Chapter 13 #2
“Sybilla,” he said in a low, alarmed voice. And then in the next instant, he was crouched at her side, his arms strong beneath her back and knees, lifting her from the cold, stone step and close against his bare chest, so warm and solid.
Her arms went around his neck as he turned back through the doorway and Sybilla sobbed into his shoulder as he kicked the door closed behind them both, leaving the tiny portrait lying forgotten on the stairs.
She clung to him like someone rescued from a rushing, flooded river, her body seeming frail and slight, limp, and so cold. And she was crying, pressing her damp face into his shoulder, her labored inhalations pulling at his skin.
Julian did not hesitate—nay, he did not even think twice about it—when he took her to his bed, kneeling upon it carefully and then twisting to lay Sybilla down.
Her arms did not relent and so he stretched out beside her, still holding her close against him.
He pressed one palm between her shoulder blades; the other cradled her head, stroking her hair.
This was unlike any Sybilla Foxe he had heard tales of.
Unlike any Sybilla Foxe he had seen during his time at Fallstowe.
Here was no ice-cold matriarch, no notorious demigoddess, no traitorous villain.
This was a woman devastated, lost, so defenseless and defeated that she could not hold her head aright.
Julian could almost feel the pain seeping out of her chest in the area of her heart and leeching into his flesh.
He could almost hear the rending sound that gentle organ was making behind its thick fortress.
He held her closer.
“Shh,” he whispered against her hair, and then pressed his mouth there at the crown of her head.
She smelled of sunshine on a winter’s day, like a steamy exhalation around a melancholy smile.
Her hair was soft and clouded like silk, the vague scent of her particular soap lingering there like a nosegay of dried flowers forgotten in the snow. “Shh. Sybilla, it’s all right.”
“She hated me,” she choked out against his chest, her words hot and wet with tears and emotion. “My own mother hated me.”
Julian had no response.
It was several moments before her sobbing quieted to the occasional hiccough.
“You don’t understand,” she said in a raspy whisper, and Julian imagined that her throat must be raw.
“She named me after . . . her. After ... Sybil.” She pulled away slightly to look up into Julian’s face, and he was struck breathless at the beauty of her, the raw emotion spread across her face.
Her eyelids were pink, the lashes black and spiky, like tiny weapons.
Her nose and cheeks flushed atop her ivory skin.
“She denied her as her sister,” Sybilla clarified. “She spoke of her so . . . so coldly. As if she was a stranger. Only she never told me her name. But now I know—she named me after the woman she considered an enemy.”
Julian frowned. “But she let you assume you were named after her, and she never revealed that Sybil was not part of her given name. Surely you must take that as some sign of her consideration for you.”
Sybilla put her cheek against his chest once more, gently this time though, without the desperation of before. He could no longer see her face, and Julian didn’t like it.
“It was a little joke to her, I think,” Sybilla said in a low voice, a dark voice.
“It makes sense now. She took the name Sybil out of practicality, to lend authenticity to her stolen identity as a lady. She took a family name, that of a woman who had everything my mother wanted—money, status, privilege. Those things she did eventually gain. Then when I was born, she gave that name to me.”
“I fail to see the humor in that particular joke,” Julian hedged.
“I was a reminder of her past, the time before she was a lady. Morys Foxe would be my father, though, legitimize my birth in a way that no one could go back in time and do for her, no matter how she schemed, whom she married. So I was to be known as a lady, but Mother knew the truth all along—I was no lady. I was just like her. And she gave me this name to remind her of it every day.”
Julian was silently rocked by such an insight, and infuriated at this new information about Amicia Foxe. Infuriated at himself for introducing this new pain to her.
“It means nothing,” he said, pulling her minutely closer for emphasis. “You are who you are. She could not change it then, and she cannot change it now.” He hesitated for a moment, and then said, “For what it’s worth, Sybil de Lairne seemed a lovely, lovely woman.”
“Of course she is,” Sybilla huffed. “How could she be anything but, to have saved a memento of a woman so quietly wretched and not to have sought her out through the king? She could have destroyed my mother at any time. My mother likely knew that.”
