“What are you saying? Are you mad?” His face
looked frozen; his voice was a harsh whisper.
“It should not have happened. It was an
accident,” she said again.
“The battle,” he decided. “That began the
madness. You told me you had never seen bloodshed before. Then
Eudon’s accident, the long trek through the forest fearing a Saxon
attack at every step, the way I treated you when I tied you to me
at night – this is my doing. It’s my fault you’ve lost your
wits.”
“I am not mad,” she stated as firmly as she
could. “I am occasionally confused because I am in the wrong time,
but I am not mad, nor am I bewitched. Nor are you. Please don’t
blame yourself for anything. It’s not your fault in any way.”
“More than twelve hundred years,” he said,
shaking his head. “So long a time. Yet you are here, and you did
appear out of the air, in the blinking of my eye. Perhaps it is
true. There might be such a magic, though whether it would be for
good or evil, I cannot tell. I want to believe you, India, but this
is such a strange story.”
“I’m not at all surprised if you find it hard
to accept,” she told him, much encouraged that he was at least
considering what she had said. “I could scarcely believe it myself
at first, when my only hope was that Hank would find me quickly and
take me home again.”
“Who is
Ahnk
?” he demanded.
“It was his machine,” India said.
“A man? Is he your lover?” He tossed the
medallion onto the table and came toward her with a purposeful
step.
“Of course not. Hank is in love with my best
friend.” She stopped talking when he took her shoulders between his
hands with a roughness he had never displayed toward her before.
Realization dawned on her, and with it a deep joy that canceled her
fear that he would reject her if he knew everything. “Are you
jealous?”
“Of everyone who looks at you or speaks to
you,” he grated, pulling her toward him. “I am jealous of Marcion,
of Hugo, and poor Eudon, and of Osric. I am even jealous of Sister
Gertrude. Most of all, I despise this
Ahnk
, who, from what
you say, may take you away from me at any time. India, I want you
more than I have ever wanted any woman before, including my dear
wife. My passion for you at this moment, when I am not certain
whether you are witch or spirit or human as you claim to be, shames
me as much as my desire shamed me when I first looked into your
eyes and wanted you, even though I thought you were a boy. You
cannot know,” he added ruefully, “how relieved I was to mount my
horse and put my arm around you and discover you are a woman.”
“All those nights lying beside you,” she
said, remembering each of them, “all those long days, so close
together on your horse.”
“A penance for my many sins,” he murmured,
touching his lips to the curve of her throat. “A penance, too, was
my decision to wear my chain mail day and night as a barrier
between us, until I could ascertain exactly what you are. Without
that armor to keep us separated, I would have made you mine the
first night we lay together.”
“Oh, Theuderic.” She could not decide whether
to laugh or to cry. She pushed at his chest until he loosened his
hold on her and raised his head. She wanted to look into his eyes
when he answered her next question. “Do you believe me?”
“I may be bewitched,” he said. “Or we may
both be mad. I could be risking my immortal soul. But yes, I do
believe your story, perhaps because I want so very much to believe
that you would not lie to me.”
‘Theu, I swear to you I am telling the truth.
There is no witchcraft involved in my being here, and no
madness.”
He held her eyes with a deep and steady gaze
for a moment before he nodded. “Then I have only one more question
to ask you tonight,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. With a
firm pressure on her shoulders, with one hand sliding down to her
hips to guide them forward, he drew her to him. She felt his hard
masculine need, as she had seen it earlier by the pool.
“The answer is yes,” she said, putting her
arms around him at last, after so many days of wanting to hold
him.
Once he had her assent, he wasted not a
second, immediately taking complete possession of her lips. She had
never been kissed like that before. She could not have freed
herself from his embrace, even if she had wanted to be free. His
arms encircled her, holding her so tightly that she could barely
breathe, while his mouth demanded her response.
