Fairest Of Them All (27 page)

A disbelieving bark of laughter escaped him. “Do you honestly believe if you had denied me last night, I would have begged your pardon and taken my leave?”

“Aye, ‘tis exactly what I believe. Which is why I’m denying you tonight” Her words tumbled like pebbles into a bottomless well of silence.

Austyn released her shoulders and backed away from her, as if realizing too late that he had stumbled not into an enemy camp, but into a trap. His heel came up against the edge of the harp; it collapsed with a discordant thunk.

He drove a hand through his hair as his bemused gaze raked the chamber. “Are you trying to tell me that had I partaken of your delicious supper, allowed you to recline at my feet and enchant me with a lullaby, then given you leave to strip my weary body and bathe me from head to toe with those exquisite hands of yours, you still had absolutely no intention of taking me to your bed?”

“None whatsoever.”

“Why you shameless little ...” He took a menacing step toward her.

“No,” she said firmly.

He did not curb his dangerous charge until a mere inch of air sizzled between their bodies. To keep from shrinking in his shadow, Holly forced herself to remember the husband who had cradled her across his lap while he sponged her tears away. The warrior who had spared Eugene de Leggef s life when vengeance demanded he take it The knight who had leashed his mighty strength to cup her nape in his broad palm and stolen her mouth’s virginity with nothing more than the gentle persuasion of his tongue. If she had miscalculated that man’s honor, the price would be very dear indeed.

She could almost see the unholy war being fought behind the glittering palisades of Austyn’s eyes. A war between temptation and honor. Lust and mercy. Passion and compassion.

Just when she feared his dark desires might emerge the sole victor, he stroked the backs of his fingers down her cheek with a bewitching tenderness she had thought never to feel from him again. “You’ve chosen your weapons well, woman. Now I shall choose mine.”

With that cryptic warning, he turned on his heel and left her.

When the bolt had fallen into place, Holly sank down on the window seat, trembling like a reed in the wind. Austyn might never return to her, but by proving to him that he wasn’t the monster his grandfather had been, she had at least sent him on his way with his soul intact She touched her fingertips to her tingling cheek, wishing wistfully that she could say the same of her heart

Sleep eluded Holly. She squirmed and tossed in a bed that seemed to have swelled to twice its normal size since she had shared it with her husband, however briefly, the night before. The feather mattress threatened to swallow her whole. The coverlet and sheets tugged at her ankles until she kicked them away. Even the flimsy chemise sought to bind her, twisting its way around her throat in a perverse noose. She finally dragged it off and cast it to the floor, preferring to sleep as she had since childhood.

But the caress of the cool night air against her naked breasts only served to remind her that she was child no more.

Sleep came to her in fitful spurts and fevered dreams. She awoke from a sojourn into wrenching loneliness to find a dark shape poised above her. Her rational mind warned her that she should be afraid, but some more primitive instinct welcomed this shadowy manifestation of her longings.

Her womb quickened with expectancy as he descended on her, a swaggering satyr—half angel, half demon—in the darkness.

He would not kiss her mouth.

This loving Austyn forged from Stardust and shadows brushed his lips against her temple, traced the delicate shell of each ear with his tongue, nibbled the curve of her jaw, then coasted lower to nuzzle his lips against the throbbing pulse in her throat She sighed her delight.

His delectable wooing enticed her to touch him, but she curled her hands into fists, fearing that if she succumbed to the temptation, he would melt back into the mists of yearning from which she had summoned him.

A shudder of pleasure convulsed her as his cunning tongue flicked out to lash one of her nipples. She arched her back, unable to resist the accomplished devilment of his mouth. The generous globes of her breasts had been both leered at and praised, but they’d never been debauched with such reverence. He licked and nipped and teased until she’d dropped every defense, then suckled her hard and deep, coaxing a surge of hot, thick nectar from between her thighs.

He would not kiss her mouth.

