Enchanted (26 page)

“Probably. She is clever enough to know a
well-placed knight’s child is worth more than a
peasant’s spawn.” Marie shrugged. “But she is no
match for me. Nor is Geoffrey.”

Ariane didn’t doubt it.

“I will teach him to crawl naked across a
swine pen just to lick the place where I have sat,” Marie
said. “I owe you at least that.”

“Why?” Ariane asked, rather
horrified.

“Your music. It says all that I haven’t
had words to say since I was eight.”

Marie put aside her sewing basket and stood up.

“If you will excuse me, lady,” she
said, “I have certain implements to prepare for
Geoffrey’s…mortification.”

Ariane opened her mouth. No words came out.

Marie smiled. “Nay, I never used such harem
toys on Simon. I liked him too well.”

“That wasn’t what I was going to
ask.”

“It would have occurred to you sooner or
later, and I value my life here. ’Tis as much kindness as I
have known since I was stolen. God be with you in your dreams, Lady
Ariane.”

“Thank you,” Ariane said faintly.

Marie smiled. “But if you wish for more
substantial company than God, your husband is pacing the
battlements.”

Involuntarily, Ariane glanced overhead and held her
breath, listening. She heard nothing but the ceaseless blowing of
the wind. Then came a faint spattering of sleet against
shutters.

“Another storm,” Ariane said.

“Aye. ’Tis much colder at Blackthorne
Keep than it was in the Holy Land.”

“’Tis too cold for Simon to be up
there, that is certain,” Ariane whispered. “He will
take a chill.”

“Go and tell him so.”

“I shall,” Ariane said, turning to
leave.

“And while you do it, stand inside
Simon’s mantle, close enough to breathe his breath, so close
that your nipples brush against his chest.”

Ariane stopped.

“Then,” Marie instructed softly,
“set your hands most carefully on the bulge that is growing
beneath his breeches.”

Ariane’s breath wedged in her throat.

“Measure him until he outgrows the reach of
your fingers. Then undo his breeches and measure what you can with
your mouth. Simon will be the warmer for it.” Marie laughed.
“And so will his sad nightingale.”

T
he candle died in the fierce wind
that howled around Ariane when she stepped onto the battlements.
Her hair lifted and swirled as though alive. A flurry of ice-tipped
rain stung her cheeks. She shivered but refused to retreat. The
cleverly woven fabric of her dress kept much of the chill at bay.
As for the rest…

Amethyst eyes sought the silhouette of Simon
stalking along the battlements. At first Ariane saw nothing, for
the wind had brought tears to her eyes. Then she heard fragments of
conversation and turned toward the sounds.

Halfway across the battlements two men were
standing near a brazier, warming their hands against the icy night.
Sparks leaped up with each twist of wind, outlining the men in
glittering swirls of light.

Without stopping to think how she was going to
explain her presence on the battlements in the midst of night and
storm, Ariane started for the men. Just before she reached the
brazier, Simon spun around as though sensing her presence.

“Lady Ariane!” Simon said, shocked.
“What are you doing here? Is Meg not well? Does
Dominic—”

“I must speak with you,” Ariane said
distinctly, cutting across her husband’s quick words.

Simon stepped away from the brazier. Taking
Ariane’s arm, he led her back just inside the stairwell,
where the wind would be somewhat baffled. There a torch guttered
and leaped fitfully, lighting the way for the next guard.

The whipping, unpredictable torchlight made
Ariane’s eyes appear wild. She wore no mantle, nothing but
the fey dress whose textures haunted Simon’s dreams. Shivers
coursed visibly over her, yet she seemed unaware of her own cold.
She was watching Simon with an intensity that in another woman he
would have labeled passion.

But not in Ariane, the woman who withdrew from
Simon’s own passion.

“What is wrong?” Simon demanded.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? God’s teeth, lady! You stand
shivering in front of me in the middle of the night and say that
nothing is wrong?”

Stand inside Simon’s
mantle, close enough to breathe his breath, so close that your
nipples brush against his chest
.

Ariane let the useless candle fall from her hand
and stepped closer to Simon, then closer still.

“Cover me,” she said in a shaking
voice.

When he hesitated, Ariane bit back a cry.

“Please, Simon. I am in need.”

He opened his mantle and shifted the belt holding
his sword so that the blade was at his back. Ariane stepped forward
without waiting for him to finish.

When he closed the mantle again, Ariane was inside
its heavy folds. Touching him.

Vivid heat flushed Ariane from her forehead to her
heels as Simon’s body pressed against her, changing her,
seducing her into honeyed warmth. She felt as she had in her
dreams; cherished, hot, sensuous to her very core. She wanted to
pull Simon around her like a living blanket.

“Ahhhhhh,” Ariane said raggedly, sigh
and moan alike. “You always smell so good to me. And your
heat…You are warmer than flame itself.”