Overwhelmed by his desire and her own, she
reacted with hungry abandon to a kiss that seared her soul and
branded her as his, and his alone. Afterward, she hung fainting in
his arms while he kissed her throat and ears and cheeks, until he
found her mouth again. There he drank greedily, while her lips and
face and neck flamed from his touch, and the tightening of her arms
around his neck brought her into ever closer contact with his body.
He tugged at the linen shirt she wore, lifting it upward until it
was at her waist.
“Ah, sweet lady, this is what I need.” He
stroked her hips, his callused hands against the smooth softness of
her skin. One hand slid down between them, across her abdomen and
downward, downward…
With a soft cry of consent, she moved a
little to let him feel the moist heat that would tell him how much
she wanted him. He lingered there, probing, testing her readiness,
driving her half mad with rising desire until she cried and begged
him to stop – and, when he obeyed her, begged him not to stop.
He understood what her nearly incoherent
babbling meant. With one long motion he pushed her shirt up and
over her head and tossed it onto the bench. Looking at the expanse
of pale skin now revealed to him, he expelled a soft breath of
admiration.
“Exquisite.” He placed a hand over each of
her breasts, his fingers cupping the high, round firmness. “So
delicate, so fragile, and yet you are so strong. See how your
breasts stand up hard and proud at my touch. Oh, India, India.” He
lowered his mouth to first one and then the other breast, and she
began to shake with violent tremors. She clutched at his shoulders
for support.
He knew she could stand no longer. He must
have known, without her telling him, for he lifted her as if she
weighed nothing at all and carried her to his bed. When he laid her
upon it, his hands caressed the length of her body right down to
her toes, then upward again, along the inside of both legs, over
thigh and hip and upward to her breasts, where he paused for a
breath-stopping moment before continuing onward to cup her face in
his hands and hold her steady for a sweet, deep kiss. Then he
straightened to strip off his tunic and throw it aside. He knelt
above her, and although she believed he would not hurt her, she
involuntarily, with the concern of a woman who has not known a man
for long, empty years, shrank away from his size and his
strength.
“Don’t fear me,” he said. “I only want you to
feel as I do.”
“I’m not afraid.” To prove it to him, she
touched his cheek, then laced her fingers through his hair. “I want
you so much. Come to me, Theu. Come to me now.” With those words
she let one hand trail across his chest, along the fine brown hair
that grew there, downward across his taut belly, and lower still,
into a tangled mass of brown curls. Her eyes never leaving his, she
touched him, deliberately, provocatively. His surprised gasp filled
her with delight. She reached farther, deeper into the mat of hair
to stroke a smaller, rounded warmth, then slowly drew her fingers
out again, stroking, always stroking. He closed his eyes and
moaned. Daring to look where her hand caressed, she watched him
grow larger and harder. The heat inside her was rapidly becoming
unbearable, and only he could quench it.
‘Theu, please.” He opened his eyes again.
“Never have I received such an invitation,”
he said in a broken whisper.
“Accept it,” she begged, “before I die of
wanting you.”
“If you die, I die too,” he told her, his
hands separating her legs. With wry humor he added, “Shall we die
together?”
After that she could not utter anything but
gasps and moans and, occasionally, his name.
This was like no lovemaking she had seen in
the movies or on television, nor was it in any way similar to what
she had experienced in her marriage. Where her husband had always
been almost deferential with her, Theu’s loving was a fierce,
vigorous assertion of his imperative masculine need, and it was not
entirely gentle. Yet there was a tenderness in his actions, as if
he assumed that whatever gave him pleasure would please her
also.
He entered her with a swift, hard thrust that
shattered her senses, and so strong and urgent was his hunger for
her that she wondered if she would survive to rise from his bed
when he was done with her. His passionate attack tore her breath
from her throat and nearly stopped her heart. Her gasp of amazement
when his great size filled her completely made him pause for just
an instant.
“Don’t fight,” he groaned, his eyes
silver-pale with passion about to be forcefully unleashed. “Come
with me. I want you with me.”
