Sing Me Home (16 page)

“—and what will become of me after you’re gone, and we have no real reason to wheedle our way into the halls of kings?” She squinted away from him, over the river, thinking up all of Maguire’s nasty phrases. “Arnaud won’t suffer my singing and Nutmeg’s dancing. All the world will be calling me a barber’s chair, since every man in every parish will have a turn in me—oh!”

He dragged her back against his body with a shock of contact. She smelled him—leather and rain and something else, something musky and private and exciting. He breathed hard against her head as the wind pressed her under-tunic flat against her legs.

She wanted this man. She wanted him now, by the cool waters of this river, upon the sweet green clover with the warm June sun pounding down upon them.

This didn’t feel at all like sin.

She lifted her hand and blindly wove her fingers into his hair. He stood as tense as a harp’s string. His arm tightened. He twisted her and she saw the bright blue sky blazing beyond his dark head. Then, suddenly, the pebbles of the river bit into her knees, the cool water splashed beneath her body as he laid her down in the shallow waters. The river chilled her shoulder blades—a thumb’s depth of it, no more, but enough to soak her linen under-tunic, lick at her buttocks, and send her hair fanning out, pulled gently with the current.

He looked down at her with his blue eyes bright. An expression flittered across his face that she could not read. His gaze was like a touch, and she felt it trailing like a finger up her inner thigh.

Suddenly he lay down in the shallow water and rolled onto his back. He yanked her on top of him. Water splashed onto her thighs, her belly, her breasts, and her soaking hair slapped on her back. He spread her knees so they braced on the pebbles on either side of his hips. Splayed across his loins, she felt him—the hard root of him, straining against the fibers of his braies.

His cock pressed up against her cleft. She gasped at the feel of it, so hot and hard against her. She flattened her hands on his abdomen to brace herself. Water seeped into his shirt, outlining the ripples of his ribs. Droplets gleamed on his face, and his eyes blazed a blue to match the sky.

He filled his hands with her breasts and her nipples tightened into knots in his palms. He massaged her in ways she’d never been touched. The nuns had always told her that God gave women breasts for one reason alone: For nursing children. But no motherly thoughts of feeding babes had ever sent hot sparks through her like this, or made her breasts feel so heavy or made her nipples ache, or made her want to arch like a cat, begging with her body for a rougher touch.

She imagined how he must see her right now, sprawled half-naked across his loins, her hair a tumble of snags, nothing shading her nudity from the eyes of the world but the wet linen plastered to her skin. She was happy he found her worth touching, kissing, loving.

“I won’t have you blaming me for your ruin,” he said, as he dragged his hands down her hips. “If you really want this, Maura, you’ll have to take it yourself.”

She leaned over and pressed her lips against his. Her tight nipples grazed his chest. She welcomed his tongue and slid her own against his the way he’d shown her that one night by the inlet shore. On his tongue she tasted the sweetness of honey she’d used in the oatcakes that morning and the lingering trace of hazel-mead he’d purchased in Clare.

He kissed her back in new and wondrous ways. He kissed with the bite of his teeth on her lower lip. He kissed by wandering all over her mouth while his fingers played upon her spine. Aye, it was no surprise that he could play upon her body like a master harpist upon strings, knowing where to strum, and how hard to do it, and how long. No matter how he touched her, every single brush of flesh against flesh was as potent as the hippocras the sisters doled out at Christmastime.

Her mind spun. She grasped moments of sensation—the rasp of his unshaven cheek against her neck, the yank and pull of his fingers on the hem of her under-tunic as he tugged it free between them, the roughness of his linen undergarments on the tender, swelling flesh between her legs. He throbbed and her body answered. She loved how he felt lodged against her, she soaked it all in as swiftly as her under-tunic soaked in the cool river water. But as his kisses continued, she grew impatient with the masterful play of his hands.

“Is this to be all teasing kisses and love play, then?” She sounded breathless and husky as she pulled away from him. “Or will you finally make a woman out of me?”

“As you wish, my lady.”

