Ten
Genevieve paced about her chamber, near panic. Once—it seemed a lifetime ago!—she had vowed that she would never be afraid of a Lancastrian whether peasant or king.
But that was before she had seen Tristan at court. So deadly calm, his eyes black glittering pits of burning hell, his soft words carrying a threat that made her shiver even now with the memory.
Wildly, for the hundredth time, she tried the door; tears of weary frustration rose to her eyes. It did not budge.
She moved back into the chamber, stepping up to the dais and regarding the tub of bathwater before the fire. The tub had been there, hot and steamy and awaiting her, as if someone had known they would arrive that night. Maybe someone had known. Perhaps Tristan had sent a rider on ahead.
She had bathed quickly, with terror gripping her at any sound from below. She had not intended to be caught by him in the tub. So she had washed in a frenzy.
But—as he had so curtly told her—he had been busy. He had not come. She had leapt from the tub and dressed in the fine blue velvet that someone had left out for her. And now she paced, barely conscious that she continually pulled at the strings of her low-cut bodice, trying to cover herself more effectively.
She paused, closing her eyes, praying for courage. Did he intend to murder her himself tonight? Perhaps with the very poker she had used against him?
Oh, damn him! He truly knew how to draw out torture and vengeance. Better that he had claimed her head at Court, when she retained some semblance of fatalistic courage, than to drag her back all that distance and leave her to these hours of gnawing fear.
Genevieve opened her eyes, and they fell on the tapestry across the room that covered the windows—merely archers’ slits, and very narrow. She was slim and agile; it was possible that she could squeeze through and leap to the parapet beneath. She could also break a leg, she reminded herself. But what was the threat of a broken leg in comparison to the vengeance that awaited at the hands of Tristan de la Tere?
She crossed the room to the windows, tearing desperately at the tapestry of her father’s hunt. It fell to the ground, and she looked at the slit with rising dismay. It was higher from the ground than she had thought, and narrower. But still . . . if she twisted and flattened herself, clearing her shoulders and then her hips ...
She turned around again and spotted the stool before her dressing table. She raced for it, and breathing raggedly, she dragged it to the wall beneath the window. She hopped up on it and pulled herself up, shivering as she looked below. The parapet seemed a long distance away.
It was then that the door to the chamber slammed inward. The sound itself churned new terror in Genevieve’s heart; the stool beneath her fell away, but she hung on to the window. She twisted instinctively and saw Tristan, implacable, observing her efforts from the doorway. His sword was at his side, as always, and his hands were upon his hips. His silhouette nearly filled the doorway; the arch barely seemed to top his head, and his mantle floated about him. He appeared majestic—and totally ruthless.
Genevieve let out a moan and clawed desperately at the stone. Her moment of reckoning had come.
She pushed herself frantically—she was almost through! But hands like steel clamped her around the waist; she was dragged down and cast to the floor. She landed hard and gasped for breath, brushing the hair from her eyes.
Genevieve’s terrified vision fell upon Tristan’s boots, planted wide apart. She scooted backward, then along the wall, to put distance between them. Then she forced her eyes to move upward, to the tops of his boots, to his thigh muscles bulging against the tight leather of his breeches, to the hem of his tunic. Clenching her teeth and swallowing briefly—and offering up a last plaintive prayer—she forced her eyes up the lean sector of his hips and the forbidding breadth of his chest to meet his eyes, willing her own to be wide and defiant and scornful.
“That was rather foolish, don’t you think?” he inquired politely, reaching down a hand to help her rise. She stared at it, but did not take it, preferring to rise by her own power.
“No,” she said flatly. Her back was to the wall as he took a step closer, not touching her but not freeing her from the deadly dark heat of his eyes. She shuddered, holding the stone behind her with her palms for support. His words were smooth and coolly spoken, but his fury was so tangible it smouldered in the very air, like dry lightning cracking the sky on a summer’s night.
Tristan smiled slowly, a dry, twisted, humorless grin, and walked away from her, unbuckling his scabbard, dropping it on one of the chairs before the fire.
“Was that an escape attempt—or a wish for suicide?” he asked her casually.
“Does it matter?” she replied.
He shrugged, walked over to the bed, and sat. “Not particularly,” he told her. He kept watching her as he pulled off his boots, and his face was an enigma. A slight trace of amusement suddenly seemed to touch his features, but his eyes were still brilliant with a smouldering, deep-seated rage.
Her eyes fell inadvertently to his scabbard and his sword. He followed her gaze and smiled more fully. “Were you thinking of turning my own sword against me?”