“Sybil asked me if I had met you,” Julian said, stroking Sybilla’s back now.
“Of course I hadn’t yet, but even she had heard the tales of your boldness and success.
We compared stories.” He felt a smile come to his mouth.
Was this a dream? Was he truly comforting Sybilla Foxe in his arms? In his bed?
Her voice was uncharacteristically hesitant. “Was she appalled?”
Julian frowned, looking down at the curve of her cheek, the crescent of her ear—all of her that he could see. “Appalled? No. She was quite pleased and intrigued, I daresay.”
“I would think it to be an embarrassment to her.”
Julian took hold of her shoulder then, and held her slightly away from him so that he could look into her eyes. “How could you say such a thing? Sybilla, how could you think yourself to be an embarrassment to anyone?”
Her eyes searched his hungrily, helplessly, and it was in that instant that Julian realized how frightened Sybilla Foxe actually was. How frightened she had likely been for so long, and how alone.
“You,” he said slowly, emphatically, “are a legend. You are amazing. Tremendous. Brave. Strong.” He paused, swallowed.
“I would be honored to even call you my friend, to proclaim that I know you. I would shout it from the very top of Westminster, and I would be the most envied man in England. In the world.”
Julian was surprised when her chin flinched, her eyes filled with tears again. He had not wanted her to cry.
“Oh, but wait,” he said quickly, pulling a disappointed face. “There is one person you have likely embarrassed deeply.”
Her brow crinkled into a frown, but her eyes held their wetness at the brim without spilling over. “Who?”
He leaned his face close so that the tip of his nose barely touched hers. “The king, I’m afraid. I’ve seen him face a score of wild rebels alone in a foreign desert, and yet he can’t bring one tiny woman to heel in his own country. Quite humiliating for such a manly monarch, wouldn’t you agree?”
Then Sybilla Foxe actually giggled. And Julian felt such relief, even as her mirth caused a rogue tear to roll down her cheek.
“I’m not a tiny woman,” she objected.
“Oh, you give the impression that you are quite intimidating,” Julian said. “But there’s really almost nothing to you. Quite small, actually.”
She gave a short gasp of outrage.
“No, really, see?” He ran the back of his fingers down her face.
“This jawline—delicate.” Down her throat and over her bare shoulder, where he encircled her bicep.
“Your arms, strong, but slight.” Down to the curve of her waist, stopping just shy of the crest of her hip.
“Your waist, fragile. Vulnerable. Your legs, so shapely, and yet you come only to my shoulder when you stand.” He was whispering now. “I daren’t go on.”
“Why?” she whispered back, and he could see a familiar spark in her deep and glistening eyes now. A glimmer of the Sybilla he had known since coming to Fallstowe.
“Because I want to so very much,” he choked, and skimmed his hand back up her side and to her arm, where he let the pads of his fingers swirl against the perfect satin that was her skin. “And I don’t wish to become a regret to you, Sybilla.”
Her gaze never wavered from his as her palms came to the sides of his face. Slowly, keeping him pinned with the ethereal blue of her eyes, she moved her head toward his. And then her lashes fluttered against her cheeks as she slid her open mouth onto his lips.
Julian’s eyes were open when Sybilla pulled away from his mouth. She looked up at him, their eyes little more than a hand’s-breadth apart, and she knew her desire had to be washed plainly over her face.
“Holy God, woman,” he rasped. “Sybilla, you must know, I cannot in good conscience take you when you have been so recently distraught.” The words seemed to dangle between them in the humid chill of the room.
“But?” Sybilla dared, looking at his mouth, unable now to look away from it, hungering for the taste of him on her tongue once more.
“But I am at your mercy,” he confessed, and even as he spoke he drew her even nearer to him, until her flesh was pressed against him, into him. “I beg you, have pity on me.”
His plea seemed anything but helpless, the fire in his amber eyes warming the skin of her face, and Sybilla could not slow her heartbeat. She didn’t want to. And she knew fully that it was not Julian Griffin who was at anyone’s mercy now.
