Chapter 17 #3
Mellyora slipped down the stairs to the ground floor, then across the room to a corridor parallel to that above.
Taking a torch from the wall, she moved in the shadows until she came to the chapel.
It was small and simple: a Norman arch had been built over the altar, the pews were basic oak, and no more than twenty-five people could comfortably sit in the room.
A winding stairway led to the crypts below, but she hesitated, staring at the single religious symbol in the chapel, the beautiful gold Celtic cross that hung above the altar.
She walked down the hall, then started, thinking that she heard movement.
“Hello?” she called softly. “Hello …”
Unease filtered down her spine. “Hello! Come out!” she whispered heatedly.
She’d heard a rustling from the stairs. But now, she thought that she heard something from behind her.
She spun around.
Waryk. Still in his fur-trimmed robe, arms crossed over his chest, eyes narrowed in the dim light.
“Waryk!” she cried nervously.
“Who are you meeting here?” he demanded.
“What?”
“Who are you supposed to meet here, who are you calling?”
She shook her head. “No one!”
His expletive cut the night like a blade, and despite herself, she winced, moving backwards, hands clenched into fists. He started down the aisle toward her, strides long, eyes sharp. “Then why are you here?”
“I just came to—to—”
“To what?”
“See my mother’s grave.”
He stopped, just six inches from her. She had to hold her ground or trip over the dais where the altar stood.
“In the middle of the night?” he challenged. “To commune with her? To ask her if your father hadn’t been a plundering, thieving, raping conqueror when he first came here?”
“Aye, maybe!”
“You’re a liar,” he told her.
She opened her mouth to protest, but his hand suddenly shot out.
His fingers entwined in her hair and he dragged her toward him, tilting her head.
He stared into her eyes, then lowered his mouth to hers, covering it, encompassing it.
His tongue moved into her mouth with a coercive, invading force.
His lips punished, and yet seduced with a strange, wild, fire.
She struggled against him, unnerved by his mood, and his sudden actions.
He had touched her before, and pushed her away.
Time and again. Yet now it seemed that something exploded within her, liquid, like mercury, dancing in her blood.
She wanted to free herself, she wanted to go back, she had taunted him too far, and she knew it, and she wanted the evening to start over, she didn’t want to feel this cataclysm of scalding heat sear through her with such wicked design …
“Stop, we’re in a chapel!” she whispered, breaking from him.
“So, confess your sins. Who were you meeting?” he demanded against her mouth.
“No one!”
“You’re a liar,” he said, and his fingers, threaded into her hair, tightened their hold so that she nearly cried out. She didn’t think that she’d ever seen him so incensed. “You were expecting someone to be here. You wretched little fool. You’ll bring about the deaths of a dozen men yet.”
“No!”
“You’re right. Because I won’t let you,” he said suddenly, and he ducked, picking her up, hiking her over his shoulders.
“Waryk, what are you doing. Waryk, let me go, I can walk, someone will see us—”
“Oh? Who?”
“Let me go, let me walk, let me stand on my own feet, I will go where you want me to go—”
“Aye, that you will.”
He was very angry, and she was flopping against his back as he moved with long, heedless strides. “Waryk, you’re tossing me about like a sack of flour—”
“Aye, and I’ve only just begun.”
He carried her back to the main stairway to the second floor apartments, and down the corridor to their rooms.
He laid her down upon the bed, and was with her, over her.
Firelight played in the room, catching the ice in his eyes, and it seemed that they gleamed red, and gold, a demon’s eyes, eyes of fury, relentless.
She started to speak, to protest, to fight; but once again, his mouth covered and consumed hers, and the taste of him seemed to fill her, even as she felt as if he raided her soul with his kiss, the force of his lips and tongue sweeping thought and reason, protest and strength away from her.
Her robe was split open she realized, as was his, and she felt his nakedness pressed to her.
Her linen gown was shoved high to her waist; she felt his hand on her flesh, fingers brushing her nakedness, touching, probing.