He thrust his hand between them and his knuckles brushed her cleft. Her whole body tensed at the intensity of the sensation. He loosed the cloth of his braies to set free his cock. She only glimpsed it—long and thick and throbbing—before he lifted her body so she balanced atop it. The tip was hot against her,
inside her
. She found herself slipping around the tip of it, gyrating her hips, searching for where it fit, feeling pressure, a sweet, burning, welcome pressure as she settled down a mite.

She groaned aloud at the feel of him so close to the ache. She heard him make a sound, too. He was grimacing, looking between them, and she looked down, too, and saw their flesh merging.

Pebbles rolled under her knee as she eased down, a little more, feeling a resistance, a stretch that bordered on pain, as her body gripped him tight.

“Easy,” he said, as his fingers dug into her hips. “Easy, Maura.”

She wasn’t having easy, not anymore. She rolled her hips again and pressed harder. She gasped at the pinch as the resistance gave. Then the long, hard, hot length of him slid within her, all the way in, until she felt the bones of his hips against her inner thighs. She held still, breathless, as both of their bodies throbbed and his cock pulsed inside her.

She threw her head back.
So snug.
The warm summer sun caressed her face as his cock touched her deep, deep inside. She felt a fullness she’d never ever experienced. It excited her that they were here, coupling upon the banks of some river, she with her legs spread to welcome him, merging their flesh in a way too wonderful to not be forbidden.

“Are you hurt, lass?” His voice was strained.

“No,” she whispered. “No.”

Then he moved. She gasped at the swelling against her inner muscles. He moved again, kissing her deep inside with his cock as he had kissed her lips with his mouth. He gripped her hips and showed her how to slide up his rod and then plunge down again. She did it herself, feeling the full length of him stroking the skin inside her. She felt her cleft grow slippery and slick, like her body was licking him each time she rose up and sank down anew. He was breathing hard now, like she was breathing, for each plunge was a higher, tighter sensation—over and over and over—and he gripped her hips and made a grunting sound as he moved faster—still faster—until suddenly beyond the film of her eyelids the light intensified, and a cry gathered in her throat. She threw her head back and it was as if the sun shone so bright and so hot that the light burst over her and rained showers of sparks over her wet, heaving body.

For moments uncounted she quivered with waves of sensation even as Colin continued moving, his cock swelling tight so that it filled her up. He thrust so hard that he lifted her knees off the riverbed. He made a strangled, grunting sound and she felt liquid warmth filling her up. And she understood yet another thing about the world that had never occurred to her—that this coupling between a man and a woman could be beautiful, could be joyous, could be as close to Heaven as anyone could come while still living on earth.

It took some time before she noticed the flow of the cool water across her knees. Spread as her legs were, her thighs began to ache. She lowered her head and looked down upon the man who’d just made her a woman.

Were she looking into a silvered mirror, she’d expect to see the same sort of expression upon her own face—the same half-lidded eyes, the same faint smile, the same slowing breathing. She didn’t think she could speak even if she wanted to. He took her hand in his, raised it to his face, and brushed a kiss in the hollow of her palm. She rasped her hand across his unshaven cheek and bent over him, so her damp hair hung like a curtain. He thrust his hand through her hair and combed it with his fingers, as his gaze roamed over her, full and hungry with promise.

And she knew with a bone-deep certainty that whatever happened in the days to come, she would never regret this moment by the riverbed.

“You’ll be sore, lass, if you don’t climb off of me.”

She bit her lower lip and swung her leg over him, feeling his cock slip out from between her legs. He took her in his arms and rolled her out of the water—rolling, rolling, laughing as they tumbled onto the dry grass of the riverbank. They lay for some time. She pressed her ear against his chest to hear his racing heart. A chill breeze twisted around the wet black boughs, sending a confusion of leaves dancing upon the wind.

A strange sort of peace flooded through her. She closed her eyes and basked in it for uncounted moments.

“I like it here.” She made no effort to rise from their bed of grass as she traced little circles upon his chest. “I like lazing about on a riverbank in the middle of the day.”

One eye winced open. His lips twitched in a smile.

“So is it true what they say,” she said, as he made no attempt to touch her, to kiss her, to take her in his arms again, “that once a man beds a woman, he doesn’t want her anymore?”

“You know that’s not true, lass.”

