Fairest of Them All (Once Upon A Time #3)

Chapter 22

CHAPTER 22

Austyn had envisioned Holly in many guises in the past fortnight: haughty lady sneering down at her patrician nose at him; malicious harpy berating him for his greed; bewitching temptress taunting him with a flutter of her burgeoning lashes and a flick of her moist, pink tongue. But as he gazed at her curled on the bed of sable like a small, contented cat, he realized each of those women were only illusions contrived to distract him from who she really was.

His wife.

The thin chemise had puddled around her hips, baring her slender legs. ’Twas impossible for a man to look upon such legs and not envision them wrapped around his waist. As if Holly had divined his thoughts, she tugged the chemise down to shield them from his gaze. Her modesty pricked his conscience, stirring his conflicting desires to protect and possess.

He tore down the veil of webs that separated them with a savage swipe. “Rather enjoying playing the captive princess, aren’t you, sweeting? Would you like me to fan you with peacock feathers or pop grapes in your mouth?” His sarcasm betrayed him, battering him with images of Holly’s succulent lips parting to receive whatever he would give her.

Holly moved to a sitting position, warily eyeing the savage stranger she had once called “husband.” His hair was unkempt, his eyes red-rimmed and wild, as if he hadn’t slept since their last encounter. He’d been seething with icy anger then, but now an edge of desperation sharpened his expression. Holly longed to reach out to him, but did not dare. She knew with a conviction beyond faith that if she drove him to abandon her this night, he would never return.

She hid her distress behind a mask of scorn. “If you think I take any pleasure in my captivity, then you’re sorely mistaken. I’d gladly trade my lavish cell to lay in a meadow of fresh cut hay or feel the cool rain beat on my face. But I suppose you wouldn’t understand that, being the sort of man who locks up a lady and allows a murderer free roam of his castle.”

Austyn’s faint flinch told her she had struck well and deep. “You, my lady, committed your treachery willfully. My father had no choice.”

Had Holly not been convinced that Austyn believed every word he was saying, she would have given vent to the hysterical laugh that welled in her throat. “Ah, the dreaded curse of the Gavenmores! Refresh my memory. Was it cast by a temperamental mermaid offended by some clumsy fisherman?” She wiggled her graceful fingers at him. “Or some fat little Booka infuriated because one of your ancestors stepped on his toadstool?”

A becoming flush crawled up Austyn’s throat. Holly doubted that anyone had ever dared to question the veracity of the Gavenmore curse. At least not to his face. “’Twas neither,” he strangled out. “’Twas the faerie queen Rhiannon, a cruel and heartless witch.”

“A heartless witch falsely accused of infidelity.” Holly twined a curl around her finger, pursing her lips in a thoughtful pout. “If a man refuses to trust a woman he claims to love, then tell me, husband, who between them is the faithless one? Has it never occurred to you that your father might be cursed with nothing more than a savage temper? Perhaps ’twas his own wretched jealousy that drove your mother into the arms of another man.”

“Enough!” Austyn roared. “You know naught of what you speak. Perhaps you seek only to justify your own infidelity.”

Holly sat up on her knees, eager for any opportunity to defend herself. “If you believed that, Nathanael would be dead instead of rotting away in your dungeon. You are a knight, sir. ’Twas I who wronged you; therefore, honor should demand that you free him.”

Austyn’s caustic smile never reached his eyes. “See how prettily she pleads for her lover’s freedom.”

“He is not my lover!” Holly yelled, pushed beyond endurance by her husband’s stubbornness. “I am innocent!”

Austyn’s voice softened to a velvety rasp. “There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?”

A fearful hope quickened in Holly’s heart. If her husband required proof of her innocence, then she was only too willing to provide it. As he stalked toward the bed pedestal, she scrambled off the other side, provoking him to pursue her with deliberate insolence.

“Did you think Nathanael my only lover? How naive of you! There were scores of others. Dozens! Hundreds!” She ran to the window and wrenched open the shutters. A violent gust of wind and rain extinguished every taper, whipped the webs into a dancing frenzy. Holly refused to cower from Austyn’s inevitable approach. “They visit me here in my bed every night.” She gave her riotous curls a shake. “I just lower my hair and up they climb!”

