Rebellious Love (6 page)

"What! Who is it? Oh! Help . . . !" Drawing breath to scream, she was stopped by Curran's hand covering her mouth.

"Ssshhh . . . it's only me," he advised kindly.

She was not reassured. The huge male body sprawled over her filled Verony with terror. She began instinctively to struggle.

Curran misunderstood her movements. He laughed deep in his throat. "I'm not usually so dense with women, sweetling. But you . . . you do things to me I don't understand." Hot, moist lips trailed down the ivory column of her neck, lingering at the vulnerable pulse points. "Ver'ny ... so beautiful . . ."

"H . . . umph . . . what' . . . m'lady . . . ?"

Curran stiffened, abruptly aware that the old nurse had resumed her traditional sleeping place on a pallet beside Verony's bed. Damn! This was hardly the setting to convince her of his passion. "C'mon," he said thickly, "we'll go to my room."

Verony opened her mouth to protest loudly, only to be stopped by Quran's impassioned kiss. Without releasing her, he lifted her easily and carried her from the chamber.

For all Curran's speculation about the degree of her experience, Verony had in fact never been kissed before. She was, however, rapidly discovering the sensation to be everything she had imagined and then some. By the time he kicked open the door to his room and deposited her gently on the bed, her heart was racing, and her mind whirled.

Even befuddled by drink, Curran was a highly skilled and considerate lover. As his hands cupped her breasts through the thin sleeping robe, his thumbs brushing over her rapidly hardening nipples, his mouth trailed a line of fire from her delicate earlobes to the corner of her mouth already aching for his touch.

Verony gasped as his tongue darted out to caress the tiny mole set at one corner of her lips. "I've wanted to do that since the first time I saw you,"

Curran groaned, his fingers unsteady as they began unlacing her robe.

Whatever this was, Verony thought dazedly, it could not be called rape. Having succeeded in stripping them both, Curran set himself to igniting every cell of her body into a fierce blaze only his possession could ease. With his hands tenderly stroking her hips and thighs, his mouth raining kisses from her erect nipples down to the very center of her womanhood, his strong, hard body pressed intimately to hers, Verony could only wonder at what she had feared.

She knew her behavior was wanton, but Curran's caresses managed to make that seem singularly unimportant. She should be fighting him, screaming for help, risking everything to preserve her honor. And she did try, at least a little. But the slightest movement brought her into even greater contact with his hair-roughened length and her traitorous body arched in pleasure. A moan broke from her when he gently parted her legs, his skillful fingers stroking upward as he murmured love words against her breasts.

Abandoning all thought of struggling, Verony embraced him passionately. Her hands caressed the bunched muscles of his back, each separate finger tip savoring the pure male beauty of him. She breathed in the crisp, sun-warmed scent of his hair, her tongue tasting the faintly salty smoothness of his skin.

A tiny dart of fear shivered through her when she felt the huge shaft of his manhood carefully probing her tiny entrance. But the gentleness he showed, and her own raging need, banished Verony's last hesitation. All pretense gone, she acknowledged that she wanted him completely, wanted to understand at last the mystery that lay between a man and woman who came to each other tenderly.

Her body arched to his, her slender legs parted, Verony breathed in deeply. All her senses more alive than they had ever been, she yearned for his possession.

Nothing. One moment Curran's fingers were gently opening her, the next his hand was stilled, his great body slumped over hers as all the strength and passion abruptly left him. Verony did not at first understand what had happened. She waited through several long breaths made difficult by the weight of him, before cautiously murmuring his name.

"Curran . . . ?"

Still nothing. He lay like one dead, utterly immobile and unresponsive.

Managing to free a hand, Verony shook him tentatively. "Curran ..."

His answer was a faint snore. Disbelievingly, she stared at him. Vast quantities of wine far beyond any amount he had ever drunk before had at last done their work. The battle-toughened warrior lay blissfully unconscious, with Verony trapped under him.

