By Possession (29 page)

She ignored him and bent to kiss his chest, letting her lips follow the meandering explorations of her hand. She licked as the whore had done so that woman would not have known more of him than she did. A profound stirring saturated her, richer than mere excitement, a pleasure that filled her heart and overjoyed her soul.

She moved and felt and kissed and absorbed, not thinking about anything at all except knowing him,
having
him for this first and last time. His fingers caressed tensely into
her hair. She glanced to his watchful eyes and returned to her discoveries.

She slid the sheet away while her mouth followed the scar's line down and the heat of her breath offered comfort the way the compresses had. She kissed the damage as a mother might when trying to ease a child's pain. Her fingers pressed and learned the sinews of his thighs and knees, his hard belly and hips, finally the smooth surface of his erect phallus.

Total knowing. Completeness. Brief possession. She did not think or question or consider. She explored and learned, the evidence of his pleasure bringing her astonishing happiness. She felt the want pouring out of him, hungering and waiting, and her own arousal spiraled. Aye, total knowing. Her kisses followed her hand as if the progression were essential.

His sharp breath penetrated her constricted awareness. She let his subtle reactions guide her and immerse her. His tension encompassed her, straining beneath his grasp on her shoulder. She sensed it shaking, crumbling. “Enough,” he gasped, pulling her up, pressing her mouth to a fierce kiss while the release flexed through him.

She drifted in the moment, tasting him, suffused still with the heady passion of it, feeling his tautness seep away.

A tilt of his head separated their mouths. She opened her eyes to see fires blazing at her.

He was furious.

He kept her head so close that their noses almost touched. “What was that? My betrothal gift?”

“I only wanted … I needed to…”

“You wanted? You needed? I have been wanting and needing for weeks, Moira, and now when half my body is crippled you serve me this passive, solitary pleasure. I will not take gifts from you any more than you take payment from me.”

His anger could not make her regret it. “Do not yell at me, Addis. The gift was to myself. Besides, you could have stopped me.”

“A man does not stop a dream come to life, even if it is incomplete.” His hand pressed against her head, drawing her still closer to his severe, intent face. “Then let us finish it, to the extent you have left me capable. You look well content with your control of this want and need you had. I do not plan to leave your passion so contained.”

He kissed her again with slow deliberation, provoking her sensual stupor to a sharper alertness. He would not let her move, but kept her breast crushed to his chest and his fingers splayed on her scalp, holding her while he carefully ravished her mouth and neck and ear. He was right. She was content in her containment of her need. She was not sure that she wanted this. She feared the pain waiting on the other side of ecstasy.

“Better if you did not …” she said.

“You would have me take pleasure and not give it? You are too generous, Moira,” he whispered in her ear while his teeth and tongue explored ways to send her body trembling.

“ 'Twas not generosity. Not really.”

“Nor is this. Not really. Do not worry. You are safe from me for a while at least. Your mouth took care of that too well.”

“Then it makes no sense for you to …”

“Ah, but I want to. Need to. Like you.” He caressed around her arm to the outer swell of her breast, defeating her protests with suggestive strokes that raised anticipations of sensations that she remembered far too well.

She capitulated. Angling across his chest she accepted the kisses turned to her mouth. Shifting on her side she invited the deft touches on her breast. Her body treated
the delicious feelings as if it nibbled at a savory. Soon she was thinking of nothing and just experiencing the building intensity of it.

“Take off your gown.”

“I don't think—”

“Do it.”

He helped her sit on the bed's edge and untie the lacing along her back. She slid the loose gown down her body until it sank to a pile at her feet. She sat a moment, her eyes closed, trembling with an expectation that pierced clear through her.

He caressed along her thigh to the hem of her shift. “This too.”

She looked at him. His eyes burned with desire of a different kind, with a passion only partly physical. She understood it. Recognized it. Not generosity. Not really.

She slid the shift off and sat naked beside him, the small of her back against his waist. He gently stroked down her back and she bowed into the heady contact. With two clumsy shifts he eased his body over, making a bit more room for her.

“You are so beautiful, Moira. Kneel here so I can see you and touch you.”

She climbed beside him and knelt, sitting back on her feet. Examining her as she had him, he traced along her edges and curves, drawing her body, exploring hills and valleys, crevices and swells. The journey of his hand raised such pleasure that her eyes blurred and her throat dried. Impatient craving trembled its demand in her breasts. Thick moisture dampened the pulsing hunger growing between her thighs.

He eased her toward him until she had to brace her weight on hands flanking his head. She bent a kiss to him while he continued to arouse her hovering body, flicking
and rubbing her nipples as if he heard their demands for attention.

Her conscious world began to constrict to just him and her and the crying desire titillating her with its sweet torture. Her passion broke out of any containment. He sensed it and began driving her mercilessly higher until she mindlessly uttered small cries that marked the rhythmic need throbbing through her. The passivity of her position both frustrated and excited her. Only the immobile arm and bent leg kept her from straddling him and pressing herself against his length. Except for the dulled memory that she had rendered him incapable, she would have sought the joining that her body demanded.

He pressed into her back, moving her down and forward until he could take her breast in his mouth. She gasped in relief and then dissolved into sighs and cries. The pleasure became twisting and tense and sharp. He licked and sucked and teased while his caresses moved to buttocks and thighs, to belly and back and she became frantic for more. He gave it to her, sliding his hand between her thighs. She parted them for him and groaned when he ventured where her whole body begged him to go.

