Rexanne Becnel (25 page)

Wynne sat in the entrance of the tent, staring out at nothing in particular, hearing only in the most superficial sense the rising buzz of the grass crickets and the comforting rush of the night winds in the arcing branches of the beech trees above them.

The men had all departed to their bedrolls, and no voices carried to her any longer. At least no spoken voices. But in her head—no, in her heart—she felt herself being called, as clearly as if a voice rang out in the dark silence, calling her by name.

What was she to do?

Already her body fairly hummed in answer to that call. Would she truly lose anything by giving in to it?

She turned her head slightly, smiling fondly at the sprawl of six-year-old bodies that took up the entire floor of the tent. They were all blessedly asleep, lulled by the healthy exhaustion so typical of children. How she wished she could tumble into that same oblivion they’d found and experience the same deep peace. At the moment, however, peace seemed far beyond her.

Refusing to think about where her actions might lead, she rose on silent feet and eased out of the tent. The air was cooler, and the breeze caught at her unbound hair, lifting it as if in a caress. She moved on sure feet, heading toward the Dyke and the same familiar hummuck she’d perched on most of the day, staring toward Wales.

Cleve was waiting there.

He’d spread a rug upon the grass, and he lay on his back, his arms crossed beneath his head. When she stopped but one pace from him, he looked up at her. It was dark, and the moon was partly hidden by the clouds, yet she saw him almost clearly. He saw her too, for she felt the vivid imprint of his gaze moving down her body. From the top of her dark hair past her eyes and mouth to her breasts and belly and all the way down to her bare feet. Then up again, stroking her entire length until he stopped at her face.

“I’ve prepared a nest for us, love. Come he beside me.” He sat up and reached a hand to her.

But Wynne would not take it. She wet her lips nervously, and only when he lowered his hand back to his side did she speak.

“The thing is, we must talk. We must understand each other.”

“I understand far more than you think, Wynne,” he answered in a voice so low and husky that her knees began to tremble. “You also understand. Come here beside me and you will soon see.”

Wynne shook her head. “Not yet. Not until we have agreed.”

He rolled to his side and propped his head on one hand. “Agreed? ’Tis clear we are in complete agreement. I am here. You are here.”

“ ’Tis not so simple as that.”

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “You do but make this more complicated than it is.”

“And you would rather believe it is as simple as … as an easy tumble with some … some whore!” A sudden fit of trembling caught her in its grip. “Oh, I am a fool even to be here.”

She turned, prepared to flee, to run and hide her awful shame. To lick her wounds. But Cleve was faster than she. Before she’d even reached the crest of the Dyke, he bounded up, caught her arm, and forced her to a halt. Her chest heaved with both emotion and her efforts to get away as she stood before him. Though she faced him, however—forced to do so by his unrelenting grip on both her shoulders—she did not look at him.

“I know it is not simple, Wynne. Anything but. There is a vast chasm between us. But there is also this … this passion. It’s been there since I first laid eyes on you in the forest, looking like some wild, magical creature who might disappear at any moment. Like one of your Welsh fairies, a figment of my imagination, not wholly of this world.”

Her eyes raised to his, drawn by the compelling force of his words. He’d wanted her from the first?

Their eyes met and locked, trading secrets in the darkness of midnight. “I should not … should not feel this … this passion for you,” she whispered. “You are my enemy.”

He shook his head. “No, I’m not your enemy. I could never be your enemy.” His voice became more husky. “I could never be your enemy.”

She had become less and less rigid in his grasp. Now, as he pulled her closer, Wynne felt herself fairly dissolving into his arms. When he lowered his face to hers, she leaned against him, more than ready for his kiss. Then his lips met hers, and she sighed with relief, though the turmoil inside her increased a hundredfold. But it was a different sort of turmoil from before, demanding, not doubting. Joyful, not fearful.

He pulled her fully against him so that they met, belly to belly, chest to breast. How could they fit so perfectly together? a part of her wondered. He was so tall and hard; she was so much smaller and softer. He was the wrong man, from the wrong country, and with all the wrong ideas. Yet he made her body sing and her heart soar.