She was incapable of speech, nor could she
move, because she was fastened to the bed by the weight of his
body, impaled on the hot hardness of his desire. There was only one
way she could answer him. She lifted her head an inch or so to
place her lips on his and gently, delicately, let her tongue slide
between his teeth to touch his tongue with the tip of her own.
With a wild cry, he tore his mouth from hers
to renew his passionate onslaught. For an instant she feared he
would split her body in two, but then something within her, some
deep atavistic longing, awoke to match his fierceness with her own.
Urging him onward, she rode the crest of passion with him, wrapping
her legs around him to draw him ever deeper into her aching,
throbbing center, laughing and crying at once, calling out his name
over and over again,
Theu, Theu, Theu
… until tears and
laughter and passion mingled in an explosion that forged them into
one ecstatic, rapturous being.
Nor would he leave her. He stayed within her,
moving more gently now, kissing and caressing her with tender hands
and mouth, whispering sweet, endearing lover’s nonsense until she
had completely recovered her senses. Only then, when she could
answer him like a reasoning person again, did he withdraw to lie
beside her, gazing at her with deep affection. In the half light of
the oil lamp, he was handsome beyond belief, and his hard warrior’s
body was a source of wonder to her. He had aroused in her emotions
she had never imagined she could feel, and her tenderness toward
him was tinged with gratitude for that gift.
“Never,” she began. He stopped her with a
single finger against her lips.
“Don’t speak,” he whispered. “What lies
between us is too strong, too profound for words. And I am a man of
action, not a scholar. Let my body speak for me, let my behavior be
whatever proof you need of what I feel.”
She took his hand from her mouth, held it
between hers, and kissed each finger and his palm and inner wrist.
When she had finished, she laid his hand upon her breast. He
pressed downward, his palm against her nipple, and she felt the
hardening from the immediate physical contact – felt also, far down
in her pelvis, a quickening throb. Even now, when she was
completely satisfied by his loving, still, newly awakened passion
lay waiting to blossom into heat and beauty once more. He bent his
head to suck at her hard nipple, and the inner throb grew
stronger.
He lay back, pulling her across his chest. He
drew up the bedclothes, confining them together under the
down-filled quilt and blue coverlet, holding her against his heart,
rubbing her shoulder affectionately and kissing her brow, and she
snuggled against him in warmth and contentment, the fire within her
banked, waiting, not yet extinguished. Believing he had fallen
asleep, she rested her cheek and one hand on the hair on his chest,
waiting till he wakened. She began to drift toward sleep
herself.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“Hmmm.” She did not want to move, unless it
was to make love again.
“The stew will be cold, but we can reheat it
by the fire.” He stood up, lifting her with him and setting her on
her feet. He took the covered bowl from the table and put it into
the ashes, then added more wood to the fire, pushing the smoldering
logs around until the flame burst forth and caught the new timber.
When he straightened, looking across the flames at her with
simmering passion in his eyes once more, she tried to cover herself
with her hands. “Don’t be shy, India. Your body is beautiful. Let
me see you. All of you.”
“I’m not used to anyone looking at me like
this. I feel safer with my clothes on.”
“Do you want to be safe from me?” He appeared
to be disappointed. With a quirk of his mouth, quickly repressed,
he scooped her bra and teddy off the chair and held them out to
her. “If you wish to cover yourself, wear these. And wear the
stockings, too. They are like black cobwebs, so fine that my rough
hands would tear them to shreds if I touched them. But at least
they will veil your lovely ankles and your beautiful feet from my
sight.”
“I didn’t mean—” she began, but he stopped
her, taking the bra out of her hand and holding it up to peer
through the lace.
“I would so like to see this garment
stretched across your breasts. But I think if your pretty nipples
were hidden from me, I would surely rip the offending cloth
away.”
“Don’t talk like that. It’s
embarrassing.”
“Why should it be, after what we have done
together?” He stopped, watching her, as if a surprising thought had
just struck him. “Tell me, India, how old was your husband?”