Patricia Ryan - [Fairfax Family 01] (42 page)

“Listen to me,” he growled.

“Nay!”

“You don’t want to hear the truth, because then you’d have less reason to hate me.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, but she couldn’t close her ears.

He said, “The only way I could help you was by pretending to go along with Bernard so he wouldn’t kill me straight off and I could figure out some way to get you out of there.”

“Pretending? More lies.”

“Martine, look at me.” His hands tightened around hers, and he shook them. “
Look
at me, damn it!” She opened her eyes and looked into his as he hovered over her, pressing her down. “I can’t wield sword or hold a bow. I can’t even walk without that damn crutch. There was no way I could defend you physically. Bernard knew that. He was counting on it.”

“You... you told him it galled you to have to protect me.”

“And you believed that?”

“You bargained with him over which piece of land he would give you!”

“He would have been suspicious if I’d thrown in with him too easily. It seems my strategy worked better than I realized. You believed it, too.” She saw a flicker of something that might have been hurt in his eyes. “Did you really have so little faith in me?”

She looked away. “You locked me downstairs in that awful... You wouldn’t even let me spend the night in my chamber.”

He released her hands to cup her face and turn it so she had to look him in the eye. “The tunnel leads from the cellar, Martine. If you’d been held on the third level, you never would have gotten out of that keep.”

She considered that for a moment. “You locked me in that cell because you knew ‘twould be easier for me to escape from down there?”

“Well, actually, I thought it would be easier for me to help you escape. I never expected you to be gone when I got down there.” He chuckled. “I must admit, I was impressed. Boyce out cold on the floor with an empty goblet next to him, and the doors to the cell and the tunnel gaping open... It didn’t take me long to figure out what you’d done, or that you’d needed help to do it. Felda was the obvious candidate, so I woke her up and made her tell me where you went.”

“But I didn’t even tell her!”

“She said it was an abandoned cottage. This was the only likely choice.” He stroked her cheek, and she breathed in his subtle, comforting scent. His fingers strayed to her lips, which he softly caressed. “Martine...”

Again she turned her head, deliberately breaking the contact. Presently he released her and stood, saying, “I’ll get some wood and make a fire. Then perhaps we can both get a few good hours of sleep before dawn.”

Taking up his crutch, he grabbed a broken-handled ax off the floor and went outside. She lay on her side facing the wall, listening to the repetitive
thwack
of wood being chopped and wondering how he managed it with his injuries. When he returned, he built a fire in the clay-lined cooking pit, which took him a while to light, and then he came and straightened the two mantles that covered her. Just as she thought to ask where he was going to sleep, she felt him behind her, fitting his big body to hers and tucking the mantles around both of them.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“We can keep each other warm,” he said, wrapping her in his arms and urging her against him.

“Thorne, I don’t think—”

“Good night, my lady,” he murmured.

He did feel warm, wonderfully warm. She felt enclosed and protected in his embrace—his innocent embrace, after all, for he made no move to render it otherwise. His breath on the back of her neck became steadily more regular, his body heavier, until presently she knew that he was fast asleep. Closing her eyes, she soon joined him.

When next she woke, it was still dark, and she felt chilled again. The fire had gone out, and Thorne was relighting it. When he returned to the stack of fur-covered pallets and settled in behind her, chafing her arm to warm her, she realized that the front of his tunic had become heated from the flames. She felt the delicious warmth even through her kirtle and tunic, and sighed in luxurious contentment, automatically snuggling back against him. She did it unthinkingly, unaware, even as his hand stilled on her arm and his breath caught in his throat, of the effect her actions might have on him. It wasn’t until she felt the movement against her bottom—felt his manhood rise and press against her—that she realized what she had unconsciously wrought.

She lay perfectly still, thinking,
I should pull away from him
, but unable to will herself to do so. The rise and fall of his chest against her back accelerated in time to her thudding heart. For a few moments they lay together like two carved statues, and then slowly, very slowly, he drew his hand up her arm.

This time his touch was gentle, even tentative, as if he were waiting for her to object. She should object, she knew, but a longing deeper than her reservations had stricken her with a strange paralysis, and she found herself powerless to move. He stroked her through her wool sleeve, his hand traveling up to her shoulder and then down to her own hand. His fingertips skimmed gingerly over hers; he massaged her palm with his thumb, and the effect was so unexpectedly erotic that she gasped.

He caressed her rounded hip and the concave slope of her waist, then splayed his hand over her belly and let it rest there while he kissed, with aching softness, the back of her neck. Everything he did felt tentative, experimental, as if he were testing her acceptance of him. He trailed his hand upward, stopping just beneath her breasts. They tingled with anticipation. She felt her nipples harden; with every breath they seemed to scrape against the linen of her kirtle. Gradually his hand moved upward, molding itself lightly to flesh that seemed to swell beneath his touch, as if begging for a firmer caress. When his palm grazed the erect nipple, desire pulsed deep in her womb, and she felt his organ throb against her.

Again and again, with mesmerizing slowness, he traced paths of liquid fire over her body, although he made no move to disrobe her. His lingering exploration drove her to maddening heights of arousal. With a touch both cautious and intimate, he coaxed sensations in her that surpassed anything she ever thought herself capable of feeling. Her heart filled her throat; she was feverish with longing.

At last she felt him gather her skirts and pull them up, exposing her stockinged legs and bare hip to the silken caress of the fur-lined mantle that blanketed them. She felt darkly excited to be rendered naked only from waist to thigh. She felt the soft tickle of the fur on her sensitized skin.