Drawing on her breasts and tantalizing with his hand he led her from frantic to desperate and into delirious until the want and need overwhelmed her. The desire started stretching, seeking, reaching.… He released her and she rocked back, burying her moans in his shoulder. He used a touch that sent the exquisite release crashing through her like a cataclysm.

She collapsed, managing to remember that half his body was infirm. He pulled her into the comfort of his arm, her cheek and hand sealed against his chest.

They lay there for hours, neither sleeping nor moving, adrift in a little world of sweet comfort and peace. They
barely spoke the whole time, as if both knew that words had no place or reason in this precious “now.”

It is love
, she thought.
Denying its name does not dull either the beauty or the pain
.

She nestled closer and watched across his chest as the afternoon sun grew long shadows on the chamber's walls.

CHAPTER 15

M
ATHILDA WAKE WAS BEAUTIFUL
, small, and frail, with a pale radiance that illuminated the spot of courtyard where she stood. She kept her eyes lowered modestly while Thomas introduced her. Addis frowned down at her elegant blond head. His first reaction was that the girl accepted her duty but knew her worth far too well.

His second was that she reminded him of Claire.

Her creamy lids fluttered and she scanned up his length. It was a slow, long journey before her pretty head tilted back and she saw his face. Thomas must have warned her about the scar, but her smile still wavered.

“You are very tall, Sir Addis.”

He had to admire her clever recovery. “And you are quite small, my lady.”

“It is thought that I might yet grow, but I do not think that you will shrink.”

“If you would prefer that I do, I will try.” The banter
flowed easily. He knew how this game was played. He'd once been a champion at it, a lifetime ago.

“Oh, I do not think that I would care for a small knight, Sir Addis.”

Thomas beamed beside her. The father's obvious pride interested him more than the girl's obedient demeanor. Did Thomas indulge her? Could she bend him to her will? If she begged to be spared from this match, would Thomas relent?

The possibility should make him concerned, but he found himself hoping it was so. The side of himself that acknowledged the need for this alliance kept battling the side that resented the coercion of duty. A perverse temptation to find ways to frighten her kept pricking at his better intentions.

He led the way into the hall. Pleasant smells floated up when their feet crushed the herbs mixed with the rushes. Summer flowers hung in abundant clusters from the beams and window headers. A crisp new cloth covered the head table and the chair from the solar had been moved down to the lord's place. Piles of colorful fruits substituted for more costly adornments but added to the hall's fresh, cool effect, as if someone had decided silver would be too heavy and formal on this late summer day. Three musicians sat on stools in a corner.

He had ignored the impending visit but Moira had not. She had demanded to know the day and then had prepared for it, badgering the coin from him to purchase the food and objects and services befitting a dinner where he met a kinswoman of a great family, economizing where she could and spending where she must. She knew from her years at Hawkesford that one did not stint on such an occasion. Every detail would be a manifestation of his honor. He scanned the delightful results and wondered if
the child by his side could even appreciate the efforts a bondwoman had made on her behalf.

She was not in sight, nor would she be. She supervised in the kitchen, he guessed, or maybe rested out in the garden now that all had been prepared.

He wished that she were present. If Thomas saw her lush body and clear eyes he would wonder and eventually he might ask. Then he could let the father know that which the daughter must eventually accept, that the bondwoman who served him in London would always be with him. That when he sought friendship and comfort it would be with the Shadow and not the tiny sliver of light to whom he was bound. If he had his way he would seek more than that from her, not that he expected success there.

A bittersweet mood had tinged their last week together. She visited the Southwark house every day that he lay there but the intimacy had never again turned physical. The night that he returned to London he had waited, hoping that she would come to him, all the while knowing that she would not. He supposed he had known even while it happened that her passion had been a final, sweet acknowledgment of what had occurred and what might have been.

Thomas had explained that Mathilda was fourteen but she barely looked that old despite her elaborately plaited hair and costly gown. Addis hoped to God that no one would expect a quick marriage between him and this child. Perhaps he would entertain her with explicit descriptions of his scars and how he had attained them. That should help delay things until she matured more. Maybe it would delay things forever.

Henry and a hired servant delivered the food in stages and Thomas's squires served it. The musicians played softly. Richard and a widow lady he had been courting
joined them at the table. Mathilda graciously accepted the choice meats that Addis offered her along with his attention.

She talked a lot. She managed to turn every topic back to herself. Claire had been like that when a young girl. Later she had acquired the finesse to make others gladly do the job for her. He wondered if this child was clever enough to figure out the shrewdness of permitting that.

He learned all about her pony, who had run off in the spring, and how half the estate had searched for five days before finding it. He was treated to an elaborate description of the new silks her mother had recently purchased. She reassured him that she prayed often to her favorite saints, but that her special devotion was for the Virgin Mother.

Between her disorganized stories and Thomas's commentary he managed to receive a complete list of her many virtues and womanly skills. He reflected that he had learned more about Moira during the long silences of their journey from Darwendon than he could ever acquire about little Mathilda from all these words.

Moira. What was she doing now? He considered complaining about some dish so that she would be obligated to show herself. He could use her soothing presence. Little rumbles of resentment in one of his souls kept threatening to fracture the courteous composure of the other one.