Torn between hilarity and chagrin, she tried vainly to free herself. It took no great experience to know that come morning, Curran would not be fit company for anyone. Added to which her situation was more than a little embarrassing. If she should be found there . . .

Verony banished that thought. Better to concentrate all her energies on getting away. The waist-length tresses of her hair were caught under his torso, her breast still cupped in his hand and her legs pinned by his. Attacking one problem at a time, she tried to release her hair. After long, futile minutes during which she managed only to hurt herself, Verony gave up. Perhaps she could move Curran's arm....

Conditioned to lift and wield a forty-pound battle sword for hours on end, the limb was corded from finger to shoulder by heavy muscle and sinew. Not for the life of her could Verony budge it. By the time she gave up, she was gasping for breath.

Her legs then, she thought. Free them and she could get better leverage for releasing the rest of herself. But the moment her thighs moved against Curran's, he muttered pleasantly in his sleep and drew her even closer.

"Ver'ny ... so beautiful. . . have to take care of you ..."

And a fine job you're making of it, she thought waspishly. Aroused to a peak of pleasure almost painful in its intensity, Verony was in no mood to sleep. But she had no choice. She certainly wasn't going anywhere, and morning, with all the problems it would bring, came quickly enough. Sighing, she snuggled more comfortably against him and drifted off.

A nasty sensation in his stomach woke Curran shortly after dawn. He opened an eye gingerly, unsure of where he was or what was happening to him. The movement was a mistake. Pain of a kind he had never before known slammed in at him, swiftly accompanied by nausea. Groaning, he hung his head over the edge of the bed and retched.

A cool hand stroked his forehead. "Easy . . . you'll be all right. . . just take it slowly . . ." The voice was soft but had an unmistakable edge of impatience.

He must be wounded, Curran decided, when with eyes once again safely closed his head was lowered back down on the bolster. The injury must be grievous to cause such agony. Yet he could remember no battle. . . .

He did, however, recall a tussle of a far different sort. Verony! Blocking out all other considerations, he sat up abruptly. The room spun, or perhaps it was the inside of his head revolving in the jellied mass his brain seemed to have become. His stomach twisted dizzily as someone hammered on his skull.

"I told you to take it slowly," Verony snapped. Wrapped in a blanket and crouched beside him on the bed, she looked little more than a child. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes glinted angrily. Glancing down, Curran could see her discarded night robe on the floor beside them.

"Oh, God! Verony ... I'm sorry—" He broke off. How on earth did one apologize to a lady for taking advantage "of her? That he had done so, Curran had no doubt. There was no boastfulness in the certain knowledge of his virility. From a rather precocious age he had enjoyed the company of women, and they had seemed at least equally

pleased by him. But his mistresses were unfailingly experienced and wise in the ways of the world. Never had he forced an innocent, vulnerable young girl to share his bed.

Shame surged through Curran, blotting out at least for the moment his physical discomfort. What he had done was beneath contempt. He was lower than a worm. It required no effort to imagine what his father and brothers would say if they learned of his dishonor. Raised to respect and admire women, he had nothing but disdain for men who used physical strength or intimidation to enforce their will. Yet he was compelled to believe he had done just that.

Cursing himself for a drunken fool, he searched desperately for some way to make amends. "Last night... the wine ... I got some crazy idea I should ..." He shook his head sorrowfully, almost welcoming the pain he did not doubt was well deserved.

"Curran . . ." Verony began, feeling a bit more kindly disposed toward him as she witnessed his anguish.

"Let me finish," he entreated. "Don't worry about what happened. Believe me, I'll take care of everything. If I had been in my wits last night, I would have simply explained to you what must be. This only makes it more urgent." Meeting her eyes hesitantly, he repeated: "Don't worry, everything will be all right."

What was he talking about, Verony wondered? It was clear he sincerely regretted his behavior of the previous night for more reasons than simply the painful aftereffects he must be suffering. But she could not imagine what he meant to do.