Simon’s nostrils flared as he caught the
scent that was Ariane’s and Ariane’s alone. He breathed
deeply,
drawing her into his body. Mixed with
midnight and roses was a spicy trace of feminine arousal.

The scent of it sent a rush of searing awareness
through Simon. Even his memories of Ariane held in the thrall of
healing balm and his caressing mouth weren’t as vivid as the
feel of Ariane’s breasts pressed against his chest now,
arousing him with each breath she took.

Simon’s own breath came out with a sound that
was halfway between a curse and a groan. To his surprise, Ariane
tilted back her head as though savoring the warm rush of his
exhalation and the urgency of his need. She inhaled deeply,
infusing her body with his breath.

“Ariane?” Simon asked in a low, intense
voice. “What is it? What drove you to me?”

She simply shook her head and pressed even closer
to his body, fitting herself to him, giving herself to the dream
that had haunted her since she had lain in healing thrall and
learned that a man’s hands could bring comfort instead of
fear, pleasure instead of pain, ecstasy instead of nightmare.

Closing his eyes, Simon fought against the fierce
rush of his desire. Of their own will, his arms contracted,
overlapping the edges of the mantle as he drew Ariane even nearer
to his body. Rather grimly he waited for her to realize what was
pressing against her belly.

The feel of his wife’s hands settling most
carefully on the bulge growing beneath his breeches nearly brought
Simon to his knees.

“I have dreamed of you, Simon. Have you
dreamed of me?”

Surprise and desire hammered through him. He would
have spoken, but Ariane was measuring him full well with her hands,
taking away the possibility of thought, much less speech.

Breath hissed between Simon’s clenched teeth
as he felt his laces coming undone. He knew he should protest,
should stop Ariane before she drove him over the edge of reason
with passion only half-slaked, but he could
not
force himself to deny entry to her cool, searching hands.

She found him, freed him, stroked him from blunt
satin tip to thick base and then beyond, cupping the aching flesh
that was drawn up so tightly with hunger that it was all Simon
could do to stand upright.

Simon ordered his arms to push Ariane away, but
instead they contracted about her hips, bringing her even closer,
cradling her thighs hotly between his own. The part of his mind
that weighed and measured and reasoned expected Ariane to struggle
against the blunt sexuality of the embrace.

Instead, Ariane pressed herself against Simon from
breast to thigh, moving slowly, caressing him with her whole body.
The erect flesh she held so lovingly leaped between her hands.

“This is madness,” Simon hissed.

“Yes.”

“Give me your mouth.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

Simon bent to receive Ariane’s kiss, only to
feel her pulling away from the embrace.

“No,” he said huskily.
“Don’t draw back.”

“I must!”

Clenching his teeth against words of
disappointment, Simon released Ariane completely, keeping only the
mantle around her.

Immediately she slid down his body like a warm,
supple weight, vanishing entirely beneath the luxurious mantle.

“Ariane? Are you feeling
fai—”

Simon’s question ended in a gasp as her cheek
smoothed over his erect flesh. Her skin was cool from the wind and
her breath was warm from her body. It whispered over him in another
kind of caress as she turned her head from side to side, stroking
him. Then she caught him between her hands and brought him to her
mouth.

“
Dear God
,”
Simon said thickly.

His whole body tightened like a bow. Had it not
been for the stone wall against his back, he would have fallen.
Ariane’s mouth was hot, soft, wet, and her tongue was
endlessly curious.

Simon took the wild loving as long as he could.
Then he sank the fingers of one hand into Ariane’s hair and
slowly, slowly, began to draw her head away from his body. She
resisted at first. He thought the sweet pressure of her mouth
tugging on him would be his undoing.

In the end, Simon’s discipline and sheer male
strength won out over Ariane’s seductive caresses. But both
he and she were trembling by the time Simon drew her up his body
and buried his tongue hungrily in her mouth.

The kiss was as abandoned as Ariane’s
caresses had been, a hot mating of tongues that left both of them
breathless, barely able to stand. Yet neither wanted to end the
kiss. Each clung harder, closer, deeper, while the wind whipped
Ariane’s hair into a seething black cloud.

Beneath the mantle, Simon pulled off his gloves and
loosened silver laces until his fingers could slide beneath cloth
to touch Ariane’s breasts. The chill of his fingertips
against Ariane’s warmth served to heighten the intensity of
the caress, tightening her nipples in a dizzying rush. She moaned
deep in her throat and swayed toward Simon, knowing only him.

It was a long time before Simon could force himself
to release Ariane’s mouth. He leaned heavily against the
stone wall, caressing what he could reach of her breasts with
hungry fingers, breathing as though he had been in battle.

“Simon?”

“The rest of your laces,” he said
huskily. “Undo them for me. If I let go of the mantle, the
wind will have it.”

“I would rather undo your laces.”