“Pity you?” she said, unable to stop herself from reaching out her tongue and tasting him once more, just the slightest flick. “Julian—oh, Julian—how could I pity you when I can’t stop thinking of the things I want you to do to my body right now?”
She felt his sharp intake of breath before he said, “If they are even a shade of the things I want to do to your body, perhaps you should have pity on yourself.”
And then he rolled over on top of her, covering her chilled body with his own, pressing her head back into the mattress as his mouth descended on hers.
Sybilla was lost in the hunger his kiss stirred in her, a deep, primitive want unlike any she had ever felt for a man before.
It was vulnerable, frightening, consuming, and because she was so afraid of this cavernous depth of passion, she entered headlong into it, meeting it on the battlefield of Julian Griffin’s bed.
“Love me now, Julian,” she demanded in a mumble against his mouth when he drew away for a gasp of air. His right hand found her breast, stroked it too gently, making her squirm into him.
“Now?” he said in a taunting whisper. “Oh no, my lady. Not yet. Not for a while.” He kissed her hard, with a closed mouth, and only for an instant before drawing away completely and getting up from the bed.
Sybilla had no time to voice her outrage at his departure before he had seized her ankles and dragged her to the edge of the bed. Then he leaned over and lifted her from the mattress, throwing her over his shoulder. She gave a shrieking laugh.
“Julian! What are you doing?” His body turned with a jerk into a semicircle and then she was flying back through the air, bouncing as she landed on the sheet of the mattress, the coverlet still in his hand billowing up from the bed.
“What few clothes you are wearing will be off of you in a moment, and I don’t wish for you to catch cold.” His grin was pure sin and Sybilla caught her lower lip in her teeth and bit down as she watched him. He looked so delicious, she wanted to sink her teeth into his chest.
“My clothes?” she teased as he crawled onto the bed toward her. “Why, whatever for?”
“Because . . .” He reached her, pulling the coverlet up to their shoulders and then sliding his hand down her stomach.
Down, down . . . He kissed her lightly. “I’m going to make love to you.
” He kissed her again, and his hand slid into the junction of her legs.
He pulled up firmly. “And make love to you.” Again he kissed her, and then he spoke against her mouth while he dragged up the hem of her thin gown to touch her bare skin.
“And make it, and make it, and make it.”
Sybilla cried out in the back of her throat as he tortured her, and then her hands found his skin, and she sought to absorb him with her palms against his chest, his broad, sculpted shoulders.
He was so warm, golden, as if he radiated sunshine, his muscles rounded and hard, the goodness of his body dripping like honey onto her skin.
She could barely hold on to her peak as he drove her, and so she ran her own hand down his front, into the loosened waistband of his pant, opening it until she had him firmly in her grip.
The conflicting sensations of velvety softness and iron-hard length were heady, and when Julian Griffin gave voice to his own moan, Sybilla took her chance.
“Love me now,” she demanded against his jaw, and tightened her fingers for emphasis before sliding her palm against him. “Now, Julian.”
Then his hand was gone from between her legs, and in a moment the fingers of his right hand gripped her cheeks. He leaned close to her face, staring into her eyes. Her knees were open beneath the heavy coverlet, her gown around her waist.
“No,” he growled. His fingers tightened as he shifted his hips and she felt the length of him high up on her thigh, so close.
“You may be used to getting your way, Sybilla Foxe, but not here, not with me. You asked for this, and I will oblige you, lady, but I will do to you what I please, when I want to do it.” He moved his hips again, and the tip of him touched her.
He spoke against her lips, puckered in his grip. “Do you understand me?” And then he was almost in her.
Sybilla let go then, going over the edge, her body grasping for him, her hips arching as she cried, “Yes, Julian.”
And when she was back from her journey over the edge of the world, his touch gentled. He moved over her, stroking her face, kissing her lips so softly, licking her, murmuring his praise. Then he slid into her aching flesh, still pulsing around him, and he began to push her toward oblivion again.
And again.
And again.
Neither one of them saw his chamber door open slightly in the small hours of dawn. They didn’t see the still shadow that was the brief witness to their continued passion. And they did not see the door shut again slowly, silently.