Forever His (34 page)

She struggled but his hold on her was solid, and that kiss stole her breath and any chance of talking sense to him. He stumbled a bit as he turned to carry her into the room, but he kicked the terrace door shut with his heel—and his steps were sure and purposeful as he headed straight for the bed. He mounted the dais and deposited her on the tangled covers, not even pausing to pull back the blankets.

The fine wool coverlet was soft beneath her, compared with the rough cloth of his tunic when he lowered himself over her. He gave her no chance to scramble away, setting her entire body aflame with his touch and the reckless intoxication of his kiss. She tasted the potent liquor he had drunk and the unique masculine spice that was Gaston until her blood was filled with fire and her every muscle shook with long-denied wanting. Resistance slowly became a distant, foreign, fading idea that seemed to belong to another woman in another place. Another time.

Bracing his forearms against the mattress on either side of her head, he moved against her, until both of them were breathing deep and unevenly. Though he was still fully clothed right down to his boots, she felt his rigid masculine hardness pressing against her with unrelenting, impatient purpose, and a small muffled cry of hesitation and uncertainty escaped her.

His kiss changed, his lips moving over hers with a far different intent than mere silence. The gentle force of it left her helpless and hungering, and when he opened his mouth and touched his tongue to her tender lower lip, she could only open her mouth to receive him.

The first satiny brush of his tongue against hers wrested a shiver of need from her, so intense it went through her whole body like glittering ice and flame. He deepened the kiss, but still did not plunge fully into her offered dampness. Instead he kept teasing her with a rain of tiny wet kisses that barely touched his tongue to hers.

When she made another small sound, knowing as he must that it came from impatience and not protest, he lifted his mouth from hers, just long enough to tear off his tunic and kick off his boots and leggings. His naked, muscular body was a stark silhouette in the moonlight. He poised over her only for a moment, tense and still, the size of him daunting even cloaked in shadow.

And then he lowered himself over her, pressing her back into the mattress.

“Gaston ...” she whispered as she arched beneath him.

She couldn’t do this. Musn’t do this. Musn’t let him do this.
Reasons
. Hadn’t there been reasons? She tried to remember one. All she could think of was him. Her scoundrel knight. The passionate husband who teased and provoked and protected her. The daring warrior who chased all her fears away. Tough as steel, with a tender heart he fought so hard to keep hidden.

In that moment, all she could remember clearly was one overpowering truth that had imprinted itself on her mind with such simple, heartfelt words.

When you find love, you must catch it close and hold it tight.

With a wordless cry of denial, she grasped fistfuls of the blanket to keep herself from wrapping her arms around him. He began to slide down her body, his bristly beard and the crisp hair covering the flat planes of his chest unbearably arousing, a rough contrast to the smooth, wet sorcery that his lips and tongue worked over her breasts and belly

He moved lower and she went rigid, unable to breathe as she realized his intent, stunned by the rush of shocking anticipation that flooded through her.

His hands circled her waist, slid lower, grasped the rounded cheeks of her bottom ... and then he lifted her to his mouth.

And kissed her in a most intimate way, beyond anything she had experienced before.

A shuddering moan escaped her as the very tip of his tongue found the satin bud hidden in her damp curls, and touched it.

Celine writhed in his grasp, knowing she should stop him, knowing she could not stand the pleasure that raked through her at that single, incredible flick of his tongue—and needing more. More of his touch. More of him. All of him

He did it again, with exquisite care, a slow sampling that brought a sheen of fever to her entire body and left her shuddering beneath him. The ribbons of bright fire wrapped around her closer, tighter, and a trembling began in her belly.

Then he took the delicate bud more deeply into his mouth, drawing her in with his tongue. He suckled her gently.

His groan of pleasure made her sob as much as the intense sensations that clenched taut deep within her. Her eyes were open, but she could no longer tell dark from light, reality from dream, body from soul, so violent were the pleasure and emotion arcing through her, need that went beyond all description. Breath, thought, heartbeat all raced wildly. Her head tossed on the silk pillows. Wordless pleas tumbled from her lips in French, in English.

