Captive Heart (14 page)

“Shall we make this night last?” I asked as I led him to the bed.

“For as long as you want it to.”

My lips were on his, his hand cupped around my flank, my hand stroking the iron muscles of his thigh when the chamber door creaked open. We froze. Was it the lord-knight needing something from his cell? Perhaps Lyn had found her way here?

When a decidedly feminine form slipped through by the dying firelight, I relaxed. Marrok, though, dropped his hand from me and sat up. When a second lady entered after the first, I elbowed my way up in surprise. I drew the edge of the bed sheet over my hips, but Marrok didn’t make any such move to modesty.

“Who are you?” His tone was cold.

“Gifts,” the one nearest replied. She was young. My age perhaps, or a season or two shy. And her face in firelight as she neared the bed was lovely. As lovely as the second lady’s, for as she neared, I saw they were twinned.

“Who sends gifts such as you?” Marrok demanded, surprising me with the continued hard edge to his voice.

“A grateful father who wishes to thank you for your mercy.”

“And one who wishes to ensure you fight well when you meet with his brother. He sends us here to give you strength.”

“Like Lot who offered up his daughters,” said the first.

“And Lot was a good man, wasn’t he?” said the second. “Just as our father is a good man.”

Bewildered yet, I spoke the first thing that entered my head. “My father is called Lot, named for the man of Scripture.”

The first damosel turned earnest eyes on me. “And is your father not a good man?”

“A good
king
actually. Just misguided at times.”

“And you think that’s what we are—a
misguidance
?” asked the first.

“Even if we told you we’d be here even without our father’s blessing?” asked the second.

The first of the damosels stirred the brazier fire back to life, setting the twin beauty of their faces aglow, reflecting the heartfelt worship in their eyes. They turned to each other then, and slowly, deliberately, slipped each other’s nightshifts over their heads.

Pale skin made paler by the night was revealed, inch by anticipated inch. I stole a glance at Marrok, who’d gone very still, entranced as much now by their nakedness as by their twinness. His breath was already quickening.

As was the rest of him.

As was I.

Proud of their bodies—and rightly so, as twin roses from a master’s garden made flesh they seemed—they stretched, offering a better, wanton view of their perfect round breasts draped in shadow, the long curve of their waists that disappeared in a mass of nighted curls and mystery.

A whine broke from Marrok’s throat.

One of them circled to my side of the bed, looking over the round of her shoulder at us through a fall of auburn hair, her hips swaying promise as she went.

I felt the sear of her gaze as it followed down our chests, over our jutted hips, and across our still-twined legs.

Her brows arched in momentary surprise. Then, as comprehension dawned, her lips quirked in a small and knowing smile.

I had to send them away. It was the right and courteous thing to do. Only, looking up, the swell from beneath her upturned breast begged a touch, a hand cupped perfectly around it. Swallowing, I hoped that recognizing that Marrok and I lay here in sin—or on the edge of it as we had yet to get seriously started this night—would of itself be message enough because I wasn’t sure I could speak the words of dismissal.

Powerless, I looked to Marrok for support, but his hand already hid the lush curve of the hip beside him.

Decidedly not put off by our sin, my lady—

No!
What was I doing thinking of her as
mine
simply because she stood on the bedside by me less than an arm’s reach away? The damosel next to me eyed our intertwined legs and the half-flaccid staffs that fell at our thighs. I twitched under her gaze, my body betraying the words I still could not utter.

Marrok rolled over, capturing his lady’s other hip and dragging her down to sit on the bed.

Of her own, my lady sat beside me. Temptress that she was, she lifted my hand and guided it to that very swell of breast that nestled as firmly and snugly in my palm as I had imagined it would. A sharp flow of blood raised my staff to half-mast.

It didn’t go unnoticed. In a breathspace my lady’s hand was upon it, confident, sure and experienced. Marrok’s groan told me I was not alone in a temptress’s grasp.

