SECRETS OF THE WIND (8 page)

Mouthwatering smells enveloped Chas like a lover’s embrace as she walked into the room. Prince Ruan was standing at the head of a long table sagging beneath dish after dish, the aromas of which made Chas giddy with hunger.

“My mother says these are all your favorites. How she finds out such things is beyond me but…” Ruan said, sweeping a hand over the steaming bowls. He stepped around to the right side of the table and pulled out a chair.

She went to him and took the seat he offered. As he pushed her chair up the table, she felt his fingers grazing the backs of her shoulders, and once more, that electric current passed through her body. She turned her head to watch him take his own seat.

“I dismissed the servants so we will have to serve ourselves,” he said. “I hope the wine is to your taste.”

Quietly—with no discussion of what had transpired between them earlier—they passed one another the bowls and platters of food. The conversation was light and pertained only to such mundane topics as the unseasonable coolness of late and the overabundance of crops that had not ripened sufficiently to allow the farmers to make money. When the last forkful of succulent beef had been consumed and dessert passed up by each of them, Ruan stood and held her chair for her.

“I am told the gardens here are quite lovely in the evening. Would you like to take a stroll?” he asked.

“I think I should fetch my shawl,” she said, but he was shaking his head. He went to a side table, and took up a package and brought it back to her. “I took the liberty of procuring this for you.”

Chas had no way of knowing the prince had spent the afternoon searching the markets of Viridian looking for something to give her as a peace offering. Neither did she know that such presents were never given by Ruan Cosaint, except to his mother or sisters. When she opened the tissue paper and discovered the lovely woolen shawl fashioned in an intricate Gaelachuan pattern of knots, her face brightened and she looked up at him.

“It is lovely!” she proclaimed.

“Not as lovely as the woman who will be wearing it,” he said in a soft voice.

Chas draped the ivory shawl with its pale rose knot work around her shoulders then took the arm Ruan offered. She walked with him to the wide Francach doors and then out into the cool mist of the evening.

They did not speak as they walked through the sweet-scented garden. His free hand covered hers and she did not think he realized he was caressing her fingers. Overhead, the moon was full and heavy with a golden hue that softly lit the cobblestone pathway between the flowerbeds. When they reached the end of the cobblestones, they were standing at a wrought iron gate beyond which the waves of the Northern Sea crashed delicately against moonlit cliffs. She unhooked her arms from his and reached out to curl her fingers around the coolness of the wrought iron.

“I have never been this far north,” she said.

He stood behind her, his body lightly touching hers. “I trained near here,” he told her. “I’ve not been back since, but always thought I’d like to have a summer place in this county.”

The heat from his body was intoxicating and she leaned back against him, closing her eyes as he put his hands to either side of hers, enclosing her so that she was pressed between his solid body and the wrought iron sea gate.

“Do you mean your training with the Order of Taibhse?” she asked.

“Aye. It was similar, I think, to your training.”

Chas tensed. “My training?” she said.

He put his chin on her shoulder. “Think you I am not privy to the doings of my mother and her band of merry councilors?” he asked. He slid his hands over her arms and drew her closer to him. “I make it my business to know what that interfering old biddy is up to.”

She tried to turn around but his hold tightened. “If you’ve known all along what I am…”

“I only found out this afternoon when I returned from the market,” he said and she detected a note of coldness in his tone. “It took my spies that long to glean the information.”

She wanted to face him, to see his eyes as he spoke. Even in the bright moonlight, she thought she could garner his feelings if she could but look into his face.

“So how much are you willing to do, little Riezell Guardian, to fulfill your contract to my mother and her pesky court of jesters?”

There was no mistaking the coldness now. His voice had turned hard and brittle, and there was rigidity to his embrace that suggested he had put some distance between them, though his body was still pressed close to hers.

“There have been attempts on your life and the queen thought…”

“She knows damned well I can look after myself!” he said, releasing her and stepping back.

When Chas turned, he was standing there with his hands shoved into the pockets of his britches—a defensive posture. He was not looking at her, but rather at the moonlight-laced surface of the sea.

“Is it that your mother thinks you need more protection or that it was a woman she chose to provide that protection?” Chas asked.

He turned his head and speared her with a hard look that sent a shiver down her spine. “My mother has been trying to foist this woman and that woman off on me since I gained my majority. The plethora of idjuts she’s offered would fill a good-size mental institution. I told her I would choose my own wife, but does she listen?”

“And you are furious that she chose me to offer to you?” she said, hurt niggling at her heart.

“Oh, you’ll suit me well enough,” he said, turning away from her again. “With your training, you won’t be a clinging vine twining around me to choke the very life from me.”

“But you are still angry that…”

She got no farther for he snatched his left hand out of his pocket and reached out to grab her. He drew her to him so quickly, she had no time to react and when she found herself tight against him, the hardness of his erection made her knees weak.

“How far would you have gone in your charade, Chastain Neff?” he asked, putting his lips to her ear as he spoke.

The warmth of his breath sent a quickening of pleasure into her womb. He smelled of cinnamon and the heady wine they had consumed.

“I was drunk as a pissant as I wandered through that damned noisy market this afternoon. I could barely put one foot ahead of the other but I wanted to find that shawl for you so I could give it to you as a peace offering.”

“I am grateful…”

“I felt bad, wench,” he said through clenched teeth, “that I had acted like a randy youth and I wanted to apologize.”

“It wasn’t…”

“Imagine my shock to learn you had been hired to seduce me for my mother. I could have strangled you then!”

His hands went around her throat but Chas made no move to block him. Though her highly specialized training would have made it relatively easy to break his hold, she went limp against him, offering her neck as a sacrifice.