“Well, look at you. You’re like a butcher’s dog, lying quiet and bored beside the beef.”

She expected him to roll her over in the grass and make a mockery of her words. Instead, he trailed his fingers down her spine, his gaze still on the sky above.

She lifted herself up on her elbow and frowned at him. “It’s a fine pretty sight, to see you counting the boughs like a merchant counting his day’s takings.”

“I’m thinking.”

“Aye, I can smell the wood burning.”

“At Emain Macha,” he said, “the master
filidh
would each day give us a theme. Then he would send us into the dark to lie on our backs to contemplate the theme and compose a poem.”

There was so much she didn’t know about this man. So much of his past hidden from her, so many days ahead for discovery.

If he willed it.

“It was always as cold as Hades when he sent us to task.” His lips curled in a rueful smile. “The school worked only from Michaelmas to March, and the man who ran it had no will to waste good peat on a bunch of boy poets.”

“It would seem easier to sleep than to think, laying in the cold like that.” Odd mood he was in. “What strange things are churning in your mind?”

“Just thinking, Maura. Just thinking.” Then he looked at her and his face changed. He rolled her on her back in the grass. “Help me make it stop.”

She opened her arms to wrap them around his body, and then parted her thighs for his touch.

Suddenly, a voice came from the trees, calling Colin’s name.

“Go away, Maguire,” Colin mumbled, as he tugged the linen off her breast with his teeth.

She heard Maguire stumbled out of the trees and skid to a sudden stop. She knew she should be embarrassed caught like this, Colin’s mouth on her breast, her thighs bare to the world. She waited for a rush of shame, of regret, of guilt, but all she felt was irritation that Maguire would come bother them just when Colin was slipping his tongue across the tight peak of her right nipple.

“About time,” Maguire cackled. “I was thinking I’d have to stop calling you a beard-splitter, Colin, if you didn’t tumble the lass soon.”

Colin raised his head. At her groan, he replaced his tongue with his skillful fingers. “Go away, Maguire.”

“I’ll be off and on my way, then.” Maguire’s cackle echoed through the woods. “It’s sure you’ve got a task before you making up for all those nights she left you with ballocks as heavy as lead—”

“Wait.” A ripple of lines appeared on Colin’s brow. He raised his head, cocked it, and went very still.

“Please.” She pressed her hand over his, for Colin had stopped rolling her nipple between his fingers.

“Shhhh.”

Then she heard it, too. A faint ringing through the trees, the sound of unfamiliar voices, all coming from the direction of the road.

She whispered, “Don’t stop, Colin.”

He said, “I hear horses upon the road.”

“Oh,” Maguire said, his voice bright as he backed away, “they belong to a deacon making his way to the next parish—”

“You’re lying to me.” Colin abandoned her breast altogether. “That’s the jangle of a rich man’s harness.”

“Colin,” she whispered, reaching up to him. “Stay—”

It was too late. He slipped off her. He stood up and tied his braies. “Who is it, Maguire?”

“I told you, just a deacon. I thought the Abbess might want to confess—”

“For a poacher, you’re the worst liar of all.”

Then Colin was gone, striding back to the road.

Maura made a huff of frustration as she stood up on shaking legs. “What were you thinking,” she snapped, scrambling for her clothes, “following him out here when you knew the plan was for me to hold him fast?”

“I was thinking of saving the man’s life.”

“And a right bad job you did of it,” she said, sweeping up her tunic, “lying like a child who ate a pie set to cooling.”

“How was I to know you’d finally hike those skirts of yours? You, who’ve been keeping them as tight as an innkeeper’s fist?”

“Never mind about my skirts.” She scrambled into her kirtle. “What have you and your clumsy tongue sent him off to?”

The Mudman didn’t answer. He didn’t have to, because she saw the answer upon his grim face. She swept up her slippers and tossed her stockings over her shoulder as she followed Colin’s path toward the road. She found him at the edge of the woods, his back pressed against a tree, hidden, gripping the bark with a hand gone white.

Beyond, upon the road, stood a horse and rider. The shiny bosses of the horse’s harness gleamed in the sunshine. She must have made a noise, for the man upon the horse gave her a sharp glance as she stumbled half-dressed through the trees.