By Possession (9 page)

Slapping water joined the sounds of birds and wildlife. Moira could find no place in the little lake that would be invisible from the road, so she refrained from stripping as she wanted to do. Instead she bunched her skirts up around her thighs and, turning her back to the cart, scrubbed her legs.

Untying the lacing across the top of her bodice, she slipped the gown off her arms and shoulders. The smell of those men had wafted to her nose for over a day now, reminding her of the experience. This stop would delay them a good hour, but she was grateful that Addis had made it. He still limped and presumably needed to rest his hip, but she suspected that he had guessed that she wanted to wash. In small ways like this she had seen a few cracks in the hard facade.

It would be nice to believe that one day the whole shell would crumble away and the old Addis would emerge, but she doubted that could ever happen. She wasn't even sure she would want it to. He may have grown hard, but also thoughtful and sharp, and that might serve him well in the months ahead. Her own maturity had also given her the wisdom to admit that the youthful Addis had not been without flaws. The girl in her might wish the young squire would return, but the woman rather preferred the man.

She splashed water on her arms and neck. Glancing over her shoulder she could not see him, and so she lowered the gown and washed her breasts. Aye, she rather liked the man, but she could do without his silent self-possession.
It had not been just his years in the Baltic that had done that to him. His life as a slave may have forged the hard privacy that armored his person, but the internal changes had begun before he left. Probably they were why he had left, and Claire lay at the root of it all.

Beautiful Claire. Elegant, charming, radiant Claire. Frivolous, spoiled, vain Claire. She had loved Claire with acceptance the way a sister might, but had always known what she had in her and had marveled that no one else ever noticed how little of substance lay beneath the light. Certainly not the men. Definitely not Addis, but then he had been spoiled and vain too. They had been born for each other, two perfect, self-centered children who assumed the world had been created as a setting for their idyllic love.

She remembered them at their betrothal, looking like figures who had stepped out of a tapestry. She had been awed like everyone else. Who could not be? Addis stood so tall and strong, the perfect knight, his dark, deep-set eyes ablaze. Claire appeared ethereal, floating in silk and virtue, secure in the belief that in Addis she had gotten what she obviously deserved.

Then the dream had ended, the idyll had shattered, and the world had intruded with its harsh truths. And Claire had been unable to even look at the resulting wreckage, let alone touch it. Moira knew more about Claire and Addis than anyone else. Much more than Addis suspected. Far more than she would like.

A flurry of activity on the lake crashed through her reverie. Birds and waterfowl suddenly took to noisy flight. She turned to see Addis striding through the shallow water, naked to his waist, creating violent eddies and splashes, coming right toward her with a dangerous expression.

Woman's instinct screamed a warning. She looked down
and saw naked legs and thighs and a wet garment clutched to breasts, barely covering them. Frantic about her vulnerability, and not liking the determination with which he hurried toward her, she turned and tried to run, her thoughts scrambled by her alarm.

Why now? If he planned to force her he could have done so anytime. Last night, even yesterday.

“Do not run away.” He did not shout but the command carried clearly over the water. His lordly tone did not reassure her at all. Holding the gown made movement awkward and she let the skirt fall. A mistake, that. The fabric served like a wick and immediately she was dragging heavy sodden drapery.

He was upon her in an instant, grabbing her around the waist. She twisted and squirmed and pushed with the arm not clasping the gown to her body. She opened her mouth to scream but a rough palm gagged her. “Cry out and I will hit you,” he growled.

He began dragging her toward the bank, saying something she didn't hear while she blindly struggled. How could she have been so stupid! Of course he wanted his bondwoman with him. More convenient than seeking out whores.

She leveraged an elbow sharply into his stomach and he spit a curse. The lake and bank blurred past while he turned her around, lifted her, and slung her over his shoulder.

She poured desperate arguments onto his back. “Release me! Do not do this! You are an honorable and chivalrous knight—”

“Be silent!”