“You’re no innocent,” I breathed at last.

She leaned in, her pout of lips almost touching mine. “Who said we were?” Then they were touching and her wise hand on me brushed the underside of my risen flesh from tip to base, a nail tracing the sensitive line between staff and stones.

I moaned.

But no, any further and I would not be able to stop this temptress’s assault.

A gasp and growl from Marrok told me for him it might already be too late—that perhaps he’d already reached the point of no return.

“Lyn!” I cried. A reminder both to him and me.

“Shh.” My lady pressed her unoccupied fingers to my lips. “She’s having her own pleasure now.”

I shook my head. This was not Persant’s doing. This was no offer of a virgin daughter from a grateful father. They were being spelled. Or we were.

One of Nimue’s trials.

I made to rise, and the lady squeezed expertly at the base of my staff arresting my flight as it leapt to hard attention. Then the tip of it was in her mouth, the wet ring of her lips sliding over it, enveloping it with warm breath.

“No. No,” I implored, but how could I move now?

Marrok snarled, tipping his lady face-down on the mattress beside me. He rose over her like a beast, all reason fled from his eyes. The bed shook as he buried himself in her. Then shook again. And again.

My maiden’s mouth and hand maddened me.

I clawed at her hair and at the one breast that hung within reach. Her second hand gripped my stones.

“Lyn!” I cried again. A denial. An apology. A prayer.

Sight of Marrok rising and flattening as he rode to his peak drove me to mine.

Grabbing the lady’s shoulder by his teeth, Marrok raised her up. An arm, snaking around her stomach, pulled her to him as he thrust into her one last time, his great body shaking with effort and release. His eyes limned red with whatever demon rode
him
.

God’s wounds, I wasn’t even jealous watching him with another. I had eyes and ears only for his animal pleasure, my own body tuned to his. I swear I could feel his release in me moments before my own.

He howled, a preternatural sound that was his alone. My own, more human, cry joined his as the lady over me caught the fountain of my ecstasy deep within her throat.

What should have been a moment of supreme joy in the twin sharing of our pleasure turned instead to a moment of deepest regret.

This was what Nimue had wanted, not us. Why? And Lyn, had she succumbed to similar temptation? What did Nimue hope to gain? Did she think to drive us apart with jealousy? To remove the champions from each other, and the championed from both? If so, she’d underestimated the strengths of our bonds. Anger not jealousy raged in my heart. Neither Marrok nor Lyn could be held responsible for any act they’d been magicked to against their wills. Or—

Or had it been against Marrok’s will? Did the same stab of regret wound him as it did me?

The air turned thick with shame as whatever it was that spelled the ladies fled and they collapsed, sobbing, into the sheets.

With horror, I realized that I’d only been focusing on what Nimue had tried to do—might well have done yet—to Marrok, Lyn and me, and not what she had done to Persant’s daughters. What Marrok had done to one. What I didn’t stop with the other.

I laid a hand in comfort only on the back of “my” lady. “There’s no fault of yours here,” I started to say. But she flinched away, hands fluttering to cover what she’d been moments before so proud to display. Snatching up a discarded nightshift from the floor, she draped herself and fled, her sister only a step behind.

I launched myself after them, with no plan but to comfort and absolve. Marrok’s hard grip on my arm stopped me.

“You’ll only make it worse. Leave them. They have each other for comfort.”

“I just… They need to know what happened isn’t their fault.”

“Isn’t it? Much easier to compel when there’s no resistance.”

“What would you know of it?”

“I…know.” I should have paid attention to the shadow that passed across his firelit eyes, but I was too indignant to care.

“And what of our part? Have we no blame?”

“Could you have stopped yourself?”

“Could they?”

Marrok rolled away, his back to me. “I have blame enough to bear. I will not be held accountable for this as well.”

