Chapter 24 #2
Feeling defeated, she returned to her task of wearing a path in the floor rushes. As she sailed around the room, the little pot of blush of rose slipped from her fingers. She almost paused to retrieve it, but a great weariness sent her back to her bed.
She grasped the bed curtains and eased them farther aside before removing her black mourning gown and Evelina’s slip of a chemise.
She’d scrub the paint from her breasts on the morrow. One last time, she let her fingertips glide down the carved swirls of her bedpost.
His bedpost.
Then she blew out the candle stumps, pinched the wicks, and climbed into the dark recess of her waiting bed.
Not that she expected to sleep.
In a dark and quiet corner of Dunmuir, a hidden alcove where nothing but the damp scent of rain and the earthy musk of spent lust could intrude, Evelina breathed a soft sigh of pleasure, and allowed herself to be pulled more snugly into her own knight’s arms.
Sated and indulged, she ran her fingertips across the smattering of hair on his broad, hard-muscled chest, and pressed sweet kisses into the hollow where his neck joined his shoulders.
She lit a kiss to his beard, awed by the wonder he made her feel, the surge of love filling her.
“My beauty…” The veteran warrior gave her well-satisfied smile, and smoothed his callused hand down the curve of her hip. “You are my world, the reason my heart beats.
“Ne’er have I known more contentment than holding you,” he vowed, skimming his fingers along her thigh before brushing them lightly over her intimate curls, toying with them in the same lazy way she moved her own fingers over his chest hair.
“And now that you’ve spent yourself once, you mean to be content with merely holding me?” Evelina purred, parting her thighs to invite a more thorough exploration.
Her lover obliged, dipping his hand deeper between her legs, no longer gently, but firm and demanding, palming her womanhood with a rough, circular motion until she arched her hips, pressing herself against his hand, opening her thighs even wider in her need.
“Taste me,” she urged him, the words a command, but cushioned on a breathy sigh no man could deny.
Her one-time champion knight didn’t even think to. With a heating of his gaze, and an agility that belied his years, he eased her onto her back, and settled himself at the core of her womanhood, gladly partaking of all she offered him.
He inhaled deeply. Then, for the longest moment, he just looked at her. His gaze locked on her hot, pulsing need.
“My warrior…” She could hardly speak.
Intense pleasure spun through her for she knew how much he, too, enjoyed this most intimate of acts.
He also took his time, first lightly circling his thumbs over her inner thighs, then letting his soft, warm breath hush over her feminine curls.
He used his oh-so-magical hands to open her fully, freeing all of her to his greedy gaze.
Evelina shivered, her excitement almost unbearable as he looked down at her, his eyes dark with passion.
Then he leaned close again, his tongue gliding slowly up and down the seam of her sleek, tingling flesh. And as he licked her so leisurely, he used the tip of one finger to tease and rub the tiny, sensitive bud of her greatest pleasure.
“You will end me...” Evelina closed her eyes, clutched handfuls of his thick, shoulder-length hair. She began writhing as his tongue licked and swirled, his finger’s magic threatening to shatter her.
She risked a glance at him, always excited to watch him devour her. “I cannot take anymore…”
“You must, my beauty.” He looked up at her, his eyes glinting in the darkness. “I have only begun to savor you,” he said, then replaced his circling finger with his mouth, drawing gently on her.
He didn’t stop until he’d coaxed every sigh, each sweet shiver out of her. Sighs, shivers, and the most thunderous release he could give her.
Then, with a deep, sated sigh of his own, the rugged knight stretched out beside her on the simple pallet and drew her back into the circle of his arms.
“You are my life, Evelina.” He reached for her hand, twining their fingers. “I cannae go on without you.”
“You needn’t. You have me, all of me.”
“’Tis no’ enough, and ne’er will be.”
She stiffened. “You must not speak such foolery,” she warned, a tremor rippling down her back.
A shiver she hoped he’d mistake for the last, lingering vestiges of her release.
“Foolery?” He lifted up on his elbow to peer down at her. Frowning, he adjusted the plaid he swirled over her, protecting her from the chill damp of their trysting place. “Is that how you see my feelings for you?”
“Nae.” She gave him a wistful smile. “Not your feelings, dear heart.” She smoothed back his thick, brown-gray hair. “Never that, I promise.”
“Then what?” His deep voice came harsh against the patter of rain and the low, rhythmic snores of those sleeping on pallets not far away. Clansmen blessedly unaware of the two lovers nestled in a dark, secluded niche in a corner of the slumbering great hall.
“Leave be.” She touched her fingers to his lips. “It serves no purpose to rile yourself.”
“Then dinnae rile me.” He grasped her hand again, this time bringing the soft underside of her wrist to his lips for a thorough and possessive kiss. “If you would no’ see me vexed, then have done with your mad notions and wed me.”
Evelina sighed. “Do not make me regret I stayed the night here, my love.”
“I would harry you with regrets to the end of the world and back if it would help my cause,” her lover vowed, agitation thrumming in his voice, his agitation crackling in the chill, damp air. “I love you, Evelina. And I would see you where you belong, as my lady wife, at my side.”
Evelina’s heart twisted. “I have told you before, I will not marry you,” she said, drawing on her long years of training to hide the pain it cost her to refuse him. “I will not see you scorned.”
“Think you I care what the tongue-waggers might say?”
“Not might, will.”
“The plague take them.”
“I know you do not care about gossip,” Evelina said, closing her eyes against the hurt she knew she was causing him. “’Tis I who care. Now please be silent before everyone hears you ranting and discovers us.”
“Perhaps they should!” the knight swore, his frustration palpable.
“Please, my love, be still and let us glory in what we do have.” Evelina slipped her hand beneath the blanket and began making slow, gentle circles on his heaving chest.
Soothing caresses, she hoped.
“Becalm yourself and let us sleep.” She pressed a gentle kiss on his shoulder. “We have enjoyed a full night together. Our first. Let that be enough.”
“It will ne’er be enough,” her lover returned, but already his breathing slowed, and soon his quiet snores joined those of his sleeping kinsmen.
Only Evelina didn’t sleep.
She simply awaited the dawn as she did on countless other nights. Staring into the darkness, listening to the gentle fall of rain and the soft sigh of the wind.
And every once in a while, wiping the dampness from her eyes.