Wrapping a muscular arm around her waist, Austyn drove her against the sill, parting her legs with the breadth of his hips. Cold raindrops pelted her back in stark contrast to the rigid heat pressed to the vulnerable hollow between her thighs. He tangled his free hand in her curls, bending her head back until his lips hovered above hers, a sigh away from possession. Each desperate catch of his breath throbbed in her ears.

If only he would kiss her, Holly thought frantically, she might be able to reach the man she had married.

“Why do you hesitate?” she whispered hoarsely. “Is it the curse you fear?”

“The curse has no power over me.”

“Why not?”

Holly’s world narrowed to the feral gleam of his eyes in the darkness, the note of savage despair in his voice. “Because I would have to love you first.”

She knew then that he wasn’t going to kiss her. Knew it even as he wrapped an arm around her hips and lifted her to the bed. Knew it as he laid her beneath him on the plush sable, shoved up her chemise, baring her to the waist, and nudged her knees apart.

She reached for him, desiring nothing more than to caress his bearded jaw, thread her fingers through his hair, wrap him in her embrace. But he caught both of her wrists in one hand, his grip a gentle manacle that sought not to bind her in cruelty, but to deprive him of a tenderness that might destroy them both. Shivering with reaction, Holly braced herself for the worst.

Her entire body convulsed as if seared by lightning as one of his deft fingers parted the fleecy down between her thighs.

She turned her face to the pillow, aflame with shyness at his perverse gallantry. He might deny her the kisses and caresses of lovemaking, but he would not brutalize her. Broken gasps escaped from between her clenched teeth as he probed the tender cleft, his big, blunt finger burrowing deeper with each stroke, making her ready to receive him. Devastating tingles of pleasure spread from his touch. When his one finger was joined by another, she could not resist the foreign urge to arch against his hand.

Austyn knew he’d erred the instant his hand breached Holly’s silky nether curls. He’d had every intention of bedding her urgently and crudely, as if she were nothing more than a jaded harlot he had laid down his coin for, but the feel of her delicate body shivering beneath his own had stirred some lingering remnant of decency in his soul.

When his finger sought to prime her for his possession, he bit back a groan to discover the fragile cup of her womb already overflowed with nectar for him. ’Twas a bitter sweetness he had not entreated and did not deserve.

It tempted him to graze his thumb across the sensitive nub buried in her own sable pelt. Tempted him to suckle her magnificent breasts through the gossamer sendal of the chemise until she writhed with pleasure beneath him. Tempted him to part the tender petals of her lips with his tongue. But how long would it be before that tongue betrayed him? Before he began to murmur hot, hoarse words against her mouth, the curve of her throat, the satiny cream of her belly? Words of tenderness. Words of love. Words of doom.

His reckless musings cost him dearly. Holly’s hand escaped his and twined around his nape, scorching him like a red-hot brand.

Ruthlessly quenching every longing but his most primal one, Austyn unfastened his hose, linked his fingers through hers and pressed her hands back on each side of her head.

Holly clung to Austyn’s strong hands, all she knew of substance in a shadowy universe of torrential rain, crashing thunder, and howling winds. When terror threatened to overwhelm her, she reminded herself that this was no stranger looming over her, but her Austyn—big and warm and smelling of mint and the musk of his need.

A flash of lightning illuminated the tower. Their gazes locked for a brief eternity, then he drove himself between her splayed legs with a guttural groan, cleaving the fragile barrier of her innocence.

Holly’s fingers arched along with her back as a bright lance of pain consumed her. Austyn’s hand could have ravished her for hours and not prepared her for this fulsome weight inside of her. He seemed overwhelming to her, so massive she did not know how her slight body could contain him. Yet somehow it did, adjusting magically to welcome the length and breadth of him into her melting core.

As the pain subsided, she squeezed his hands until their palms were mated as tightly as their bodies. He ground his hips against her own, wedging himself as deep in her throbbing sheath as she could take him, then withdrawing to do it again. His hands held her captive to his will while his body bludgeoned her with waves of dark pleasure until she could hardly recognize the sound of her own voice, entreating him with broken moans and hoarse whimpers for some shimmering reprieve he alone could deliver.