His tongue pressed urgently against the seam of her lips, probing for entrance, demanding more from her, and Wynne opened at once. She wanted him there inside her, awakening all her senses, bringing her alive with the erotic play of his lips and tongue. The stroke of his tongue filling her mouth fully, then pulling away, rubbing her sensitive inner lips like warm, rough velvet cloth, aroused the most sinful of feelings in her.

He held her in a fierce embrace, with one hand covering her derriere and pressing her hard against his loins. Fire leaped between them there, and without being conscious of her actions, Wynne slid one of her hands down his back to the curve of his muscular buttocks. He jerked in reaction, a convulsive response to her artless caress.

“Sweet Mother, but you have tortured me too long,” he breathed in her ear. His lips found the delicate edge of that orifice, then his tongue. Wynne gasped and arched in helpless pleasure—or was it pain? The two seemed so very much alike. The desire that built within her seemed ludicrously about to explode beyond the meager confines of her body. Yet she was certain that explosion would nonetheless be exquisite, and she wanted it more than she’d ever wanted anything before.

“You torture me now,” she panted, sliding her hands up along his back. Through the soft linen of his chainse she could feel every muscle, every ridge and curve and hollow of his torso. The warmth of him was there too, like a fever, a contagion that would soon consume them both, for the fever was now in her as well.

“I shall torture you more and more. The whole night long will I torture you,” he vowed, interspersing his hoarse words with an erotic trail of kisses. Down her throat the trail moved, down along her collarbone, pressing against the hollow at the base of her neck, then lower, nuzzling the neckline of her kirtle down until he pressed his hot lips to the upper swells of her breasts. Only then did he pause.

“You are indeed a witch, my wild Welsh rose. A witch who has me in her thrall. A seeress who has enchanted me.” Without warning he lifted her into his arms. His strides were swift and sure through the dark and the high grasses. He only stopped when he reached the rug he had prepared for them.

“You’ve bewitched me,” he murmured. “Whether with some dark potion or just the dark glow in your eyes, I don’t know. But I must have you, Wynne. There can be no other way.”

He set her upon her feet, then pulled her once more against him. His hands stroked slowly down her back, melting her, she thought through the fog of passion that had her in its grasp. But his touch, though lingering, was no less urgent. “Lie with me, love. Here and now. Forever,” he added in a soft, heated breath against her ear.

“Forever?” She sought his lips with hers, probing within his mouth, seeking to undo him in the same wanton manner with which he always managed to overwhelm her. Then she pulled a little away from him. “There can be no forever,” she whispered, as much to remind herself as to let him know. “There is only now. That’s all there can be for us.”

But Cleve ignored her words. As if he fought their dampening effect on both himself and her, he captured her lips once more. “We shall see,” he murmured. He pulled her down upon the rug so that they were kneeling face-to-face, their thighs touching, her breasts pressed against his chest. “We shall see.”

Wynne, however, fought the overpowering effect of his touch. “No.” She shook her head. “There can be only now. You must know that.”

There was a pause. “There can be more, Wynne. If you’ll just let there be.”

Like a cold rush of wind between them his words drove her a little farther back from him. “You are a fool to still believe that,” she whispered, her heart breaking from the intrusion of reality into this sweetest moment of unreality.

“Bedamned!” he swore, though he did not release her from his grasp. “If you believe that, why do you come to me this way? If you would keep me your enemy by day, how can you come to me as a lover by night?”

Wynne did not have an answer, at least not one she could express to him. She could hardly say that he was the one man in her life whom she would cherish above all others. She could never reveal that her feelings moved far beyond mere passion. An avowal of love would gain her nothing, and perhaps cost her everything.

But her silence only increased his agitation. “Why do you come to me?” he demanded, shaking her for emphasis.

“I would … I would see this passion to its fruition!” she cried in frustration. “ ’Tis nothing more than that. No, nothing,” she insisted.

“You are untried, are you not?”

Wynne gritted her teeth. “I am a virgin,” she confirmed. “But what has that to do with it?”

