Lady Knight (13 page)

Eleanor.

“Yes, sir?” Alan said.

Riannon did not realise she had spoken aloud. “Go to sleep. You want to be fresh
and at your best for the wedding tomorrow.”

“For certès, there’ll be pretty women aplenty to dance with. And they say that
wine will flow in the streets.”

“Then let us hope, for the Lady Cicely’s sake, that no heads get broken.”

“Do you need me to aid you with aught?” he said.

Riannon shook her head and cast another glance at the candle.

Alan climbed into his pallet at the foot of her bed, hastily mumbled his
prayers, then settled to watch her with a curious frown. Riannon could not stop
nervously pacing. Her squire had not known her to visit a lover. Though she had
sent him on his way to sport himself in brothels, she found herself unable to
admit why she prowled the chamber rather than retire to sleep. He was not
unintelligent. Long before the candle finally began to melt the hour mark,
Alan’s imperfectly suppressed smile signalled that he had guessed what she was
about – if not who with.

The house lay quiet and dark, though the sun would not yet be fully set outside
on this unbearably long summer night. Riannon shielded the candle as she made
her way to the lady’s chamber door. Her leather soles made no noise.

Riannon paused. She felt that tightness twisting her entrails familiar from
facing a battle. She was scared. What of? Not a beautiful woman who wished to
make love with her? Riannon drew on every ounce of experience of war to open the
door and step into the chamber.

Eleanor stood partway between a richly hung bed and a table littered with
cosmetics. The flame from a single oil lamp caressed her with a soft yellow
light. She wore only her linen chemise. Her recently brushed hair fell loose
about her shoulders. Long and dark with coppery highlights. Riannon had never
seen anything more breathtakingly beautiful. Awe added to fear and held her
immobile.

Eleanor stared at Riannon standing just inside the door. Riannon’s physical
largeness struck her. Her lover stood taller than most men, and she radiated
muscular power and the strength of a warrior. The wavering light from the candle
in her hand cast a huge, looming shadow on the wall behind her. Her scar seemed
to writhe like an unquiet serpent. Yet it was Riannon’s stillness that unnerved
Eleanor. Had she changed her mind?

“It passes my understanding,” Eleanor said, “why the men of religion regard with
utmost suspicion assignations such as these. I cannot recall ever praying so
much as this afternoon. Not, I grant you, that my sudden excess of piety was for
enlightenment. But, rather, for the dark of night.”

Riannon grinned. Eleanor exhaled a knot of nerves that had begun to gather
beneath her breastbone. Riannon crossed the chamber in four long strides and set
the candle on Eleanor’s dressing table. The look she turned on Eleanor banished
any doubts that she wished to draw back. Riannon stared at her as if she were
trying to commit every curve to memory. She touched Eleanor’s hair and lifted a
lock to her lips.

The gesture might have been an act of worship. Eleanor did not want to be
treated as a wooden icon. Her blood coursed warm, barely contained beneath her
skin. Ignorant she might be of the exact nature of what they would do in bed
with each other, but passion and Eleanor were old friends. The fire spread along
familiar paths to burn in her breasts and low in her belly. Eleanor knew what
she wanted. She wanted Riannon to give it to her.

“Love me,” Eleanor said.

She slid her arms up around Riannon’s neck, stood on tiptoe, and kissed her.
Devoured her lips. Invaded her mouth with her tongue. Riannon clamped strong
arms around her and pulled her close. Eleanor pressed against a hard body. Her
own body melted and yearned for Riannon, heedless of unusual contours.
Riannon’s strong grip on her buttock drew a moan from her that cared nought for
the sex of the fingers squeezing her desire to the surface.

Eleanor tugged at Riannon’s overtunic. “Take this off.” Riannon impatiently
pulled the garment off and dropped it. Her tunic followed quickly. Eleanor drew
her towards the bed. She stripped off her own chemise and let it fall to the
rushes.

“By the gods, you’re beautiful.” Riannon cupped one of Eleanor’s breasts.
“Perfect.”

Eleanor inhaled sharply at the contact and looked down to see her pale flesh
firmly captured by one of those big, beautiful hands. Her nipple stiffened
against Riannon’s finger. Oh, gods, she wanted this. It felt as though Riannon’s
touch brought boiling to the surface every moment of every day of every month of
Eleanor’s unwanted celibacy, and exquisitely concentrated all her unsatisfied
needs where skin met skin. The blistering heat flooding through Eleanor
threatened to melt her knees and between her legs. Beyond caring how wantonly
she acted, she reached under Riannon’s shirt for the laces holding up her hose.

