Conqueror (39 page)

“Lean into me,” he ordered hoarsely.

She did, until her forehead rested against his stomach. This gave him more space to push his hand down her bodice and trace the puckered areola of her nipple. Then he pinched it gently.

Her breath exploded out of her in a deep moan. He closed his fist around her hair and pressed his hips forward, into her mouth. Her warm, moist breath pressed into the material of his hose, at odds with the sharp edges of her teeth. Her tongue flicked out against him, a pushing wet pressure, doing to him what he’d done to her so many times, coaxing her into desire through her clothes.

“Jésu, woman,” he growled, and gently pushed her back onto the bed. He tore at his clothes, flinging each item away. She was tearing at hers just as wildly, and he knelt on the bed beside her, helping her cast away her gown and chemise, his fingers fumbling where they were usually so sure.

“I love you, Gwyn,” he said hoarsely, and swung one leg over her body, a knee on either side of her now trembling body. A tear spilled from the corner of her eye. It made him angry. He dashed it away with the back of a knuckle and bent his full attention to her body, stretched out on the furs for him to take.

Lowering his head, he sucked her breast into his mouth and sent his tongue flicking hotly over the taut red bud thrust up for him. She cried out as his teeth tightened around it, just enough to make her gasp. Her body arched with a moan and she reached for him, but he caught her wrists together and pressed them to the pillow above her head. With his other hand, he pressed a long, thick finger to her wetness, just one, swift stroke.

Her body bucked into the air, her head back.

Slippery, hot and wet, he sent his fingers plunging into her again. Her knees fell apart and her spine arched up, pushing her body up to him. He rolled to his side, his chest pressing against her sweaty ribs, one hand holding her wrists, the other driving his fingers in and out of her wet heat. He nipped at her breast, a sharp bite followed by a smooth, hot lap of his wicked tongue, taut and tight. Her breath came out hot and fast and ragged. She tugged sharply on her hands, to free them. He tightened his hold. Evidence of his desire pressed velvety and hard against her hip, and she shifted towards it.

“Please,” she moaned, her mouth against his shoulder.

He reveled in watching her body writhe and buck at his command, in her long black hair tossed and knotted about on the pillow above, in hearing the small, breathy sounds shudder out of her. Her whimpers were growing more rhythmic, more gasping, less controlled.

He rose up between her legs and in one swift, rocking movement, sheathed himself within her, thrusting to the hilt. She flung her head back and reached for him, crying out.

“Wrap your legs around me,” he ordered hoarsely. She did, holding him between her slippery, trembling thighs. Then, ankles locked behind his back, she pushed up onto her elbows and dropped her head back, her hips high in the air, meeting each pounding thrust of his.

Wet and tight, her flesh was hot, swelling, sweet womanly depths. He felt release barreling down on him. He plunged deeply into her again, then held, pushing steadily high inside her.

“Oh,
aye
,” she cried. Her body was slicked with sweat, and she pleaded for him to move again, more. He could feel it coming for her, tightening her body, making her cries more reckless and rhythmic.

“Please, Griffyn, please, aye, please,” she was moaning.

He rolled them over, holding her torso and hips close to him, until she was straddling him, stretched out over his belly and legs.

“Come on, my love,” he whispered, his eyes locked on hers, his wide hands on her hips. “Now.”

“You,” she panted. “You too.”

A passion-wasted laugh came out of him. “Oh, I will.”

She sat up, straddling him, knees bent on either side of his body. She closed her eyes and dropped her head back, her hips rocking on him. He felt the tickle of her long hair drift across his bent knees and down his shins. He slid his hand down between them, pushed his thumb in to caress the swirling, wet nub. Her movements sped up, driving him deeper inside her pulsing, hot body. The room was silent, the only sound was pounding flesh, his grunts of pleasure, her gasps and mewlings. She lifted her arms and crossed them at the wrists, rested them on the top of her head, then arched back, her breasts jutting out, her lush mouth open and panting, and drove herself into him hard, whimpering with each thrust. Goddess.

