Forever His (16 page)

He cursed himself silently. It had been an impulsive move, ordering her here. Witless. He had thought to prove—to her, to them both—that he was the one in command of this situation. That his reason ruled his passions. That no woman could make him lose control of his desire, least of all her.

Only now did he realize just how unwise it was to be alone with her like this. He should send her away.

But doing that would tell her how powerfully she affected him.

When he didn’t speak, she finally lifted her gaze from the basin of water. “I’m here, as you demanded,” she said quietly.

He fixed her with a glare. She didn’t flinch. “Close the door.”

“I don’t know why you would trust me to tend your wound when you won’t even trust me to cook—”

“Close the door.”

She finally obeyed. Her hand was shaking.

His heart was beating fast, unsteady.

He purposely deepened his breathing to slow its pace. Here and now and henceforth, he was going to prove that he was a warrior first and a man second, and always would be.

“I ordered you here because I would speak with you alone,
wife
.” Casually, he leaned back and rested his weight on one elbow. The bed ropes creaked beneath him. “I do not trust you, but the wound is not deep and you know the King’s warning as well as I. If aught befalls me, your lord will forfeit all he owns.”

She set the basin on a table beside the bed, not looking at him. “You can hardly blame me for an injury you suffered while ... while wenching.”

In truth, he could.
Better, though, to let her believe Royce’s vivid tale. “The pain is but a small price to pay for the pleasure the lady gave me.” He smiled, his most wicked grin. “And though
that
fault was not yours, if any ill befalls me now, because of your care, Tourelle will pay the price.”

“I’m not in on any plot with Tourelle,” she said with an irritated shake of her head.

Gaston had stopped paying attention to what she said. God’s blood, she was beautiful. A breath of spring all garbed in green, warming his winter-cold chamber. She looked like an exceptionally brilliant bird that had fluttered in by mistake. She made the room look colorless by comparison, even the bright-hued silks that hung on the bed, embroidered with his crest.

It was the first time she had been in his bedchamber. This close, he could even catch her scent: lavender and thyme and roses—

Damn and damn and damn.
He willed the awareness away.

Wetting a strip of linen, she rubbed it with the soap and turned to face him at last. “I suppose it was too much to hope that a few days away would improve your mood.”

“My mood will improve only when you are gone. That is why I ordered you here. Tell me, have you had time to reconsider your treacherous ways? Will you go before the King and admit the truth?”

Christiane raised her hands in a gesture of pure exasperation. “No, I can’t. I couldn’t four days ago, I can’t now, and I won’t be able to the next time you ask me, or next week, or ever.”

“That is unfortunate. For you.” He leveled a cool gaze on her. “I
will
be rid of you, Christiane. Soon.”

“Believe me, I’m counting the days.” She said it with such vehemence, it sounded like the truth.

“You make no
sense
, woman. If you wish to be gone, why will you not cooperate?”

“Because I
can’t
. I’m sorry if that doesn’t make sense, but I ...” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Look, do you want me to tend your wound or not? This argument is never going to get us anywhere.”

“On that we are agreed,” he said angrily, turning his attention to something that would rouse neither his senses nor his ire. Straightening, he unknotted the blood-soaked bandages that circled his thigh just above the knee, and tore away the remaining tatters of his legging from the area. “The wound is not deep. A scratch, no more.”

She had gone completely pale. “A scratch?” she whispered, staring at the bloody injury as if she had never seen a blade-cut before. He thought for a moment that she might be ill, but instead she picked up her odd array of supplies and knelt in the rushes beside the bed.

He eyed her tools suspiciously. “What purpose has the soap? And the flask?”

“This may sound strange to you, but where I come from, we have learned that they prevent infection.”

“
Wine
prevents infection?” he scoffed. “If that were true, I know a great many pickled mercenaries who never should have died of their wounds.”

“Getting drunk doesn’t help. You use it to clean the cut.” She looked up at him, biting her bottom lip. “This is going to hurt. I promise I’m not about to make ‘aught ill’ befall you—but it’s going to hurt.”