“Please,” Eleanor said.

Riannon yanked up her shirt. No engorged penis tented the linen of her
underwear. But the urgency with which her fingers fumbled her points, and the
breathy voice she used to mutter an oath as she tugged off hose and braies, just
as surely signalled her arousal.

Without waiting for Riannon to strip off her shirt, Eleanor pulled her through
the hangings and down onto the bed with her. Out of habit, Eleanor urged Riannon
on top. It made no difference whether the weight of a lover’s body pressing her
down into the mattress was male or female.

Riannon’s hot mouth worked down from Eleanor’s mouth to her throat, then to her
breast. Eleanor’s body responded beyond her control as it lifted and strained
into Riannon’s touches. As Riannon’s dextrous tongue teased Eleanor’s nipples,
her hand slipped between their bodies. Eleanor’s hips tilted into the contact.
She was wet and ready. Riannon’s fingers found her clitoris. Eleanor groaned,
arched her back, and dug her fingers into Riannon’s shoulders. With her eyes
closed, and lost to everything but the sensations roaring through her flesh, she
clung to Riannon’s solidly muscled body. Desire pushed her upwards. Riannon’s
firm, knowing, rhythmic strokes drove her to that unbearable tension. Eleanor
cried aloud when she came with two of Riannon’s fingers inside her and her
nipple squeezed between Riannon’s lips.

Eleanor didn’t have to tell Riannon not to leave her. She enjoyed the softening
glow of her relaxing body with Riannon’s weight pressing agreeably on her and
with Riannon’s head against her chest, her warm breath softly caressing
Eleanor’s skin.

When Eleanor had command of her limbs again, she ran her fingers through
Riannon’s short, bristly hair. That part of her might have been male. Eleanor
opened her eyes. No, her lover was not a man. And no man who had shared
Eleanor’s bed had done for her what Riannon had just done. Yes, Eleanor had
occasionally achieved climaxes, but her pleasure had never been the sole aim of
their lovemaking. Her male partners, even David who had initiated her in many of
the mysteries of physical love, had not left themselves unsatisfied in deference
to her need and enjoyment.

It was a truth, too, that she had not climaxed so rapidly before. It ought to be
something she found embarrassing. Immodest. Hoydenish. Sinful, even. Eleanor
smiled at Riannon and sighed contentedly. She did not feel in need of penitence
or absolution. She felt wonderful.

“Religious theory holds women as failed men,” Eleanor said. “The next time any
man tries to tell me that, I’ll inform him in no uncertain terms that he has not
the faintest idea what he’s talking about.”

Riannon smiled, kissed the side of Eleanor’s breast, and eased herself off to
lie beside her. Her gaze, nearly as heavy as a touch, travelled Eleanor’s naked
body and she captured a strand of hair to wind around her fingers. She kissed
it.

“There is nought of failure or imperfection in you,” Riannon said.

Eleanor wriggled onto her side and tugged at the collar of Riannon’s shirt.
“Take this off. I would see you. And touch you. You must teach me how I am to
make you writhe and cry out with such pleasure.”

Riannon put her hand over Eleanor’s hand and held it still. “Let me love you
again.”

“Oh, you didn’t think there’s much chance you’d leave this bed without doing
that, did you?” Eleanor sat up to look down at Riannon. “But first, I must see
you.”

Riannon pulled Eleanor on top of her and held her with strong arms. Eleanor
couldn’t help but kiss the mouth so close to her own. Riannon’s hands began
stroking and exploring Eleanor’s back. Eleanor’s skin leaped to life beneath
Riannon’s touch. Eleanor found her will crumbling and her desire reviving as
fast as embers blown back to flames.

With lips, tongue, and hands, Riannon played Eleanor with more skill than any
minstrel did his harp. When Riannon slid her thigh between Eleanor’s legs,
Eleanor moaned and pushed against firm muscle. She would need little of that to
tumble her over the edge, but Riannon proved she had a mind to spin out an epic
saga on Eleanor’s body, not a quick ditty.