He reached for the back of her neck and pulled her down to him, locking their mouths together in a deep, endless kiss. When he released her, she stayed bent low over his body, her chin up, eyes closed, hands splayed on the mattress, intent now on only one thing. He lifted his hips in rhythmic sweeps, watching her face, aiming for that spot high and deep inside her with every carnal thrust.

“Oh, Griffyn,” she whispered. “Oh please.”

He touched her face, she opened her eyes, and then her body exploded in shuddering undulations up and down the length of him as she howled out his name in gasping whimpers and spiraling moans.

The sheer force of his orgasm knocked Griffyn dizzy as he roared in release, her body quaking and shuddering around him. He wanted to engulf her, pull her inside of him and keep her safe from whatever had made that tear slide down her cheek, from whatever sorrow he was going to cause her, to hold her and just love her, and that would never be enough anymore, not with the lies already begun.

They lay, sprawled on the bed, catching their breath. Griffyn played with a lock of Gwyn’s hair, lifting it, letting it run through his fingertips, then fall. After a moment, she rolled onto her belly and looked at him.

“Well. We succeeded in not talking.”

He smiled faintly. “We should not talk more often.”

Her body rippled with a small laugh. “I think we don’t talk quite often enough.”

“I don’t.” She smiled and ran her fingers along his jaw. He caught them up and kissed them. “That’s all I want, Gwyn.”

She rolled her eyes and gestured to the mattress. “
That?
All you want is to…not talk?”

He smiled. “I want small things. Family, harvest, children.
Bien
?”

She kissed his neck, dropping her eyes out of sight. He nestled his finger into the warm space under her chin and lifted. Her head came up, her eyes bright with tears. She smiled a watery smile. “I’ve been wanting children since I was only a child myself. I just never knew…”

“Never knew what?”

She shook her head.

The brazier was burning dimly. The moon was rising, and neither he nor Gwyn ever wished the shutters closed unless the weather demanded it. He pulled the furs up over her slim shoulders.

She rested a hand lightly on his chest and stroked her fingers idly. “And you, Griffyn? What of your dreams, as a child?”

He crossed his arms beneath his head. “I had a dream, as a child.”

“Just the one? It must have been important.”

He dropped his arm onto her shoulder and pulled her close and after all these years, he talked. “We left the Nest when I was eight. I used to lie in my bed, in Normandy, and all I wanted was to have it stop. I thought that meant coming home, as if that could fix everything. Hold everything at bay. But of course, that’s a child’s wish. Our past is like our shadow. It follows us everywhere. All any of us have is what we’ve been, and what we mean to become.”

She watched him through the dark, flickering candlelight.

“I’ve decided,” he continued, shifting his gaze down to hers, “what we intend to become matters more.”

She pushed up to kiss his chin. “That’s right. That has to be right.”

“Or else we’re doomed.”

A moment later, she asked the question he’d practically begged her to ask, “What was ‘it,’ Griffyn? What did you want to have stop? What was coming home supposed to end?”

He stared up at the cobalt-blue linen weave stretched between the posts of the bedframe. “Nothing. My father. He was known as
Mal Amour
, bad love. In Normandy, he was a curse. Mothers used the threat of
Mal Amour
to make their children behave, or he would ride through their villages and take off the heads of their fathers, rape their mothers.”

“Good God.”

“My mother had the worst of it, I believe.”

Griffyn did not think of his mother with any regularity. She’d been a quiet soul, barely verbal, and could do little to protect either herself or her son. Over the years, Griffyn’s love for her had been as real and contorted as a wire wrapped around a supple willow trunk: devoted affection distended between the whetted filament of unwanted contempt.

All of which was the deep past. None of which mattered now. His father was dead almost thirteen years now, thank God, his mother, bless her soul, was too. And now he lay in his own home, in his own bed, with his own, astonishing woman, who was soon to be his wife. Things could be different now, could they not?

“Do you think she tried her best, Griffyn?”

The sound of her voice pulled him back. He looked down.

“Your mother.” Her green eyes held his, intent, concerned. “Did she try her best?”

Well, that was a novel thought. “Yes,” he said slowly. “I’m sure she did.”

“And sometimes,” she added after a moment, “it is just not enough, is it?”

“And sometimes,” he pulled her close, “it is.”