“I am not some page boy who will faint at even the smallest pain. I have had many injuries far worse than this.”

“Amazing that you’re still here to brag about it,” she muttered.

“I am still alive after seventeen years of battles because I always keep my blade at hand and my wits about me.” He looked at her impassively as she began to wash the wound. “Always.”

Except of late
, he amended to himself in irritation. Her hands worked over him quickly, lightly. She was either trying very hard not to hurt him or trying very hard not to touch his bare thigh. Both impossible tasks. After she had washed the wound, she patted it dry, then dabbed it with the wine.

He never winced. Never made a sound. Her careful ministrations burned like Hell’s hottest flames—but he was aware of the pain only in some distant portion of his mind. The rest of him had been set ablaze with an agony far worse than the wine: having her touch him.

God’s breath, how long had it been since she had touched him? Had any woman’s touch ever moved him like this in all his thirty years?

Her long, slender fingers felt so soft and delicate against the bristly hair of his thigh, so close and yet so achingly distant from that part of him that even now, even as he fought against it with every ounce of will he possessed, throbbed to hardness with wanting her.

Desire burned him, so forceful that it seared away all meaning he had ever attached to the word before. It was an ache that consumed him even as it filled him. It flooded his mind with insane images. Visions of pulling her into his arms, up onto his bed. Running his hands over every smooth, curving inch of her. Tearing her garments away and pressing her back into the sheets. Thrusting himself into her deeply, and then more deeply, until they were both lost and breathless and—

Nay!

“This is the last I will see of you for some time, wife.”

He didn’t even realize he had spoken until she glanced up at him. “W-what?” She had just finished tying a fresh bandage around his leg. Her fingers trembled, her cheeks were flushed with color, and her eyes held a deep glimmer of heat.

Her unmistakable response to him only intensified his own arousal, which angered him even more.

“I said, this is the last I will see of you.”

“Why? Are you going away again?” She stood up, her expression wary.

“Nay,
I
am not leaving—
you
are the one who will be ‘going away.’ Since you have abused the freedom of my castle, you shall have it no more.” He was practically snarling at her, but he didn’t care. “You will be confined to your bedchamber from this day forth, until you reconsider your treacherous plans and agree to reveal the truth to the King. And since Etienne has proved unreliable, you shall have a more experienced guard: Royce, the captain of—”

“But what about the King’s warning?” she protested, her eyes flashing with sparks of anger. “If you mistreat me—”

“I am not mistreating you. You will be well fed and warmly clothed, and you may even continue your odd habit of bathing each day. But you will remain in your chamber, alone, while you think better of your loyalty to Tourelle. For however long it may take. I will not have you using my people in your scheme, distracting them with your strange foods and odd devices—”

“But everything I’ve created is to make life better here. Easier. People have even started coming to me with their problems, and I do my best to solve them. My devices are helpful—”

“They are part of your plans, and I will not have it. They will be done away with.”

“Done away with?” she gasped. “Why?”

“Because it is what I command!”

“But you can’t do that! You can’t undo everything I’ve accomplished—”

“Do you think you can defy me?” He smiled and asked it in a low tone that she should have been smart enough to recognize as dangerous.

“Yes, when you give stupid orders! The changes I’ve made are good for your people.”

He stood so suddenly that she backed up a step.

“It is not
your
place to decide what is good for
my
people!” He towered over her. “They are
my
concern, not yours. They are simple folk and too innocent to the serpent in our midst, too quick to believe—”

“I am not a serpent and I wish you would start to trust me at least a little bit. Give me a chance! Everyone else—”

“Everyone else has let their bellies run away with their reason. Now that I have returned, it will cease. Until you are ready to tell the truth, you will be treated like the enemy that you are. My people will have naught more to do with you.
I
will have naught more to do with you.”