He rained tender kisses on the quivering skin of her belly. His tongue delved into her navel in a sinuous swirl, as if to warn her there was no secrec hollow of her body he would not brand with his touch. He did not have to use his powerful hands to urge her legs apart At the tingling scrape of his beard against the downy skin at the inner curve of her knee, her thighs melted into acquiescence, shyly inviting him to sate his darkest appetites in a sweet, forbidden feast

Holly would never forget the first sensuous tickle of his mustache. Her fingernails drew tiny pearls of blood from her palms as she fought the desire to curl her fingers in the coarse silk of his hair. At her soft whimper of mortification, his tongue both soothed her and maddened her, flicking her swollen flesh with devilish skill to whip her into a frenzy of incoherent pleasure, then lowering to lap gently at the bounty of his ministrations.

He would not kiss her mouth.

He drove her to the very brink of ecstasy once, twice, three times, but her choked pleas for deliverance only seemed to prolong the taut circles of his tongue. Just when she thought she would surely perish from want if he did not fill that melting hollow aching for his attention, he added his deft hands to her sensual agony, ravishing her tenderly, but with exquisite thoroughness, with his longest finger, then with his broad, spatulate thumb.

Holly writhed, desperate to wrap her arms and legs around him. Besieged by thick, throbbing waves of pleasure, she reached up and grasped the velvet ribbons dangling from the bedposts, placing herself in willing bondage to save herself from drowning in a sea of rapture. Twas then that he reached beneath her with his other hand and gently stroked the tip of a single finger down the fragile, cloistered valley between her buttocks.

That touch, so primal, so provocative, shuddered her to the soul. A low moan tore from her throat, so feral she did not recognize it as her own.

His voice was woven of the darkness itself, both hoarse and silken. “Would you deny me now, my lady? Shall I beg your pardon and take my leave?”

He had ceased to touch her, but even the kiss of his breath scorched her eager flesh. She could feel the flames roiling off his artful tongue, his big, graceful fingers, as they awaited her breathless leave to probe and stroke and possess. He had chosen his weapons with the diabolical skill of a mortal enemy, but Holly still had enough faith in him to know he would abide by her wishes. If she denied him, he would abandon her without so much as a growl of protest, leaving him bereft of release and herself teetering on the precipice of some wondrous discovery.

Gripping the velvet ribbons so tightly they cut into her palms, she uttered the one choked word that would seal both of their fates.

“Stay.”

He stayed. His fingers plundered every vulnerable cleft they could reach while his mouth suckled her with devastating tenderness. Holly cried out as ecstasy pulsed through her in surge after indescribable surge.

Before the last of those shivery frissons could cease to wrack her womb, he was sliding his turgid staff past the quivering petals of her sex, stroking deep with a dreamy, deliberate cadence that bore little resemblance to what had passed between them the night before. That had been a brief, roaring conflagration; this was a slow burn that threatened to incinerate her very soul. Twas as if he had all night, all eternity, to claim her for his own.

He would not kiss her mouth.

His brutal tenderness made Holly want to claw at his back, to beat at his muscled shoulders with her fists. She turned her face to the pillow with a hoarse sob, helpless to do anything but lay beneath him with her legs sprawled wide and her throbbing core up-tilted for his pleasuring. Pleasure her he did, reaching to fondle and stroke the tiny nubbin sheltered by the damp nest where their bodies were joined until cry after cry of surrender was wrung from her throat Twas as if he sought to turn her into the very thing he feared the most—a piteous, mewling creature ruled by her darkest, most sensual, impulses.

She lost track of the number of times he urged her to that dark peak and hurtled her over its edge. Twas a sweet infinity before his surging rhythm and straining muscles told her he had joined her in the fall. He came and went in equal silence, leaving Holly sweat-drenched and shivering in the empty bed.

Yestereve her husband had fled her company as if to linger would be to forfeit his soul, but this night he had torn away a jagged fragment of her soul and taken it with him.

Without ever once kissing her mouth.

There was but one door leading to the walled courtyard below the north tower. Austyn battered it open with his fist and staggered into the blessed chill of the Welsh night He collapsed against the stone wall, tilting his face to the sky to let the misty air bathe his fevered flesh.

Holly might have been a fool to toss down the gauntlet of her denial, but he had proved himself an even greater fool by taking it up.

