The Border Lord and the Lady (52 page)

W
hile he had come to her bed, Kier had not taken her since their wedding night. She had been puzzled at first, but then she realized he was considering all that had happened between them. They had coupled twice, and both times their passions had exploded wildly. Cicely began to wonder if it would always be that way between them. Nay. It was their pent-up abstinence that had brought about such near violence between them. Surely that was it.

Cicely requested a bath that first evening they were finally without guests. She was soaking peacefully when her husband entered the small bedchamber. Both Cicely and Orva looked startled, for he had not bothered to knock.

“Good night, Orva,” the laird said in a tone that brooked no refusal.

Orva curtsied, casting a quick glance at her mistress. “Good night, my lord, my lady,” she said, reluctantly departing when Cicely said nothing. The chamber door closed.

“You bathe muchly,” Kier remarked as he began pulling his clothes off.

“You should bathe more,” Cicely replied. “I don’t know why it is men avoid bathing except in the summer, when they swim in the loch and count it a bath.”

“I don’t want to smell like some damned flower,” he said.

“But you like it when I do,” Cicely noted mischievously.

“Aye.” He grinned. “I do.”

“You stink of horses and sweat,” she told him.

“If you can swear to me honestly that you got my cousin to bathe more, then I will bathe more, too,” he promised her.

Cicely laughed a wicked laugh. “Of course he learned to bathe more. He wanted to please me. Come!” She held out her hand to him over the top of the tub. “You are naked now, and I will bathe you myself. When you learn how to do it properly I will make you a soap that is scented with sandlewood and clove, a more manly fragrance. The quicker you learn how to wash yourself, the less you will smell like a stable.”

He had never bathed with a woman. It was an intriguing invitation. Of course, he could haul her from her tub and have his way with her without bathing. He was the laird of Glengorm, her husband, and he was to be obeyed. But he realized she was making an attempt to reach out to him, to offer more than just public respect and private lust. He remembered how it had been between his stepmother and father. They actually seemed to enjoy each other’s company, smiled secret smiles at each other, laughed at things he did not consider amusing but they did. They were more than content. They were happy in each other’s company.

He climbed the small steps up to the edge of the tub, then lowered himself into the warm water, facing her. It occurred to him that she was fully naked herself, and he began to consider the many possibilities of bathing that had little to do with cleanliness. Kier Douglas began to smile. When Cicely stepped before him, a washrag in her hand, the tips of her breasts touched his chest, and his cock began to stir.

Cicely began to wash his face. The cloth scrubbed his forehead, his cheeks, and his chin. It followed the outline of his nose, and then his mouth. The smell of the soap was actually very pleasant and delicate.

“Your face is even handsomer when it is clean, despite its roughness,” she noted, her fingers running over the dark stubble. She next moved to wash his neck. “When I was a child, before I was old enough to bathe myself, Orva did it for me,” Cicely told him. “If she saw a neck as dirty as yours is, my lord, she would have asked you if you were growing onions in it.” Cicely washed the dirt from his neck, and then rinsed the soap away.

She next tackled his shoulders, chest, and back, her cloth working up a lather, then rinsing it away. Then she moved on to his long arms and his hands. “Your nails need paring,” she said. “I shall do it when we remove ourselves from the tub, my lord.” She moved with care so as not to splash water from the tub onto the floor. The addition of another person to the tub had brought the water dangerously high, to the tub’s edge. When she had finished his arms she handed him the cloth. “You will have to do the rest now,” she told him, easing herself up from the water onto the tub’s ledge, and swinging her legs about, her feet reaching for the stairs. Finding them, she stood and stepped down.

“But I don’t know how,” he said in a futile attempt to sound helpless. He was staring at her now, and his cock had hardened as his eyes swept over her nakedness.

“Don’t be silly,” she scolded him. “Of course you know how to wash your legs, feet, and other parts. If I tried to help you we would have water all over the chamber.” Then she quickly picked up her warm towel and began to dry herself, aware of his eyes on her nudity. He had never really seen her quite so fully bared. Cicely reached out for her chemise and made to draw it on.