“I won't! Think of your soul. My God, you went on a crusade. You are probably guaranteed salvation. Would you risk that for a few moments—”

“Hell's teeth, woman, I just told you …” He climbed up the bank and dumped her down beneath a tall bush. She rolled and scrambled to crawl away, still clutching the wet gown to her chest. Firm hands grabbed her hips and dragged her back, then flipped her. She watched in horror as he descended on her, immobilizing her with his body.

“Spread your legs.”

She beat at his shoulders and face with her free hand. “You had better kill me, you animal, because if I live I will not be silent. I will go to the royal courts! I will see you burned or castrated!”

“Spread them!” He pressed her flailing arm up over her head with one hand and yanked her legs wide with the other and pushed the wet skirt up to her thighs.

Oh saints! How could she have been so wrong? How could she have been so foolish as to ignore what he was capable of?

He grasped her hair, forcing her face to meet his. “I said I am not going to hurt you! Listen!” His tone and eyes brought her panic up short. He glanced over his shoulder, across the lake. “Listen.”

Gasping shallow breaths, she turned her attention in the direction of his gesture. Sounds of horses and talk rumbled across the water. A different alarm replaced her fear.

“How many?”

“Between twenty and thirty.”

“Colors?”

“White and scarlet.”

“Simon …”

“Perhaps not. No doubt you think I should have stood in the road and hailed them to be sure first.”

“We are a long ways from Barrowburgh though.”

“But we are close enough.”

She could see the road over his shoulder. The first riders appeared in view. What would they see if they looked down to the lake? A basket maker's cart and donkey, and a man and woman coupling under a bush. Better than a half-naked woman bathing and Addis de Valence sleeping on the hill, especially if they came from Barrowburgh. Or an unattended cart which might tempt the overbold. A cart
with her ruby in it.

“Can you see a banner or standard?” Addis asked quietly into the crook of her neck. Despite her attention on the road, his warmth and breath unsettled her.

“Aye. One passes now. A banner. Scarlet, then white. A gold falcon crosses the colors.”

“Simon's.”

“Do you think that they head to Darwendon?”

“No way to tell. Would you have me go and ask?”

“The horse …”

“He grazes nearby, below a rise. They may not see him and if they do there is nothing to say he is mine. The sword is not even a knight's weapon.”

She embraced his shoulders with her free arm. She doubted much more was visible than the entangled forms of two people and a woman's naked legs, but if they looked this way let them assume a craftsman and his wife had paused to dally.

They were noticed. She saw a hand point and heard low laughter and a few ribald comments. “A few are stopping.”

“Then forgive me, madam.” He leveraged his weight slightly and pressed his hips forward. She closed her eyes in humiliation at the evidence that their ruse was not entirely a fabrication. Well, if he didn't react to being held between a woman's thighs there would be something wrong with him.

“They are moving on.” She kept her eyes peeled until the sounds began to grow faint and the last man passed. “They are gone,” she said, smiling up with relief.

The face looking down mere inches from hers caused her to go very still. His expression looked severe and intent and devoid of any concern for passing soldiers. Their physical connection abruptly shouted for attention.

She grew acutely aware of her arm embracing the straight shoulders hovering above her and the feel of his warm skin beneath her hand. Stripped of the fear she saw him anew striding through the water, the slabbed muscles in his chest glistening in the sun, the buckskin soaked against his hips and thighs, his dark hair flying behind him. The images carried a perilous appeal.

The silence became heavy. She tried to ignore the erotic nature of their positions, but instead she was stunningly conscious of every inch of him and the expression in his eyes spoke his awareness too. He slowly looked at her brow, her nose, her jaw, and then tilted his head to examine the shoulders and chest all too visible above the hand still holding the garment to her breast. Her skin flushed beneath his meandering gaze, making it impossible to pretend she was indifferent.

“You would go to the royal courts, Moira? To have me burned or castrated? You are a vicious woman.” He smiled. The second one that she had seen. “And here I thought that you at least were not afraid of me.”