He could not have said what had possessed him to believe he could touch her in every manner, both sacred and profane, in which a husband could touch a wife, yet remain untouched himself. She had wooed him with nothing more than her soft sigh of welcome when she had discovered him standing over her bed. Yet he had forced himself to maintain his maddening charade of restraint until the bittersweet end, clenching his teeth against a roar of ecstasy that would have betrayed him for the fraud he was.

Austyn groaned. How in God’s name was he to keep Holly at arm’s length when he could still scent her on his beard, taste her on his lips? Never before had any woman, plain or comely, bought with coin or offered freely, so cut his heart to the quick. He feared her bewitching surrender in this initial battle might very well cost him the war.

“Are you satisfied, Rhiannon? Is this how it begins?”

His hoarse query was not greeted by the echo of mocking feminine laughter he expected, but by the muffled notes of his wife’s weeping.

Austyn gazed at the darkened tower window for a tortured moment, then buried his face in his hands, unwittingly blinding himself to the stooped figure who cast himself from the shadows and went scrambling over the wall.

Holly’s days soon settled into a predictable routine. She lacked for no luxury but freedom.

Her invisible jailer sent Winifred to deliver arm-fuls of freshly cut flowers—late-blooming jasmine and morning glory, wood hyacinths and blood-red roses that sent the haunting fragrance of the waning summer wafting through the tower.

As she tossed them out the window in a shower of lavender and crimson. Holly compressed her lips to a bitter line and wondered what his offerings would be in winter when the fecund earth slumbered beneath a shroud of snow. Perhaps he would have tired of her by then and would be bestowing his floral tributes on a more appreciative lover.

Her harp was joined by a newly strung lute and a carved flute flawlessly molded to the contours of her lips. Illuminated manuscripts followed—rare pieces of music suited only to the ripe soprano of a woman’s voice.

The instruments sat in forlorn silence; the manuscripts remained untouched.

He was even so generous as to send Elspeth to keep her company during the languid hours of daylight Dear Elspeth who possessed the gift of chattering cheerfully about nothing at all, but could not quite hide her troubled glances at the smudges of exhaustion beneath her mistress’s eyes.

Perversely enough, Holly thought the interminable days of captivity might have driven her mad were it not for the tempestuous liberties allowed her in the darkness of night.

For after she’d sent Elspeth on her way and extinguished the candles, Austyn would slip into her bed to cast his tender sorcery over her body. He had ceased being her husband to become a phantom lover in the darkness, stealing another precious splinter of her soul with each nocturnal visit

He would not kiss her mouth or allow her to caress him in tenderness. He broke his fierce silence only to whisper what wicked magic he was going to work until it took little more than the husky rasp of his voice in her ear to bring her to the brink of fulfillment Had there been even a hint of brutality in his attentions, Holly might have brought herself to hate him, but his accomplished hands cherished her flesh as if it were his own private altar. She’d never known such unbridled ecstasy. Or such misery.

He left no fragile hollow of her body unexplored, storming the last remaining bastion of her innocence with such wrenching tenderness that even as she buried her face in the mattress to muffle her sobs, her body was wracked by shudders of dark, exquisite rapture.

Twas that night, when he withdrew from her without so much as a grunt of satisfaction, donned his hose, and padded heavily to the door, that she broke her own stubborn silence.

“Are you going to leave nothing of me, sir?” she cried, clenching her teeth against a belated chill of shame. “Have I given you cause to hate me so much?”

He hesitated for no more than a heartbeat Then the door shut and the bolt fell gently in place, sealing her in with only her fading hopes for company.

Elspeth shot her mistress an apprehensive glance as Holly paced the tower, the slashed sleeves of her cotehardie rippling with each stride. She paused each time she passed the window, as if compelled to watch the daylight die. Her exquisite features were cast in bitterness and her eyes had a wild look that had never boded well for anyone, least of all herself.

“I care naught for the gleam in yer eye, child,” Elspeth said, laying aside her sewing. “ Tis the same gleam ye had when yer papa forbade ye a pony when ye were only six. Ye hid yerself in that tinker’s cart and ran away during a snowstorm. Twas nearly two days later when yer poor papa found ye curled in the hollow o’ that elm like an innocent sprite. Drove him half out o’ his wits with worry, ye did, but all he could do was smother yer grubby little face with kisses.”