Then he tugged at her ungently and all the world flew away.

It was like an explosion. Like being surrounded by a hundred walls of the clearest crystal that all shattered at once, bathing her in a thousand shards of feeling so powerful she thought for certain she was dying. The trembling that had begun low in her belly tore free and radiated outward in wave after wave, one ribbon after another unraveling and snapping within her.

The crystal firestorm still gripped her in its fury when he moved to cover her in one smooth glide, his body all heat and hardness and smoky-dark intoxication. He kissed her, letting her taste her own arousal while he rubbed his rigid shaft against her, rampant heat against yielding, honey-soft silk.

“I want you,” he muttered roughly against her mouth. “Tell me you want me.
Tell me.
”

She was still drifting to earth, still dazed by the intensity of the pleasure he had just given her, and yet his voice touched her even more deeply than his most intimate kiss. Suddenly there were tears in her eyes. He might consider himself a coldhearted knave, a rogue who took his pleasure when and where he wished and felt nothing—but he had just proved himself wrong. Because he would not take her unless she gave her consent in no uncertain terms.

It was one last chance to save him.

“You’ll hate yourself in the morning.” She whispered her thoughts aloud. “
You’ll hate me
.”

Poised to enter her, every muscled inch of him rigid with desire and slick with sweat, he went still. “Then tell me you do not want me and I will go,” he ground out.

She sucked in a broken breath. “I ... I don’t.”

“Nay,” he said, low and confident, kissing her, lowering himself over her. “You cannot lie, she. Not now. Not anymore. Your body speaks to mine too clearly.”

“You’re drunk. You’ll be furious in the morning. Because you’re
not
a knave.”

He nibbled her lower lip. “How is it, wife, that you can believe that when all the facts”—he rubbed his arousal against her soft dampness—“tell you otherwise?”

Celine held her fists clenched against the coverlet, wanting so much to wrap her arms around him. Could he really not know? She wouldn’t say it, knowing that once the words were out, she could never take them back.

When she didn’t speak, he lifted his head and looked down at her in the moonlit darkness. She couldn’t hide the feeling fast enough. It must have been shining through in her eyes.

“Mercy of God.” He lowered his head, breathing into her shoulder, a shudder going through his taut form. “Not that. Nay.”

The words spilled out on a breathless whisper. “I love you.”

She felt him wince. “Ah, my sweet innocent. You should not. You should not believe that. Nor should you say it. Not to me. Have you not learned yet? Your husband is a Blackheart who will only use such foolish words against you.”

She shook her head in silent denial.

“Ah, but I will. See how quickly.” He lifted his head, his smile returning, though this time it held more sadness than humor. “I want you, sweet wife. Do not make me go. If you love me, do not make me go.”

Celine turned her face away from him, looking at the silvery moonlight that spilled in through the window.

He nuzzled her throat. Ice and fire. Silk and savagery. Sweet gentleness and rough promise. She wanted all of it, all of him. Wanted to take him into herself and her love and ease all the anguish in his soul.

She had no promise of tomorrow, only this night. This now.

Just as he had hung suspended in the air between his terrace and hers moments ago, their lives hung suspended precariously between his time and hers. And what waited below was not dark water, but the bottomless unknown.

She lifted her mouth to his, wrapped her arms around his neck.
“I want you.”

And tumbled with him into the abyss.

He shifted his weight. She moaned beneath his mouth. He seemed to be everywhere at once, his hands, his kisses, and then the blunt hardness of him, where it must not be, where she most wanted it to be.

He molded himself to her, hardest where she was softest, and he lowered his cheek to hers, whispering through clenched teeth, “Hold tight, little one.”

She held him close with all her strength. “Gaston, I love you.”

She said it again in that mind-shattering second when he joined his body to hers. One swift stroke drove him home, embedded him deep inside her. She felt only a moment of pain before the feeling became a hot, pulsing fullness. He uttered a groan—whether regret or pleasure—and then he began to move, his hips arching and pressing against hers, driving him deeper. Thrusting hard and fast, he sent a building wave of pleasure spinning through her senses.

