Domning, Denise (5 page)

Each passing moment died a long and agonized death. Only the low moan of the rising wind broke the silence in the room. Why did he hesitate? She wanted it over and done with, now.

As minutes ticked away, she again recalled his conversation with her father. Perhaps her new husband still wished to be free of this contract. If he did not consummate their marriage, there would be no expensive petition to the pope; only an application for dissolution to his churchman cousin. But, then, he'd lose her dowry.

The clean sheets fairly crackled as she shifted slightly to look at him. He'd left the bed curtains open and lay covered to the waist by the blankets. His fingers were laced behind his head and his eyes, shut. She could not imagine a more relaxed pose. Golden firelight gleamed against his exposed skin and shadows traced the masculine swell of his chest.

She studied the generous sweep of his forehead, the narrow line of his nose and well-molded lips. Not a truly handsome man, she thought, but not unattractive, especially when he smiled. As she watched, fine lines of amusement began to play at the corners of his closed eyes.

"Do you like what you see?" Slowly, his eyes opened. The taunting warmth of his words was reflected in his soft gray gaze.

She immediately looked away as her cheeks burned in embarrassment. He made her feel like a child caught where it should not be. Hard words hid her chagrin, "It hardly matters, does it, my lord?" Instantly, she wished she'd not spoken. What a stupid girl! What if her words incited him to cruelty?

Her husband only laughed. "It matters, if only to my vanity. My given name is Rannulf. I prefer that form of address from those who know me well." His words implied that she would soon know him very well. So, he'd had no intention of leaving her virgin. Once again he had toyed with her and won.

"As you like, my lord." She eased back down against the mattress.

"Rannulf," he prompted.

"Rannulf," she answered uneasily.

"So, my lady wife," he said, then sighed, "we are to make a marriage tonight. What say you we begin this task of ours now?"

She steeled herself for his touch. At least the deep shadows made the fulfillment of this duty easier. She lay tensely beside him and waited.

He rolled to his side, his eyes now a pale gleam in the night. When he brushed a strand of hair from her face his touch was gentle. "If you will try to be less fearful, I would make this as painless for you as possible. Of course, this is assuming you are yet virgin."

Rowena sat bolt upright with a gasp of outrage. "What! Now you presume too much. Please recall that I have lived fourteen years in a convent."

He only laughed quietly. "What have convents to do with virginity?"

"Be assured that what I held precious for the Lord God, I now surrender to you," she sarcastically spat out, and clenched her fist into the bedclothes.

"Stay angry, wife Rowena, I like you better this way. Consummation of marriage is not as horrible as you might think."

"You questioned my honor apurpose?" she cried out. When she would have said more, his mouth took hers. Outrage made her try to pull away from his touch, but his heated kiss consumed her anger and confused her senses. She could not resist when he urged her down against the mattress.

Trapped in a web of sudden and overwhelming sensation, she closed her eyes and sighed. His was an unexpectedly clean scent. She savored the taste of his mouth on hers. Against her arm she could feel the hard curve of his shoulder, yet his skin was soft where it touched hers.

Something stirred within her, warm and deep and hidden. He pressed a kiss just below her ear. It stirred again. She caught her breath. His fingers stroked her palm.

Again, he pressed his lips to her throat, this time slightly lower, then he set another kiss lower still. The stirring within her grew into a faint tenseness. She sighed and the tenseness eased. Her fingers twined with his, and her other hand found its way to the nape of his neck. Gently, she combed her fingers through his hair and shivered at its silkiness. Trapped in her own need to feel, she trailed her fingertips down his nape to his shoulders and back again.

He groaned low in his throat. Startled back to her senses, she snatched her hand away and burned with shame. How could she have been so forward? She tried to pull away, but he caught her in his arms. Without a word, he once again took her mouth with his. She lay still and cold beneath him in her shame.

"Do not run away," he whispered, but his words were laced with laughter.

"How could I? You are holding me," she whispered in return, her arms still held tightly at her sides.