He looked down into her half-closed eyes—her slightly parted coral lips and lost himself. Swooping down, he captured her mouth with his and thrust his tongue past her lips to taste the sweetness.

Chas’ arms went around his waist, pulling him to her as his hands slid up to her cheeks. He held her head steady, cocked slightly to the left as he claimed her mouth.

No eyes saw the prince and the Riezell Guardian slip to the night-misted grass that drew along the perimeter of the sea gate. No one saw them stretch out—he atop her. No one heard the soft gasps of pleasure as hands insinuated themselves beneath layers of skirt and inside the crisp lawn of a white shirt.

Ruan’s fingers went unerringly to Chas’ soft thigh and he caressed her, running his nails lightly along her flesh. Her fingers were entwined in the thick pelt of hair between his breastbones—her hands captured between their bodies.

“I knew the moment I laid eyes on you that you were the one,” he said as he slid his lips down her chin and to the hollow of her throat. “The Goddess help me, but you are the one I have wanted and needed.”

She pulled her hands from between them and encircled his waist, delighting in the feel of his weight lying upon her. His hand was between her thighs, the warmth of his palm pressed against the core of her through her panties as his fingertips probed at her anus through the fabric.

“Your touch electrifies me,” she whispered and gently sank her teeth into the strong column of his throat.

“And yours me,” he acknowledged.

Once more, he captured her mouth and as he did, his fingers slid under the leg band of her panties and into her.

Chas groaned beneath the imprisonment of his sweet mouth. His fingers delved lightly inside her—first one, then two. His thumb stroked sensually against her clitoris until she could do nothing more than wrap her legs around his hips, mutely beseeching him to thrust deeper.

Chas was no stranger to sex but everything this gorgeous man was doing to her senses was a new and delightful discovery. There was nothing bland about his possessive lovemaking. His fingers were knowledgeable and when they went deeper inside her, Chas felt as though she would explode into a million pieces. When he quickly withdrew those fingers, she shouted her protest.

“Easy, lass,” Ruan said, his voice urgent. “I’ll not leave you wanting.”

Where Daniel Brock’s limited imagination left off, Ruan Cosaint’s was just revving up. His fingers closed around the leg band of Chas’ panties and jerked, tearing the silk fabric as easily as though it were paper.

Here was her bold corsair!
Chas thought as she felt Ruan fumbling with the closure of his britches. His hard tumescence had been pressing almost painfully against her right thigh, a slight dampness letting her know he was as primed as she.

He had pushed her skirts up above her waist and now the night air washed over her bare hips and thighs with a coolness that pebbled her flesh. The back of his hand was hot against her and when he moved it from between them, she sucked in her breath at the velvet smoothness of cock poking at her core.

“I want you,” he said and took her mouth once more, his teeth nibbling at her bottom lip.

Chas arched her hips up to him. “Then take me!” she demanded.

Ruan’s low chuckle was underlined with the heat of his hand positioning his staff at the entrance to her vagina. When he slipped that steely muscle inside her then pushed deep and hard and held it, she clawed at his back, rending the delicate lawn of his shirt.

His thrusts were as purposeful and authoritative as the man himself. That sensual probing left nothing wanting for his cock was rock-hard, sliding into her with sureness, with a command that had Chas panting with desire. He filled her to the brim and pressed his advantage deeper and deeper.

She clung to his shoulder, digging her nails into his back as he rode her. His pounding echoed in the night as he slapped his body against hers in a frenzy that left them both straining for that elusive climax each knew would be unlike anything either had experienced until now.

And when that climax came—his warm hand slipped inside her bodice to mold around her naked breast, and her legs wrapped so tightly around him his piston action could barely thrust—they exploded with a chorus of keening pleasure that was in harmony. Ruan’s head was thrown back as he announced to the world his possession of this woman.

As the last tremor, the last squeezing of muscles, the last pulsation of sperm had subsided, Ruan lay collapsed atop her, spent and shaken to the very nucleus of himself.

Here
, he thought as he rolled off her and gathered her into his arms,
was the woman he had been searching for all his life
. Here was the temptress who would make damned sure there would never be a need to stray. Here was the woman who could hold her own against his formidable temper.

Here was his Lady and there was no doubt in his mind.

Chapter Seven

Morning found the lovers lying side by side in Ruan’s bed. Their fingers were entwined upon his bare chest, her head upon his shoulder, her leg thrown possessively over his.

“As much as I hate to admit my mother was right, this time she was,” he said yawning, for there had been no sleep for either the night past.

“I questioned it myself, but there is no mistaking we were meant for one another,” she admitted. “I believe I knew the moment you first touched me.”

Neither heard the stealthy click of the lock for they were talking quietly, making plans for a life they were eager to share with one another. The soft snick of a booted foot against the carpet was lost upon the lovers.

The assassin was on them before Ruan could react. The prince’s sword—that lethal weapon that could take the head off an opponent in a bloodless moment, was across the room and out of reach.

Chas’ eyes widened as the shadow of the killer fell across the bed. She moved like a cat, throwing herself over Ruan as the assassin’s blade struck downward, stabbing into her right shoulder instead of the prince’s heart.

Ruan stared up into the eyes of his would-be killer and slid quickly out of the bed. As the man jerked his weapon from Chas’ body, the prince was already in possession of his own blade and lunged forward, parrying the threat that thrust at him.

Struggling to push herself up, Chas groaned at the fierce pain enveloping her. The right side of her body was on fire and she was amazed that her blood was not spreading in a thick puddle beneath her. She could barely draw breath so knew her right lung had collapsed. She could hear the spark of blades clashing but could not seem to turn over. As the thunder of running feet broke through the agony engulfing her, she closed her eyes and sank into unconsciousness.