And almost as quickly as it began, it was over. Wracked by an explosive spasm, he cried out, as if in pain, and collapsed atop her, his weight pressing her down into the soft wool beneath her. He muttered a curse.

She stroked his perspiration-slick back, feeling him trembling, and she kept her eyes squeezed shut, not sure why she was blinking back tears. Anguished, burning tears. It wasn’t because it had hurt; the pain had been less than nothing. It wasn’t because she was disappointed that it had ended so quickly.

She held him while their breathing and hearts slowed and their taut muscles went slack, and still she did not understand. He slid out of her, rolling onto his side, gathering her close without a word.

He mumbled an apology, brushed a kiss through her hair, and a moment later was asleep, there beside her in the crumpled bedclothes, the light of the full moon falling across them both.

And then she knew why she was crying.

It all reminded her of the first night she had arrived, on New Year’s Eve—in his arms, in his bed, with him drunk and the moonlight surrounding her, as real as his strong arm around her waist.

Destiny. God help her, it seemed like destiny. Like they had been doomed to play out this scene until it came to this end.

Just as they were doomed to be torn apart—by time or by death or by the hostility she knew he would feel when his head cleared in the morning.

Crying silent tears, she curled closer into his arms, stealing this one sweet moment of glory, feeling whole and complete for the first time in her life.

Knowing it would be the last.

H
ellish
did not begin to describe the agony in his head. A hulking Teutonic battle-lord with a war hammer could not have inflicted a more unrelenting pounding. Gaston had long suspected that somewhere in the brimstone depths of Hades, Satan had a special pit reserved for arrant sorts like himself—and the splitting pain between his temples told him that he had arrived.

He dared not move. To lift his head even an inch promised tortures beyond any in his vast ale-soaked experience. That fact held him prisoner, there on the threshold of awareness. He wished fervently that he could slide back into blessed unconsciousness. Wished a pox upon all Castilian wine makers. All Castilians. All wine makers. He groaned, then stopped because even that mild sound of misery struck his head like a spiked mace.

His mouth felt like someone had stuffed a crumpled ball of sackcloth into it. He opened his eyes slowly, one reluctant lash at a time, for he could tell from the touch of warmth at his back that his chamber was already flooded with daylight. The glare bit into his bleary eyes like a blade.

And then he realized two facts at once:

One, he was not in his own chamber.

Two, he had yet to truly taste the depths of Hell.

She
lay beside him, her soft body curled into his, as naked as the day she was born, exactly as he had dreamed it so many times: her buttocks nestling his morning arousal, his arm draped possessively around her waist, the morning sun shimmering on her hair like dew on an innocent flower.

The pain in his head was suddenly naught compared with the dread and denial that raked his gut.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, what had he done?

He could not move, even as his stomach lurched threateningly. Some part of his addled brain clung to the word “innocent.” Mayhap he had wandered into her room in the grasp of a drunken dream. Mayhap he had merely lain beside her ...

He carefully lifted his arm and moved away from her, rising from the bed one slow inch at a time, ignoring the stabbing torment that exploded through his head. Even before he stood, his rapidly awakening senses told him that his wish was hopeless.

For there on the woolen coverlet was the proof of what he had done, the stain of her lost virginity. Burn him, he had not even bothered to pull back the blankets and ease her onto the sheets before he had taken her.

He staggered backward a step, stumbled from the dais, almost tripped over his boots. They lay discarded atop his garments. He stared down at them—and the night’s folly came back to him one drunken drop at a time. Most of it. Some of it. Enough of it. He had barely taken the time to undress before thrusting inside her.

Groaning a curse, he raised both hands to his head in a futile effort to either stop the relentless thunder or crush his own skull. He could not blame her. She had used no tricks or lies. He remembered that much. He had been the one who had come to her. She had pleaded with him to leave, but he had pressed on. Run her to ground like a hunter after a sleek doe.