Judging to a fiendish nicety the line between excitement and frustration,
Riannon aroused Eleanor to a prolonged pitch where she lost herself completely
to sensation beyond the power of thought. She writhed. Her fingers knotted the
sheets. Her legs twitched and her heels drummed the mattress. Riannon’s tongue
flicking inside her threatened to drive her out of her wits for all time. Her
gasps, moans, whimpers, and begging were the music Riannon drew out of her.
When her climax finally burst, it ripped at the very roots of her as if, for the
first time in her life, sexual pleasure engulfed even her immortal soul.

Eleanor lay spent. Vaguely aware of sweating and panting, she slowly drifted
back to her body. She sprawled in wanton abandon across the middle of the bed.
Riannon lay close on her side, propped up on an elbow, watching and softly
stroking her fingertips along Eleanor’s arm. She looked smug. Eleanor sighed and
reached a languid hand up to put her fingers to Riannon’s smile.

“I know not why you look so pleased,” Eleanor said. “The joy was all mine.”

“Not so, lady.”

Eleanor tapped her finger against Riannon’s lips. “I have a name. I would hear
it from your mouth.”

Riannon kissed Eleanor’s finger. “Eleanor.”

“How strong you make me sound.”

Riannon smiled and leaned to kiss her tenderly on the lips. Eleanor slid her
arms around Riannon for the simple pleasure of holding her lover and feeling
her. A new body for her to get to know that was solid and real and exciting.
But Riannon still wore her linen shirt. Eleanor tugged at it. Riannon again
gently but firmly captured her hand and kissed her. Eleanor yielded to the
renewed exploration of Riannon’s mouth but did not forget her purpose.

“I would see you,” Eleanor said. “I would feel you. All of you.”

Riannon sat up. “I’d best not tarry. Your servants will gossip enough as it is
without me falling asleep here and being found in the morning.”

She was right, but Eleanor was neither so easily deflected nor inclined to end
their evening just yet. Eleanor levered herself up and wriggled around to sit
astride Riannon’s legs. The imperfect light angling in through the gap in the
bed hangings illuminated Riannon’s guarded look. Eleanor wondered what Riannon’s
shirt concealed. What would possibly be so bad that Riannon denied herself the
sexual pleasure Eleanor was clearly so willing to offer her?

Instead of again reaching for Riannon’s shirt, Eleanor looped her wrists around
the back of Riannon’s neck and smiled.

“I could get the idea,” Eleanor said, “that you are no stranger to ladies’
bedrooms. Which reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to ask since this
morn. Pray tell, just how many serving wenches have you tumbled in the woods?”

Riannon smiled.

“Do you know that it’s my particular conceit,” Eleanor said, “that I’m one of
the few people who can make you smile?”

Riannon put one hand, hot and heavy, on Eleanor’s thigh and captured some of her
hair with the other. “How could I not be happy with you naked sitting on me?”

“Though it sore wounds my vanity to acknowledge it, the world is stuffed with
people who would remain utterly unmoved by the situation. Now, let me fetch us
wine so that I can be comfortable while you tell me how intoxicated my beauty
makes you. Though, given your dismaying habit of likening me to a weed, perhaps
I should settle for the simple drunkenness of the grape.”

Riannon laughed.

Eleanor slipped off the bed. She found the wine jug and a cup. She had not asked
for two cups to be left. When she returned, Riannon had rearranged the pillows
and sat propped against one. Eleanor handed her the wine and fetched the candle
to set in the niche in the bed head.

Eleanor settled against Riannon with Riannon’s arm around her. Their bare legs
pressed together. Riannon’s long limbs were strongly muscled with sparse black
hair only around her shins. Her shirt had ridden up to the top of her thighs,
but still concealed the whole of her torso and hips. An old white scar, so
unlike the one torn through her face, angled across the meat of her thigh.
Eleanor traced it with a fingertip. Shirt or no shirt between them, Eleanor felt
again the wonder of physical closeness to a desired other. This time, though,
she knew herself desired in return. She need only look up into Riannon’s face to
see the miracle of her feelings reflected.

They passed the cup of wine between them. Eleanor had to continually explore
Riannon’s body as if needing constant reassurance of her physical reality. To
touch her hand. Kiss her fingers. Rub her foot against Riannon’s calf. She
wanted that shirt off her, to run her hand across Riannon’s firm torso. To feel
the muscles. To put her face to Riannon’s strong shoulder and taste the skin
there. To smell Riannon. To test her novel fascination with another woman’s
breasts.