Not like the others are, but I am afraid
. Expectant apprehension scampered through her with a vengeance now, strangely delicious and full of a stimulating quality. It filled her belly with a curious weightiness and made all her senses unnaturally alert.
Nothing but trouble, nothing but shame
, her conscience warned, but even as it did her body began relaxing beneath his of its own accord, molding to
his strength, welcoming his pressure. Could he tell? Did he feel the warmth tingling her? A power poured off of him that said that he did.

“I have this ridiculous tendency to get hysterical whenever a man throws himself on me and orders me to spread my legs,” she said dryly, hoping to push them both back from the chasm they seemed to be hurtling toward.

He shifted his lower body off of her, releasing her legs, but he didn't move away. His eyes examined hers thoughtfully in that invasive way, demanding an invisible connection. “If you had stopped fighting for a moment you would have heard me explain.”

She could get away now. She had only to push at those shoulders and it would be over. She would never be able to pretend it had been otherwise. But his maleness intoxicated her and his power and mystery compelled her, and her whole body felt anxious and waiting in a way she had never experienced before.

It took him forever. Time pulsed in silence with their heads a hand span apart, their eyes locked in a mutually naked gaze. Long after her breath had quickened and her confused heart had accepted it, he waited. They both knew she would not stop him before he lowered his mouth to hers.

Who would have thought that hard mouth could kiss so softly? His lips pressed and moved and bit in a slow, luring dance, as if he tested her taste and checked her compliance. From what Claire had described she had expected a burst of violent passion, not this courtly, almost boyish restraint. Those delicious, searching kisses summoned the remembered heartache of a girl watching from the shadows and the breathless desire of a woman too long without a man, and her complex, poignant response to the joining stunned her. Was it the girl or the woman who impulsively embraced his shoulders, pulling him closer?

His arms circled her body and arched her up to him and the next kiss wasn't nearly so careful. It consumed with possessiveness that grew primitive. His tongue seduced an opening and then explored with a gentle intimacy that rapidly transformed into demand. The warmth of his chest burned through the cool dampness of the gown barely covering her breasts, teasing her skin with the contrast. Memories and emotions and thrilling sensations merged into helpless acceptance. She stretched her hand into his hair and joined him in an ascending passion that blotted out everything but the astonishing urge to give and take.

He ended it, not her. The tension of control slid through him like an eddy of water. He eased the embrace and, separating slightly, trailed his mouth over her neck and shoulders, making little patterns of heat on her water-cooled skin that seemed to sink into her blood. A groan of affirmation almost escaped her when he began exploring her body, learning its shape with a firm hand that wandered over hips and belly and found the thighs buried under the sodden drapery.

She had learned something of lovemaking with her second husband but she had never wanted like this, had never trembled from small touches or waited with such concentrated anticipation for that possessive hand to move on. And that townsman had never taken this long just to kiss and caress, and had never made her body experience such delicious, trickling desire.

He peeled down the cloth plastered against her chest, exposing her breasts to the dappled sunlight. He caressed them and she gritted her teeth at the breathless craving his touch and gaze created. When a thumb curved up and grazed a tight nipple, her whole body reacted with an instinctive stretch of offering. He stroked her softness with his face and then rose up on one straight arm.

“Not here,” he said. He covered her breast totally with his hand, the palm pressing the hard nipple and the fingers spreading down its sides. He watched his hand move down her body, curving around waist and hip, splaying over belly, lining down and up thighs. He finally cupped her woman's mound with a subtle pressure that caused hungry thrills of sensation. The long, studied caress pronounced possession claimed but delayed. “Not now.”

He kissed her, a mere brushing of lips, and turned to rise. The muscles in his back stretched and corded while he leveraged to his feet, leaving her arms empty and her body tight with discomfort.

Conflicting emotions assaulted her. A vague gratitude that he had shown restraint but strong disappointment that he had gone no further. A prickling resentment that he had denied her the one time she had wanted this thing.

She glanced to the water and the road and reality slashed into her dazed perceptions. She realized with a shock how exposed they had been.