“In England a maiden such as you is kept well away from men. Her purity is a prize reserved for her husband.”

“We are not in England!” she cried, exasperated by this pointless discussion.

He laughed. “Ah, but we are in England, my love. Just beyond the Dyke is Wales, but where we sit, this is English soil.”

He had her there. But even so, Wynne did not see the purpose of this conversation.

“Do not expound your English values to me. If the English valued virgin maidens, they would not rape so freely. And what of you? You do not value my purity, else you would not be trying so adamantly to take it!”

He studied her a moment in the darkness. “I do not have to try very hard.”

“Oh! Why you … you utterly wretched man!” She tried to jerk free of his hold, but he had a merciless grip on her. A part of her knew he spoke very near the truth. Yet she refused to shoulder all the blame.

“If you believe I am so … so free with my … my … myself, then begone from here! Leave me be.”

For a long moment they glared at each other. Then he gave a self-deprecating chuckle. “I cannot,” he admitted. “Whether you tempt me in order that I will lower my guard against your bloodthirsty ways, whether you think to sway me to your way of thinking regarding your children—it hardly matters. I want you, and that is all. I want you and I must have you.”

Like a blast of hot summer air his profession of desire melted her icy rage. It kept coming back to that. They desired each other beyond all logic. She trembled despite her best efforts to appear composed. “You do not trust me, and I most assuredly do not trust you. All we have is this shared passion. Must there be a reason beyond that?” she finished in a soft, almost pleading voice.

He regarded her steadily. “Ideally, no. A shared passion should be enough reason.” Then his thoughtful tone grew more businesslike. “But it seldom works that way. Especially with untried maidens.”

“We Welsh do not view it in the same way you English do. We believe a girl’s purity is hers for the giving, not something her father or brother may barter away.”

“So why are you giving your purity to me?”

Wynne swallowed hard. They had come full circle, it seemed, back to the one subject she could not discuss with him. “I … I am curious,” she answered, but rather weakly.

His hands ran up and down her arms, making her aware of the great contrast between the cool night air and his warm touch. “There is no other reason?” he asked. “No ulterior motive?”

She stiffened. “ ’Tis not my intent to poison you, if that is what you fear.”

Once more he laughed. “No. If anything, I fear you will do me in with your truly lethal kisses and devastating touch. I may expire from the pure pleasure of your body pressed against mine.” He pulled her closer and bent to kiss the tender flesh at the side of her neck. “Would you do that for me, Wynne? Kill me with the exquisite pleasure of your sweet body?”

Wynne’s breath caught in her chest, and she arched her neck to better accommodate his searching lips. How could a man be at once so exciting and so exasperating? She licked her lips as a wave of fiery warmth flooded through her. “If you wish me to do you in that way, then … then I shall try.” She gasped the words out.

In a trifling moment he had her on her back, the rug prickly beneath her and his hard body warm above.

“Do your worst, then, sweet witch.”

With those words he seemed to release all the repressed passions within her. Like one being they communed. His hands found those areas of her body that most desired his touch. His lips brought a sort of heavenly salvation to her starving flesh.

Likewise did he respond to the bold ventures of her hands upon him. When one of her palms slid beneath his chainse, up the straining muscles of his back, gliding over the damp flesh there, he groaned and shifted. One of his hands found the hem of her kirtle and raised it to bare her legs. She felt the rough wool of his braies on the tender skin of her inner thighs. Like a threat and a caress it was. Something both to fear and to desire. Then when his hand followed, she gasped out loud.

“Cleve … what … wait.”

“Wait for what, sweet witch? Until we are both melting from this heat between us? If we wait any longer, I fear there may be nothing left of us but a puddle in the grass. No.” His hand slid higher, into the unchartered place between her thighs. “There is no time left for waiting.”

He was right. She knew it when his fingers found the damp center of her, and she cried out in wild abandon, arching convulsively. There was no time left for waiting. His magic was too strong for her. He was seducing her with it, making her bend to his touch, and there was nothing more she wanted in the entire world.