer, wanting to give him the same joy he had given her.

‘And I will love you,’ he finished hoarsely, ‘as a man.’

Eloise kissed his throat as he thrust deep and began to come. His cry of agonised pleasure was explosive, his cock wondrously hot and hard, leaping inside her, jolting and filling her with love.

EPILOGUE

Early autumn 1536, Yorkshire

‘Susannah? Where are you hiding, child?’

I am
not
a child.

The morning had been altogether too peaceful, Susannah thought, closing her eyes; and the hay loft above the threshing barn, a perfect hiding-place. Lying back in the shadowy warmth of the straw, she had been indulging a daydream which, even now, still held her hotly in its grip. But her peace was at an end, and she forced herself to kneel up, shaking off that dream with the straw caught in her hair.

There was no longer any point in pretending she had not heard the sound of a horseman approaching the house, then her voice being called from below.

A messenger must have arrived from her sister Eloise, come to invite her to stay at the great hall for a few days, or perhaps with some news about Eloise’s growing pregnancy, for it had been a good month now since Lord Wolf had announced to the world that his wife was expecting an heir. It was lovely to see Eloise glowing with happiness, her rounded belly beginning to show beneath her gowns, and to watch her and Lord Wolf so in love. But her sister’s joy was a reminder to Susannah that she too would be expected to marry soon and do her duty by her husband. And her father had no plans to find her a handsome suitor like Wolf, that was for certain.

Susannah unfolded her legs from beneath her and stood up. ‘Coming, Morag!’ she called down to the woman who had once been her wet-nurse, and now was . . . Well, she did not quite know how to describe Morag, except that since Eloise had settled into her new life at the great hall, her old nurse had been spending more time back here at the manor house, looking after her and Sir John.

Susannah hesitated, glancing down. While thinking and daydreaming, she had been clutching a small but heavy gold ring, set with a modest ruby.

She weighed the ring in her palm, wondering if she should wear it – and what that might signify – then pushed it back into the leather pouch hanging from her belt. She pulled the drawstring tight, checking twice that it was secure. It must not fall out and be lost, she told herself.

Hugh had given her the ring, ‘Not as a promise, but as a gift,’ he had insisted, and it was precious to her.

Not that she was in love with the king’s clerk.

Not a whit.

Hugh meant nothing to her, just as she meant nothing to him. The ruby ring was valuable though and she did not wish to lose it.

Hampered by her gown, Susannah hurried down the ladder, impatiently jumping the last few feet to the ground. Her heavy skirts billowed out, no doubt showing off her ankles, and her bodice was wrenched a little awry as she landed.

‘Damn,’ she muttered, tidying herself, then looked up in sudden consternation, for Morag was not alone.

A man stood beside her old nurse, shielding his eyes against the bright sunshine. She knew him at once. Hugh Beaufort.

Once she had thought him a comely man, broad-shouldered, long-legged, and had shivered in maidenly anticipation of those incisive green eyes meeting hers. Now she knew him so much more intimately. More intimately, indeed, than any chaste unmarried girl should know a man. And now her breath caught in her throat as she stared at him, her cheeks grew warm, and her body ached deliciously, remembering his touch.