As well
? I studied the plane of his broad back, followed it to where it divided into firm flanks. Considered the pleasure I’d found there, both fore and aft. Was it blame in that—in
us
—that he held himself accountable for?

Why was he so exasperating? And why would he not trust me with whatever secret he carried when he could share it so with Lyn? Where was the remorse for stealing a young damosel’s maidenhood even if he had been tricked into it? Being blameless did not mean foregoing pity or concern. Those were the qualities of courtesy, of knighthood.

The qualities to which I aspired. Duty compelled me to follow our host’s daughters and to find Lyn, to ensure each of them was whole and safe.

Duty urged me up.

Yet something stronger than duty held me in its grip yet. A great weariness. An apathy.

Rolling over, my back to Marrok’s, no longer hungering for him this night but loathing him, me, Lyn, the quest, I fell at once into a dark and dreamless sleep.

“Sir Persant’s late wife slept here,” the tall seneschal said as he left me at the door to the modest chamber. “One of his daughter’s handmaids will be in to attend you.”

My pack had already found its way in and the handmaid followed soon after. Once I was in my nightshift, though, I dismissed her, preferring to bear my thoughts of Nessie alone.

The distant peal of abbey bells was a comfort as they chimed the familiar offices. It was just past Vigils when the antechamber door creaked open. I thought it was my handmaid come to stoke the brazier or check the privy pot. But the one who entered was decidedly male. Marrok or Gareth stolen to my bed. Although by fire and shadow, the form seemed…

 “I’m very much sure whoever you thought to find here, sir, I am not she. Be gone or I shall scream.”

“Lady Lynette, I come in the name of Sir Persant, my father. I bear a message for your ears alone.”

“Your father? At this hour?” Word of his brother, perhaps? Of Ironside or Nessie? “Speak.”

He crossed to the bedside where I could better see him. A man a little older than myself. Of an age with Marrok, perhaps. No swordsman’s build, but a comely enough one. And something more. The stench of magic whiffed around him.

Suddenly I was afraid again. Drawing myself up, I sat to the far side of the bed, just out of reach. “Your message, quickly.”

He sat on the bed’s edge. “You mistake, my Lady. This is a message best delivered slow. For your mercy this day, my father wishes you a night of joy and forgetfulness. Let me kiss away your fears.” He advanced on me handspan by slow handspan as though approaching some wary bird ready to fly.

The magic that shrouded him wasn’t his I
saw
as he drew near, but the mark of compulsion. He acted not by his father’s command, nor even his own.

The knowing of it did not banish it, though, nor lessen its hold on him. Nor its growing claim on me. Why did I not move or scream? Why did I indulge his hand on my bared knee peeking out from beneath my linen shift? The brush of his lips on mine?

The play of fire in his eyes mesmerized me. Reminding me of…?

I broke my gaze away. Of Marrok’s demon eyes.

The hand on my knee grew bold and his kiss more insistent. My will ebbed as my body betrayed it, responding to the son’s persuasions. His weren’t the rugged lines of Marrok nor the sheer beauty that was Gareth, nor had he the breadth or muscle of either as his divesting of his tunic proved. But his warm skin and the light forest of hair covered an ample enough chest. I ran my hand over it, playing with the nubs that came erect for me.

Then his hands were filled with my nightshift, encouraging it off. If I let that happen, if I abandoned thought of Marrok and Gareth and gave away that part of myself held for their eyes alone, then Nimue would win. My head lashed back and forth even as the shift slipped over it and Persant’s son abandoned it to the floor—just as I’d abandoned my champions.

Then his eyes were roaming every reach of my body, and there was no magic in his gasps of appreciation. A reverent hand with long slender fingers claimed a breast while the bold one dared to be bolder yet. In a moment it would breach the space where only Gareth and Marrok had ever been.

Would ever be
, I vowed. Yet could not move to stop it. Not when he dropped his lips from mine and captured the rosed tip of my breast between his teeth and flicked his tongue across it.