"I'll talk to Sir Lyle," Curran continued. "He'll arrange for the necessary documents and the priest. That Father . . . Dermond, was it? He can perform the ceremony. We'll waive the bans, if you don't mind. I don't think we should wait any longer than we have to."

Ceremony? Bans? Verony's mouth dropped open. He was talking about getting married, To her. The two of them. Man and wife, just as though the events of the last year had never happened and she was still the eminently marriageable daughter of a noble house. Torn between the desire to laugh or cry, Verony exclaimed: "You're crazy! That wine curdled your brain. Just lie still. I'll get something to make you feel better."

She tried to slip off the bed, but Curran, even in his sad state, was too quick for her. A powerful hand grasped her wrist as he said: "I don't blame you for being upset. It couldn't have been . . . very pleasant for you. But Verony, I promise, it will be different when we're married. I'm not an . . . inconsiderate man. . . ."A dull flush darkened his high-boned cheeks as he struggled to convince her that however brutish her initiation might have been, he would make sure she found lovemaking a pleasure.

Verony's heart tightened. How did he manage to look so contrite and so handsome at the same time? With his raven hair mussed, his color grayish and his eyes looking as though an army had marched over them, he still sent shivers of desire radiating through her. He was a magnificent man, she thought wistfully. Strong, tender, noble, all she could ever have hoped for in a husband. And incredibly he wanted to marry her, despite her total lack of property and position. But only because he believed he had dishonored her. Biting her lip, Verony fought down the treacherous impulse to let him go on believing that until they could be wed. The temptation to reverse her desperate circumstances was almost overwhelming. Only a deeply rooted sense of honor as powerful as Curran's own stopped her.

Lowering her eyes, she murmured: "My lord, you mistake the situation. Your talk of marriage is unnecessary."

When he stared at her blankly, not understanding, Verony was forced to continue. "Nothing happened," she whispered, not quite managing to keep a note of regret from her voice.

Curran's bloodshot gaze widened. He shifted uneasily in the bed. "Nothing happened?"

Verony nodded, still not meeting his eyes.

"But I remember . . ." he began, breaking off as he tried to puzzle out her meaning. The truth came to him with a jolt, turning his face bright red. He remembered the ripe, sensual body pressed to his, the firm, uptilted breasts whose nipples blossomed in his mouth, the long, slender legs glowing like alabaster. He remembered his own intense excitement, the girl's hesitant but unmistakable response, the fierce sense of joy that had filled him as he moved to possess her. Then nothing.

Acute embarrassment surged through him, banishing the relief he should have felt. A few minutes before, when he was berating himself for a contemptible dolt, Curran would not have imagined he could feel worse. But he had not then discovered that remorse over ravaging a helpless woman was equaled by shame over having tried and failed. Impaled on this two-pronged horn of mortification, he hung his head.

Verony took advantage of his preoccupation by leaving the room. She sensed Curran needed some time alone, and she wanted to be back in her own chamber before the household became fully active. But her hope of regaining her own quarters unseen was not to be realized. A small gasp escaped her as she encountered the shape of a knight leaning against one wall of the corridor.

"Good morning, my lady," Sir Lyle said pleasantly, as though it was the most normal thing in the world to find her thus.

Taking refuge in bad temper, Verony snapped: "You are ever surprising me, Sir Lyle. Do you spend all your time skulking about?"

"No," he informed her good-naturedly.

His gentle smile made her regret her waspishness. Contritely Verony said: "I'm sorry. I'm just a little . . . confused this morning. ... If you will excuse me, I was just going to . . ."

"To dress?" Sir Lyle interrupted. His tone was still pleasant, but with an undercurrent of sharpness that left no doubt he understood the meaning of her presence in the corridor at such an early hour and in such inappropriate garb.

Verony flushed, but still managed to hold her head high. "Lord Curran," she said calmly, "could use your attentions better than I, my lord. He is not well."