His only reply other than the harsh rasp of his breathing was to double the intensity and rhythm of his earthy siege. She gasped with pure delight as every muscle of his powerful body went as rigid as the part of him buried to the hilt in her. Lightning sizzled through the tower, gifting her with a glimpse of the savage beauty of his features as he threw back his head in exultation, breaking his silence at last to roar her name in an incantation of pure ecstasy.

He collapsed against her, burying his face against her throat. Holly slipped her hand from beneath his limp one, thinking only to curl her fingers in the damp silk of his hair. He rolled off of her with nary a word, adjusted his hose, and went striding from the tower as if a legion of demons nipped at his heels.

Holly lay there in the dark with her bare legs sprawled apart, her chemise crumpled around her waist, her tender body still overflowing with the scalding bounty of her husband’s seed and murmured, “Oh, my.”

Austyn’s steps grew heavy as he descended the winding stairs to the great hall. The cavernous chamber was deserted, the dying embers of the fire in the central hearth its only light. A tankard of ale and an abandoned goblet sat on the table. The storm’s threat had subsided to a distant rumble of thunder and the muted patter of rain on the battlements.

At the discordant strum of fingers against lute strings, Austyn nearly jumped out of his skin.

“What ails you, man? Guilty conscience?”

Austyn scowled into the shadows fringing the hall, finally making out the luster of Carey’s fair hair. “’Tis fortunate I’m unarmed. I might have mistaken you for a Viking raider and whacked off your pretty head.”

Carey plucked a few saucy notes in reply, then tilted his head to study him. “That didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would.”

For a searing moment, Austyn hated his friend for knowing him so well. It took little more than his heightened color to betray him to Carey. He strode over to the table, poured a strong splash of ale in the goblet and drank it down in one swallow. “I didn’t rape her, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Would I imply such? I have no doubt that she simply succumbed to your gallant charms. What did you do? Growl some poetry at her?”

Austyn clenched his teeth to suppress a growl. “There is no need of such nonsense between us. She is my wife. I had every right to determine if she had lain with another man before me.”

Carey’s tone was as light as his fingers dancing over the strings. “And had she?”

“No,” Austyn replied, despising his own sullen tone.

“But that didn’t stop you, did it?”

Nor could Austyn stop himself from reliving that moment when he’d primed himself with Holly’s copious balm and breached the taut cocoon of her body. She’d fit him like a silken gauntlet Even as guilt assailed him at the memory of her muffled whimper, his insatiable body stirred to life.

He slammed the goblet on the table, paying it no heed when it overturned. “What would you have had me do? Withdraw and apologize? Say ‘Forgive me, my lady, for piercing your maidenhead. I can promise you ’twill never happen again.’” He paced over to the stairs, sank down on the lowest step, and rested his aching head in his hands. “God forgive me, Carey, I used her like a common whore,” he confessed hoarsely. “I kissed neither her lips nor her breasts. I offered her not a word of kindness or solace. I swear I did not deliberately seek to hurt her. I left no bruises to mar her beautiful skin.” He raked his fingers through his hair, lifting his despairing gaze to Carey’s face. “At least none you can see.”

Carey only strummed a thoughtful chord.

Austyn shook his head. “I had such tender courtesies plotted for my wife’s seduction before I discovered her treachery. Scented tapers and spiced wine. Gentle kisses and honeyed words. Yet I offered her none of those tonight.”

The lute fell silent. “And she accepted your brutish attentions with open…um, arms?”

Austyn nodded.

“Then perhaps you should ask yourself why.”

As Carey rose and strolled from the hall, his fingers plucking a pensive melody, Austyn stared into the glowing embers on the hearth. He had bedded Holly without grace or tenderness, fearing that if he allowed his hands to explore the extravagant curves of her breasts or given his thirsty lips leave to sip the honeyed nectar of her mouth, his soul would be eternally lost.

Yet as he buried his face in hands still scented with the wedded spices of musk and myrrh, he felt more damned than ever before.