She couldn’t breathe; she was pressed deeper and deeper into the bed, she wanted to jump, to scream, to leap atop the walls as she felt him probing, and then shifting, and then …
She did scream, into his throat, against his lips.
Her nails dug into him. Conflicting sensations tore into her, warmth, unbearable warmth, filling her, blood seeping into bone, overwhelming.
She wanted to cling to him, she wanted to throw him away.
Something seemed wonderful, touching, feeling, breathing him …
his lips, still so close to hers, his scent, still so subtly sensual, compelling, tantalizing, even while …
The pain seemed to knife right through her. She wouldn’t cry, she thought, wouldn’t whimper. Would never falter, allow him to see, to know, how he had hurt her …
But he would see, he would know, because he was dead still, and even in the shadows and darkness he was staring down at her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice was harsh.
“Oh, you idiot, I did tell you, you didn’t want to listen, you didn’t want to believe! I swore on my father, and—”
She broke off. He’d made some sniffing sound of impatience and begun to move again, and she gasped, fingers clinging into his fur-clad shoulders and a cry escaping her no matter what her promise to herself.
“Quit, quit, quit …” she pleaded, eyes locked on his in serious entreaty, but his mouth covered hers, and something …
began to change. His lips moved with such subtle persuasion, his tongue caressed, beckoning as much as plundering, his fingers moved down the length of her, tips stroking her flesh …
The pain faded slowly … and she was numb.
No … not numb. She could feel him, the taut constriction of his muscles, the increasing fever of his movements, the heat that threatened to overwhelm her.
His breathing came like a north wind, his heart beat like thunder.
Enveloped in his arms, she suddenly felt as if he impaled her to the bone, and she twisted in his arms, amazed at the shuddering force it awakened within her.
He moved again, and again, and she was still just clinging, feeling broken and split …
and amazed, and strangely gratified by the feel of wet, steaming heat that seemed to fill her, permeate her body, and her being …
He withdrew slowly, and lay on his back. She was cold, and instantly sore once again, keenly aware of what had taken place. Of course, she had known what it was to be married, expected what had come, and yet …
She’d never expected to feel a strangely awakened hunger. With him. When she still hurt, yet felt a need to touch his flesh, lie against him, bury herself within him. Be held by him, and soothed by him, caressed, and …
Wanted.
It was one thing to accept all this.
It was another to long for it, for him …
She turned away, curling to a ball at his side, tangled in her gown and robe.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment.
“You should be.”
“Well, milady, it’s really your fault—”
“My fault!”
“You liked the game you were playing. You played it well, you taunted me, and enjoyed my discomfort.”
“I never!” she bed. “I told you the truth, and you chose not to believe me.”
“I was wrong.”
His answer surprised her so much that she lay silent for a long moment, then whispered, “What?”
“Obviously, I was wrong.”
“Obviously,” she said, surprised at the tears that stung her eyes and glad that her back was to him.
“Glad, too, of course. I really do like Ewan.”
She swung around at that. He wasn’t looking at her, but up at the ceiling, and he seemed annoyingly complacent. “You’re glad because you like Ewan?” she said.
“Aye.”
She rose up in her tangle of clothing, raising both hands to pummel him at that, but he caught her wrists, surprised. “Now, what, madam—”
“You should be glad, sir, to discover that your wife had told the truth when she swore to you—on her father’s honor—that she’d not taken a lover!”
“Ah!” he said, and suddenly she was swung down upon her back, and he was straddling her. “I see, you didn’t want me to like Ewan, you wanted to see us both ever tormented and suspicious, ready to tear into one another at all times.”
“No!” she cried. His robe still clung to his shoulders, but that was all, and she was so newly aware of his scarred and muscled body that she felt as if her own reddened at the simple contact. “Oh, will you get off of me, please, you refuse to understand, you are simply wretched, you—you—”
She broke off because he was staring down at her, smiling.
“What do you find so amusing?” she inquired.
“Not amusing. Pleasing,” he said softly.
Again, she felt her flesh flame.
“Waryk, get—”