“Don’t!”
he told her sharply.

“Oh. Very well, my lord, but if you do not mind I will await you in bed. The night air is chill, and the heat of the fire is somewhat blocked by the tub,” Cicely said, climbing into her bed and drawing the covers up.

“Will you not dry me?” he teased, and climbed from the tub
down the steps to the floor. His aroused state was so obvious she blushed.

“Dry yourself,” she told him. “You are a big lad.”

“You noticed.” He chuckled, rubbing the water briskly from his body.

Cicely giggled. She couldn’t help it. “Aye, I’ve noticed,” she admitted, thinking that something was different tonight between them. What was it? And why? Was there some kind of relief in the fact that their marriage was now a fact, or that their guests were gone, and they were alone in the house but for the staff and wee Johanna? She felt the bed shift as he climbed in, sitting next to her, his back against the pillows.

“Well, madam,” he said softly, “here we are once again. Are you satisfied now that I smell like a field of posies?” He took her hand in his.

“I must wash your hair on the morrow to be content with you,” Cicely said to him. The big hand wrapped about her fingers was warm.

“I intend that you be content long before the morrow,” he replied, bringing her hand to his lips to kiss it. Then he nibbled lightly upon her knuckles for a brief moment.

She was silent, for if the truth be known, she was not certain what to say to him.

“What, madam, I have finally stilled that sharp tongue of yours? How is this possible?” Kier inquired of her.

“There is something different between us suddenly,” Cicely said candidly. “Do you not feel it, my lord?”

He did feel it, but he wasn’t certain whether he should admit to it until he knew exactly what it was. Now he was silent.

She saw the play of emotions across his face, for Cicely had turned her head to look at him. He was uncertain what to do or say, and it surprised her. Then she remembered that Jo had said men needed more assurance than women did when it came to matters of the heart.
The words came out before she could think further. “Perhaps now that you are clean, my lord, I am coming to like you better,” she told him.

“Are you?” he answered her, looking wary.

“Aye!” Cicely told him. “I do believe that I like you,
husband
.”

She liked him!
But wait. Why this sudden change of heart? What mischief was the woman up to? From the moment that they had been matched they had disliked each other intensely. When they came together in conjugal union it was rough and wild. Nay, it was he who had been cruel, not Cicely. Still, he was suspicious. “What has caused this change of heart, madam?” he demanded of her in a hard voice. Then he pulled her into his arms so he might look down into her face when she spoke to see if she lied.

Cicely almost quailed at his tone, but instead she decided she would face him with the truth. Truth was a powerful weapon. Looking up into his handsome face, she said, “I believe that you like me despite what you have said in the past. And I told you I didn’t like you only because you spoke the words to me first. They were hurtful, Kier. I had to wonder if your anger was only because you couldn’t have Glengorm without me. So when you expressed your dislike of me I responded in kind.”

He nodded. “But you like me now,” he said.

“I never disliked you, my lord. First I came to love Glengorm. And I loved Ian in my own way. And then he was gone, but Johanna was born to bind me even closer to Glengorm. I was frightened that I would have to hold these lands for my daughter. I am not, for all my fine upbringing, a weakling, but I never expected to find myself in a border house alone with my child. Frang will tell you that I asked him to teach me the art of defending this house, and he did.

“But then Sir William sent you to me as soon as he learned of Ian’s death. I cannot tell you the relief I felt when you took charge. I should have done whatever I had to do to keep Glengorm and its folk safe, but I was glad for your coming. And when I went into labor with
Johanna, you were there in Ian’s place helping me. You were kind, and I thought then that perhaps you were not so terrible. But why did you tell me you did not like me, Kier? What had I done that made you say those words? Though I do not believe for a moment that you ever meant them, even as I did not mean them.”

She had indeed surprised him. Finally he said, “I have not had good fortune where women are concerned.”

“There are no tales about you, as there were about ‘the wenching Douglas,’ ” Cicely said thoughtfully. “And you are past thirty, but have had no wife. And certainly not because you are unable to please a woman.”