“You already have.”

“Not those on your shirt,” Ariane
said.

As she spoke, she ducked beneath the mantle and
probed between the laces of Simon’s shirt with her tongue.
Then she began sliding back down his muscular torso, hungry for him
in a way that she couldn’t name.

Simon caught Ariane just before her mouth found him
again. Muscles bunched as he lifted her upright once more. In the
flickering light her eyes were wide, dark, shimmering with an
unbridled hunger that made Simon’s body clench. Her tongue
darted out, touching the center of her upper lip as though catching
up a drop of wine.

“You tasted as wild as the storm,”
Ariane said. “Let me taste you again.”

“You will undo me,” Simon said through
his teeth.

“I enjoy undoing you.”

“As sweet as your hands are, as hot as your
mouth is, I would rather spill my seed inside your body.”

Ariane trembled. After a moment she found
Simon’s aroused flesh with her hands. Breath hissed savagely
over his teeth at her touch.

“But you don’t want that, do
you?” Simon said. “You don’t want me sheathed
within you. Why? You aren’t a virgin to fear a man’s
hunger.”

“No, I’m not a virgin…”

Ariane sighed and shivered. With one hand she
slowly began drawing up the skirts of her dress. With the other,
she held Simon tenderly captive. The fey cloth came as though
summoned, riding up her thighs and swirling around her waist,
leaving her naked but for the brushing of the mantle’s white
fur lining on her hips.

“Remember the friend I told you about?”
Ariane asked.

Simon had difficulty concentrating on anything but
his own heavy arousal and the feel of Ariane’s dress sliding
up his thighs.

“Friend?” he said thickly.

Following the instincts of her own need, Ariane
brought Simon to the tight sheath that passion had transformed into
a sultry, aching emptiness.

“Aye,” she murmured. “My friend
who was raped.”

Ariane shifted, pressing herself against the rigid
flesh passion had conjured from Simon’s body. She rubbed over
him, moistening him as surely as her mouth had. The next motion of
her hips over him was easier, deeper, sweeter.

It made her want more. Much more. But she
wasn’t certain how to accomplish it. All she knew was that
the feel of his blunt arousal caressing her made her
want…
something
.

Simon groaned as he felt Ariane’s sultry
petals parting and gliding over him. Harshly he fought to control
the need that had become a living thing tearing at his loins.

“Yes,” Simon said raggedly. “I
remember. Your friend.”

Clinging to Simon, feeling the cold wind only as an
exquisite contrast to the heat of their embrace, Ariane shivered
with pure pleasure at the feel of him gently lodged between her
thighs. Ecstasy swept through her in a hot, secret storm.

The breaking of Simon’s breath and the sudden
thrust of his body against her told Ariane that he had felt her
sultry rain as surely as she had.

“I am she,” Ariane said.

For a moment Simon didn’t understand.

Then he did.

He looked down at Ariane’s face. She was fire
and shadow, half-opened eyes smoldering, her mouth still flushed
from his kisses.

“You?” Simon asked hoarsely.

“Aye. My first and only experience of a man
left me torn, bloodied, beaten. Betrayed.”

“Nightingale. My God…”

Simon trembled as he bent to kiss Ariane’s
eyes, her cheeks, her mouth. The caresses were both hungry
and restrained. They made her feel bathed in tender
warmth.

“I believed that this,” Ariane’s
hips moved, measuring Simon even as she returned his kisses,
“this instrument of silk and steel was meant to punish a
woman.”

Beneath Simon’s short beard, his jaw muscles
clenched against the sweet torment of being caressed by her
softness and at the same instant knowing full well that there would
be no release for him within her body.

Torn, bloodied,
beaten
.

Betrayed
.

“I understand,” Simon said huskily.

“’Tis why I froze whenever you tried to
touch between my thighs. I was frightened of being hurt
again.”

“Yes. I understand. Now.”

Simon breathed kisses against Ariane’s
eyelids and sipped at the ends of her long lashes.

“But I’m not frightened of you
anymore,” Ariane whispered.

Simon said nothing, for he was afraid he
hadn’t heard her words correctly.

“Put your arm beneath my hips,” Ariane
said, remembering how Thomas had carried Marie from the armory.

Simon bent and did as Ariane asked, too surprised
to ask why. The feel of Ariane’s resilient, sleek bottom
against his arm sent sensual lightning through both of them. Her
knees gave way, making her cling all the harder to Simon.

“Help me,” Ariane whispered.

The wind took most of her words, but Simon
didn’t hesitate. Her body was telling him everything he
needed to know, more than he had ever believed he would have from
his dark nightingale.

“Lift me,” Ariane whispered.

Simon turned his back to the wind, letting it fold
the mantle around both of them. As he took the weight of Ariane on
his arm, her own arms went around his
neck and
clung. Her thighs parted and her legs wrapped around his body.