She nodded against his shoulder. That felt nice. This whole thing felt…unexpected. And what he’d been hoping for. He’d been about to get submerged beneath wanting the thing, but came to Gwyn instead. Came to her, for her, for whatever lay inside her. And she’d lifted him out of it. Pulled him back from the muck and the pit.

“Tell me of yours, Gwyn,” he said a moment later.

Her head shifted up a little. “My what?”

“Your anything.”

She gave a little laugh and propped herself on an elbow to peer at him. “I’m quite sure I told you all about myself, a year ago, on horseback. You’ll either be tired of hearing it, or have forgotten it entirely, which means it doesn’t bear repeating.”

He plucked a stray strand of hair from the corner of her mouth. “Marinated mushrooms and stained glass. And a bolt of a certain blue fabric, the shade of which you’ve never found.”

“Oh, Jésu, Griffyn,” she whispered.

He rolled her onto her side and tugged her backwards into him, so they formed a small, heated curve on the bed. “You remember wanting children when you were only a child, Gwyn, but I recall wanting you when I was barely a man.”

She snuggled into him more deeply. “You didn’t know me when you were a boy.”

“I dreamt of you.”

They lay so still for so long after that, she probably thought he was asleep when she finally whispered, “I wish I’d known to dream of someone like you, Griffyn. I’ve muddled through with such lesser dreams.”

Griffyn was up on the walls with Harman, his architect and master mason, the next morning. The energetic Frenchman was gesturing to the nearest flanking tower.

“The problem, my lord, is that ’tis square. You see? No good!” He cut his hand through the air. “Round is better; no blind spots for your archers. And these walls,” he continued in his confident, gravelly voice. His bulbous nose shone red in the afternoon sun as he pointed to the parchment plans fluttering on the battlement wall before them. A rock positioned at each corner kept it from fluttering off. “You see, my lord? ’Tis a simple matter,
non
? To build another tower, just so, opposite.” He pointed again.

Griffyn nodded. A shot of cool air gusted over the walls. He brushed his hair back. “Another barbican.”

Harman nodded. “Another killing zone,
non
? The arrow slits, too, I will make them crosslets, so more flexible. Flare them out, here on the inner sides, such that your archers can sit within. Happy boys they will be. We build a walkway overtop, and
voilà
.” He turned his masonic squint to Griffyn and grinned. “A simple matter,
non
?”

“An expensive matter,
non
?”

Harman spread his hands and grinned. “
Mais, bien sûr
, my lord.”

“But, of course,” Griffyn echoed. He looked over the wall. A line of wagons was arriving, just cresting the hill and starting down the long, winding road from the south. A whole trainload of wagons. Just as he’d ordered. He smiled. Gwyn would want to know about this shipment immediately. He looked at the architect.

“Build it,” he ordered, and clattered down the stairs.

He found her in their outer chamber, sitting with a few of her ladies-in-waiting. He wasn’t surprised. She had women to spin and women to embroider, women to cook and women to fetch, women to distract his men and women to fall in the well, or at least stumble very near it, which might best be considered a particularly dramatic example of the former.

“My lady?” he said quietly, drawing near. The three fair maidens looked up, their faces flushed, then they giggled. Gwyn waved them off with a smile and started gathering the embroidery needles scattered across the table. “What can I do for you, Griffyn?”

“Why do you have so many?”

She looked at the needles, startled. “For embroidery, my lord. They break.”

“Women. Servants. Ladies-in-waiting.” He sat down beside her and plucked at the small patch of sewing Gwyn had been working on. “Why are there so many?”

“I would not worry too much, my lord,” she said, gently removing the linen cloth from between his calloused, and dirty, fingertips. “Some of the men coming to pledge fealty to you are their fathers.”

He picked up a needle and twirled until she plucked it free and put it with the others, punched through a thick, boiled stretch of stiff leather, which she then deposited in a small brown pouch. “Everyone is pleased the war is over, Gwyn, except you,” he observed. “Glad to have a peaceful transition.”

“’Tis true,” she agreed pleasantly. “But I wager these ones are more grateful than most, because their daughters are here, safe and sound.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “So the girls are about politics.”