“I loved a lass once, but her father would not have me because of the situation of my birth,” Kier admitted to Cicely. “Love weakens a man. I would not have believed it until it happened to me. I vowed never to be weakened by a woman again, madam.”

Cicely reached up and caressed his jaw. “You don’t have to love me, Kier,” she told him. “But could you at least admit to liking me?”

God’s balls!
There she lay, naked in his lap, her soft hand upon his face, speaking sweetly to him. Not love her? Of course he loved her, even if he could admit it only to himself. If she knew how he felt now she would have power over him, and no woman would ever have that power again. “I don’t dislike you, lass,” he told her.

“That will do for now,” Cicely replied with a small smile.

“Madam, I will never love you!” he exclaimed suddenly, sensing he was losing the argument between them over this.

“I am content that you can like me,” Cicely said. “Our children should come not just from our lustful pleasures, but from our mutual affections.” He said he would never love her, and suddenly Cicely knew that she wanted him to love her, for she was falling in love with him. But he would not know. He could not know! It would only give him an advantage over her. Cicely wanted to cry, but she didn’t. Her gaze never wavered.

She was confusing him. Those beautiful blue-green eyes looked
up at him. They were incredible eyes, and he felt briefly weakened by them. “Enough, madam,” he said, and he pulled her up so he might kiss her. Their lips met, and Cicely sighed. For some reason that soft little sound made him feel as if he were in complete control of their destiny. Her mouth was sweet beneath his, and he devoured her with his lips.

If he truly liked her, Cicely thought muzzily, the love would come eventually. She wrapped her arms about Kier and kissed him back kiss for kiss until her lips were swollen and burning. When his hand moved to cup her breast she arched into him as his thumb stroked and encircled her nipple. Then her hands began a daring exploration of his body as he explored hers.

Her fingers lightly caressed his shoulders, feeling the hard muscles beneath the skin. She reached up to catch his head between her two hands, tangling her fingers into his thick raven black hair. Cicely shifted her body so that it pressed against the length of his, and he groaned. Breast to chest. Belly to belly. She felt the thick ridge of his manhood against her thigh. The hard flesh against her soft flesh was warm, and she could have sworn it throbbed.

Kier moved her beneath him, and his dark head bent to her breasts. He kissed them and suckled hungrily upon each breast, his lips, his teeth, his tongue causing tremors to overtake her. The dark head followed a path of worship down her torso, kissing, licking. He positioned himself between her thighs, and then to her surprise he pulled her up so that her legs rested on his shoulders, her ankles fastening themselves about his neck. Burying his face in her mons, he kissed her there.

Then, using his thumbs, he opened her to his vision, staring at the moist pink flesh already pearling with its cream, the tiny jewel in its center luring him forward. His tongue began to stroke the nubbin of sensitive flesh, flicking lightly over it, slowly, slowly, then faster and faster until Cicely was writhing beneath his mouth.

“Kier! Kier!” she cried his name, then shuddered as she experienced
a strong burst of tingling delight that exploded like a shower of heat over her.

He groaned again, his tongue licking and licking and licking her juices until she begged for mercy. He raised his head and asked her in a rough voice, “What do you want, madam? Tell me what you want, and you shall have it!” His manhood was hard with his need for her, but he wanted, he needed to hear her ask, because if she asked then she was not just coupling with him out of a sense of duty. He wanted more than duty.

“I want you inside of me, my lord,” she cried out to him. “I need you inside of me!” Her legs fell away from him as she spread herself wide. “Take me now!
Please!
”

“You like me,” he said softly, taunting her as his fingers stroked the wet flesh.

“You like me,” she countered, reaching out to caress his length with her fingers, which closed about him, squeezing gently before releasing him. Again her eyes met his in a melting gaze. “And, aye, I like you, Kier Douglas!”

He said nothing; instead he swung himself over her and, with a sure hand, guided himself to the gates of paradise. She cried out as he thrust himself into her. He stopped, enjoying the delicious sensation of her silken wet heat as the walls of her sheath closed tightly around him. Then he began to move with strong, rhythmic strokes of his cock as it flashed back and forth, back and forth until Cicely was almost weeping with her delight.