She made a wordless sound of frustration between her teeth. “You are
the
most infuriating, arrogant, unreasonable, stubborn pig of a man I have ever met!” She took one heedless step toward him, her chin raised, her fists clenched. “You can lock me away from now until next year and I won’t change! I can’t!
You’re
the only one around here who needs to change. I think a little defiance from someone might do you a world of good. I think—”

He encircled the nape of her neck with one hand, drew her to him, and kissed her.

Kissed her. Before he knew what he was doing. Silenced her. Stunned them both with the explosive force of the heat that suddenly arced between them.

She stiffened, struggled, but he held her against him—one hand in her silken red hair, his other arm around her back—and after a moment, she began to melt, moaning, her hands coming up to grasp his tunic as if she were falling.

The joining of their mouths sent him spiraling downward into an abyss so wide and so deep he knew it would be bottomless. He struggled for purchase, desperate to pull away, but the blaze of desire was so huge and dark and consuming that it pulled him in until retreat was impossible, unimaginable.

Her lips opened at his urging and then he was part of her, intimately, his tongue finding hers, thrusting softly, then aggressively, while he held her head still with his hand. Their tongues and tastes and hungers mingled until he felt himself shaking with the force of it, his body aflame like newly forged steel, hers a tender branch that went up like tinder. They burned one another, consumed all air, all breath, all life ...
all
.

He broke free and thrust her away.

“Get out,” he snapped, his voice ragged, his gaze narrowed with accusation. “Leave me—before I give you what you have sought from the first.”

She stumbled backward, eyes wide and dazed. She did not speak, only stared at him, one trembling hand reaching up to touch her swollen, bruised lips.

He closed the distance between them in one stride.
“Get out!”

She turned and fled so fast that she left the door open behind her. Left him alone, his body still shaking with the ferocity of his passion for her.

God help him, would locking her away be enough? Even if he banished her to the most distant, unexplored corner of the world, would it ever be enough?

Enough to keep him from seeking her out ...
and giving in to the desire that burned his soul
.

T
wo nights later, as Celine lay alone in her room, tossing and turning, she thought she could still feel the tingle of his kiss on her lips.

Which was ridiculous, she knew. Temporary insanity. Cabin fever.
Castle
fever. Brought on by two days of being locked up with nothing to occupy her time.

But whatever it was, she couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss. About
him
.

Her entire body felt warm with awareness. Sensitive. Tense. As if that wild embrace had triggered some secret switch, sending a constant electrical charge through her nerve endings. Even the soft velvet of her tunic and leggings chafed. Her daily baths didn’t relax her. The herb tea that Yolande and Gabrielle brewed for her didn’t soothe her. Nothing helped. She felt tingly and restless all day—and it only intensified at night.

The worst part of it was, she knew her arrogant husband would be thrilled to know he had made such an impact on her.

God, what an impact.

Even now she couldn’t stop replaying it in her mind: his mouth on hers, hot and demanding; his hand in her hair; his hold on her so fierce; his granite-hard angles molded to her body ... and the delicious little sizzles that had melted her muscles when his tongue played over hers.

Celine shuddered and squeezed her eyes shut, wishing it were equally simple to shut out the vivid memories.

Never in her life had she felt anything so ... so sudden and powerful. Uncontrollable. Logic, reality, the awful things they had shouted at each other, the fact that their marriage was a sham—all of it had gone sailing straight out the window. She had not only returned his kiss, she had practically swooned. Felt a rising rush of irresistible pleasure.
Wanted more.

Oh, that was the most mortifying part of it. When he had shoved her away, all she could do was stand there shivering, blinking at him like a fool, shocked by what he had done—and disappointed that he had stopped.

And he had glared at her with hostility in his eyes. Like
she
had planned it. Like
she
was the one who had grabbed
him
. Like the entire thing was her fault!

Infuriating macho chauvinist swine. She should have
said
that. Shouted it at him. Instead she had run away, mute and frightened as a deer faced with a double-barreled shotgun.