"And would you run if I did not hold you? I think not," he breathed into her ear. Rowena shivered. "I think"—he paused to kiss her throat—"you will do as pleases both of us, not just me."

"You mock me." With great determination, she pressed her hands into the sheets and stayed perfectly still, even as his caresses seemed to dissolve her spine.

He paused and braced himself up on his elbow. "I promise I will tease you no more, at least not with words." His hands slipped up from her waist to cradle her breasts.

Rowena gasped and twisted. Outrage fused with pleasure in an unholy union as he lowered his mouth to kiss a line between his hands. The sensations he awoke were unbearable, yet she did not want them to cease. She tried to pull away, to escape the enormity of what she was feeling. Too late. She was pinned to the mattress between his arms.

All rational thought fled in the face of her primal need to feel. She knew the heat of his mouth against her breast and reveled in the roughness of his callused palm as he stroked her stomach. When his hand slid lower to touch her nether lips, she trembled beneath him.

Her hands found and caressed the hard line of his shoulders. His teasing fingers made her cry out and try to twist away while, in truth, she wanted to do no such thing. Her lips found his throat as he lowered himself to lay full length atop her, his legs between hers. His hoarse and whispered words were unintelligible as she kissed his neck. She spread her legs further to better accommodate his weight upon her. The heat between her thighs fairly scorched her.

Pain, tearing pain. Rowena cried out and arched beneath him as her virgin blood flowed. Her fingers dug deep into his back, and she bit her lip to still her cries. The fullness within her was both foreign and welcome in one incredible instant.

Her husband lay still atop her. With gentle fingers, he combed her hair and stroked her cheek. "Forgive me." His words were oddly breathless. "Have patience, your pain will pass in a moment."

Rowena's eyes stayed half-closed. A moment slipped by. Slowly, the burning ache eased. She fought the urge to shift. It was not her husband's greater weight that made her wish to move. Instead, it seemed to be the very sensation of his skin touching hers.

He had twined his legs between hers until her calves lay across his. When had he done so? His hands sought out and stroked her cheeks with his fingertips. Then, his fingers found their way down either side of her neck in a feathery caress. She shivered and gasped as a tiny spark of heat seemed to explode within her.

He took her sound to be an invitation and touched her mouth with his. Slowly, his soft, teasing kisses gave way to a passionate taking of her mouth. A new intense sense of fullness awoke within her, banishing all remembrance of her pain. Within her lay some hidden destiny her body urged her to fulfill, but, try as she might, she could not imagine what it was. She shifted uneasily beneath him, not knowing why she did so. As she moved, so did he. She gasped, but not with pain.

"I promise this will not always hurt you so," Rannulf breathed into her ear between kisses. He moved again, then again.

A subtle pleasure pulsed within her that quickly tumbled into a greater need. Rowena shifted to accommodate his thrusts, finding yet greater pleasure as she did so. He buried his head against her neck, his breathing ragged and quick, and she embraced him in mute acceptance of her womanhood. But, when his movements quickened, then ceased, she nearly cried out in complaint. There was something more; something she could not identify. What more could there be between a man and a woman?

For a long moment he lay atop her gasping in his exertion. Then, he eased slightly to one side. His eyes were heavy lidded with his ebbing passion while the smile that bent his mouth was warm and untroubled. Slowly, Rowena smiled in return.

He kissed her cheek, then the tip of her nose. When, at last, his mouth met hers, her lips clung to his as she enjoyed the taste of him, the warmth of his lips, and the glorious feeling of his mouth moving against hers.

Then, he drew away, his expression slowly clouding. As she watched his smiling warmth dimmed to stark confusion, then into a harsh coldness. He eased further from her in the bed, as if he truly feared to touch her. "Best you sleep well this night. We travel to Graistan on the morrow. I must be on about my business." He sat up and impatiently tugged the bed curtains closed around them. When he lay down, it was with his back to his wife.

"Tomorrow?" The word spilled bitterly from her lips, but it was not the morrow's leave-taking that bothered her. His sudden coldness deeply stabbed her, destroying all the warmth and pleasure they had just shared. What had she done to make him stare at her so?