His hand on her belly felt hot and rough. As he lowered it, she held her breath. When at last she felt his fingers softly brush the hair between her thighs, a whimper of desire rose from her throat. He explored her sex as patiently as he had the rest of her, investigating with a delicate and almost touching curiosity. She quivered and arched against him, thinking she would die if he didn’t put an end to this exquisite torment. When he did—when he found and stroked the little knot where the torment was gathered—a sudden, convulsive pleasure shook her in its grip. Her own cries filled her ears, and for a few blinding moments, her senses fled.

When they returned, she lay still and sated in his arms. He rose on his elbow to rain warm kisses on her ear and cheek and lips, and then she felt him reach between them to untie his chausses. Thinking he’d want her on her back, she tried to turn, but he stopped her. “Nay, stay as you are,” he whispered hoarsely, urging her as she had been, on her side facing away from him. She realized it would pain him less to lie on his left side, where there would be no pressure on his injured right arm and leg.

He shifted, and then came a hot, hard pressure as he guided himself into her from behind. Closing his hands around her hips, he filled her little by little, pausing between thrusts, letting her stretch to fit him. When he was at last completely sheathed within her, he slipped his arms around her to cup her breasts. Slowly he withdrew, and then pushed in, again and again. Through his heaving chest pressed to her back, she felt the wild beating of his heart; hers felt as if it would burst at any moment. Little by little, he increased the tempo and force of his thrusts until it seemed he had no conscious control over them at all—as if his body had disassociated itself from his mind. He drove into her with unthinking fervor, gripping her shoulders from in front to hold her still, forcing her to take all of him with each fierce thrust.

He overwhelmed her, possessed her. She craved this possession—wanted him to take her like this, to lose himself in her, wanted it desperately. Could something that felt so right really be so foolish? Was she a fool?

Thorne perceived her anxiety even through his sensual delirium; she stiffened, and he knew something was wrong. He was close, so close... too close to stop. She was exhausted, that was all; she’d had a long, harrowing day, and now she was suffering for it. “It’s all right,” he murmured, reaching between her legs to renew the intimate caress that had so transported her before. “Easy.”

Slowing his thrusts to make himself last, for he had to be sure to pull out, he touched her with all the care and skill he could summon, determined to give her the pleasure that would ease her woes, erase her ugly memories. Presently her muscles relaxed and she moaned as if in surrender, clutching at the wolf pelts.
Hold off
, he commanded himself.
Hold off till she’s done
. She writhed against him, and he strove for control. She was so tight, so hot, and as she teetered on the brink, so did he...

He felt a shudder ripple through her, and then, deep within her, powerful spasms that squeezed him with stunning bursts of pleasure, wresting the seed from his body. With a strangled growl, he drove in hard, shaking with the force of his release. It was so right, so perfect, that for a few blissful moments, he allowed himself to forget that he should have pulled out, allowed himself to savor this primal ecstasy.

With a satisfied groan, he sank into the wolf pelts, drawing Martine’s body tight to his. They were still connected; he wanted that to last forever. Breathlessly he kissed her neck. She was breathless, too.

“Martine, I... I didn’t mean to finish inside you. I’m sorry.” He reached up to stroke her cheek and found it wet. “Martine?” Levering himself up on an elbow, he pushed her hair aside, but she burrowed her face into the pelts. He felt her sobs deep inside her. “Martine, it’s all right. Don’t cry.”

Enclosing her in his arms, he held her tight and whispered against her neck. “It’s over. Sleep now. Everything’s all right.”

She must have had blessed little energy left for her tears, because it wasn’t long before she quieted.

“Martine,” he whispered, but there was no response save her peaceful breathing. She had fallen asleep with him inside her. Carefully, so as not to wake her, he drew himself out, readjusted their clothes, gathered her in his arms, and closed his eyes.

*   *   *

It was midmorning when Martine awoke and found herself alone in bed. Sunlight flooded the little cottage, a lively fire burned in the pit, and from outside she heard Thorne at the chopping block. Arising, she tidied herself as best she could, then stole to the window to watch the Saxon.

He chopped with his back to her, wearing an unbleached linen shirt and coarse leggings, having removed his tunic; evidently his exertions kept him warm. He leaned on the crutch with his weak right arm and wielded the ax with his left, splitting chunk after chunk of wood and tossing the pieces onto a large pile next to him. He worked quickly, and with great power and accuracy, despite his injuries and the ax’s broken handle. She gazed in rapt fascination at the bulge and flex of his muscles beneath his shirt, then shook her head and turned away, disgusted with herself.

Here she stood, just like her mother, staring out the window of a crude mud hut at the man who owned her soul. She was just as foolish as Adela, just as weak. Thorne wielded extraordinary power over her, power she conceded to him every time she yielded to his kisses, trembled at his touch. When would she learn? When would she finally find the strength to close her heart to him?

Embedding the ax in the chopping block, he grabbed a couple of pieces off the pile, came back inside, and added them to the fire.

“Do you intend us to stay here long?” Martine asked.

“Nay.” He reached for his tunic and lowered it over his head. “We should leave this morning.”

She glanced out the window. “There’s enough firewood in that pile to last through spring.”

He ran his fingers through his hair, which was damp with perspiration. “I got carried away. Chopping wood is so restful.”

“Restful!”

“To the mind,” he amended. “It helps me think. I was trying to figure something out.”

“What?”

He looked away and took a deep breath, then met her eyes. “How to ask you to marry me.”

Martine drew in an astonished breath and stared at him, wondering if she’d heard him right. He wanted to marry her! Thorne Falconer wanted to marry her!

He said, “I know I’m not landed, and I’ve not got the right. But I’m asking you anyway.”

Martine felt the same peculiar buzz of anticipation that she had felt when she first set eyes on Thorne and mistook him for her betrothed.
It is this man
, she remembered thinking,
this regal man with eyes of sky, who will speak vows with me, who will take me to his bed and sire my babes
...