He raised up on one elbow to look over his shoulder at her. The dour lord was back. "My men and vassals await my arrival at Nottingham. Be content that Graistan is not so far and the short trip will not trouble you much." He settled into the mattress and drew the bedclothes over him.

Rowena shuddered. She stared at his back, but soon his breathing was deep and even. Slowly, she eased across the bed into the corner farthest from him. There, hidden in the deepest shadows of the bed, she struggled to straighten her painful thoughts.

Reason and order had fled, serenity was shattered. In their place sat the memory of their lovemaking and his cruel rejection.

She had known that she would be no more to him than an instrument, a harp to be set aside when the song was finished. What she had not known was how painful that setting aside would be. Leaning her head against a bedpost, she swallowed her pain and felt the coldness within her grow colder yet. At long last, she settled deep beneath the bedclothes and as far from him as possible. It was a long while before she slept.

Rannulf lay still and forced his breathing into an even, relaxed pace. His new wife lay at the far side of the bed. Cruelty did not come easily to him as it did some men. Yet, he reminded himself of how necessary it was.

If only she had been the ugly, docile girl he'd expected, then he could have been kind and still have felt nothing toward her. Instead, she was a fiery, passionate, and beautiful woman. His lips moved in a silent curse. He was married again, this time trapped into it by his own avarice.

When his cousin, Oswald, who served Benfield's new overlord, the Bishop of Hereford, had sent her father to him with this contract, his first impulse had been to refuse. After all, he had his heirs in his half brother, Gilliam, and his natural son, Jordon. But when the man had explained the extent of his daughter's estate, he'd been stunned. He could not let the opportunity slip away, especially when it lay so close to his own heart, Graistan.

Rannulf listened. There was no sound but the wind. He peered over his shoulder at her. She was curled onto her side, her back to him. When he was sure she slept, he rolled toward her. Even now he ached to reach out and draw her near, to feel the softness of her skin against his, the silkiness of her hair twining around his arms. He remembered the sweet taste of her and shuddered.

She had wanted him. Even in her innocence, she'd shown him that. He'd touched her and a flame of raw desire burst into life in her eyes. No other man had ever awakened her passions; she had not even known herself capable of such feeling. God, he wanted no more than to lay abed with this woman and teach her more of pleasure. He ached to kiss her once again into awareness of her womanhood.

But he would not be staying at Graistan with her. Aye, he had awakened these passions of hers, now who would she find to satisfy them while he was gone? He balled his fists against such thoughts, successfully burying them where they belonged, back in the darkest corner of his mind. Yet, despite his efforts he could not escape his sense of impending heartbreak.

His life was cursed. Once, long ago, when he'd been younger, less jaded, he'd dreamed of a marriage such as his father had known with his second wife, Ermina. Theirs had been a true love, filled with great passion and caring. But, if his own first marriage had been dull and fruitless, his second had been a catastrophe that had nearly torn his family asunder. Rannulf had sworn then not to marry again.

Here was what came of greed. Beside him lay a woman who would no doubt destroy his life even more thoroughly than his last wife had. And him with it. He sighed. It would be best if he never came to care for her. If she grew to hate him for it, so be it. Better her hate than his pain.

He resettled the bedclothes up over his shoulders and waited for sleep to overtake him. The wait was dark and empty, and his wife cried out in her dreams. It was a struggle not to take her in his arms to comfort her. At long last he drifted off and had no dreams of his own.

It was the relentless drumming of sleet against the shutter that awakened Rannulf. And his wife as well, for she sighed heavily and rolled to her side. Outside, the wind howled and sent fingers of icy air probing into every corner. She shivered as a draft fluttered in the bed curtains. He stirred a little to let her know he, too, was awake.

He studied the tumble of her thick black hair against her pale skin. The contrast was as startling as she was. Without effort, he recalled the full lushness of her body and her instinctive response to his lovemaking. Before he could stop himself, he reached out and caressed the gentle curve of her back where it narrowed into her waist.

She gasped and rolled out of his arm's reach. "I thought you still slept," she said ungraciously.