She lifted her chin. “The thought had crossed my mind.”
He raised a brow slightly. Suddenly panic and desperation took over in Genevieve. With a sharp cry, she pushed herself away from the wall and raced desperately to the door. As she lifted the bar, it was slammed back into place. She turned; he was behind her. Tears began to blur her vision, but she would not let him see them. She would not be humbled; she had sworn not to cower.
She spun on him, lashing out with desperate hands. He made no comment but his face was set grimly as he secured her wrists. Genevieve brought her knee against his groin with a vengeance, and he swore, momentarily losing his hold upon her. Like a gazelle, she leapt past him, plunging over the bed and making a desperate dive for his sword. It came free in her hand, and she rolled to her back to raise it against him. He stood over her now, but paused warily as he looked from her eyes to the glinting steel of the blade. He smiled, backed up a shade, and bowed. “Would you come and get me then, lady? I’d see you try.”
“I will!” she cried out. “I will skewer you through, I’ll lay you open!” Bracing herself with one hand against the chair, she carefully rose, inching toward him with the threat. His smile seemed almost real then, youthful and truly amused. He certainly wasn’t frightened.
“I swear,” she repeated, “I’ll kill you!”
“Oh, I’ve no doubt you’ll try! he said dryly. ”Believe me, Genevieve—I’ve not forgotten your last attempt! Yet, I’m not as easy to kill as you may have hoped.”
“I don’t want to—”
Her words were broken by a cry of dismay as he kicked out, his foot rising with a sure, stunning swiftness to send the blade flying, like a silver bird of the night, over his shoulder, far from her hand.
Genevieve gasped. Tristan casually retrieved the blade from the floor. She dared not move, could not move, when he turned with it, and brought the tip of the cold steel to her throat.
“Lady,” he said softly, “you do taunt death.”
“Then kill me!” she retorted, “and have done with it!” But the words were a lie; she knew it. Her voice wavered as she spoke them.
He smiled slightly, and his gaze moved over her. A muscle rippled against his shirt, and the breath left her as the point of his sword fell against the soft flesh at her throat. She thought he meant to slay her then, for he dexterously moved the sword against her. But he drew no blood. The blade clipped away the ties that held her bodice together, and left the material gaping her breasts freed.
She did not move; she froze, paralyzed. She looked at him, and he shrugged and walked to the mantel. He twisted the sword in the firelight. “I’ve no intention to kill you, Genevieve,” he said at last. “God knows, it would be my right. But I have a knight’s code of honor. Yet,” he turned to her, speaking in a slow drawl, “I’ve no compunction about seeing you beaten at a whipping post. A rather easy punishment, really for a murdering, lying, traitorous little bitch.”
Genevieve trembled. “I was never a traitor to the Crown I recognized,” she murmured, turning away and staring at the floor.
She heard a movement behind her, and the sound of something falling. Surreptitiously she looked out from the corner of her eyes. Tristan had taken off his leather tunic and tossed it onto the chair over his sword. Genevieve drew in a sharp breath as he removed his fine white linen shirt. Uneasily aware of the fascinating bare chest and shoulders, of his hard, muscular build, she forced her glance elsewhere.
“Well?” he said impatiently. “I am waiting.”
The warning demand in his voice caused her to turn uneasily. “For what?”
“The fulfillment of a promise.”
Firelight touched his shoulders and chest, gleaming golden against them, and delineating all the line of sinew and tendon and muscle. His eyes, too, had caught the fire. He looked like a devil standing there, hands impatiently on his hips, tall and tense and powerful.
Then he smiled slowly, mockingly. “This is—approximately, I believe—where we started out, isn’t it? Actually, I’m mistaken. I was here by the fire. And you were kneeling at my feet, begging that I take you, in this very bed. Have you forgotten your promise? To please me? To come to me like a tender bride? I have not,” he said very coldly. “I gave you every chance to back out—but you were so very insistent, lady! Of course I didn’t know what you had in mind. I did warn you, Genevieve, that if you made a promise to me, you would keep it. And by God, lady, you shall.”
An hysterical little laugh escaped Genevieve. She quickly stilled it. “You ... despise me!”
“Aye, that I do!” he said bitterly.
“Then ...” she managed to whisper.
“I have decided that I do want you, Genevieve. And the one has very little to do with the other.”
“Where is your fine, Lancastrian gallantry?” she demanded sharply.
“It was buried alive on a clifftop,” he replied curtly.
“You said that you did not make war upon women!”
“Lady, you gave up any concessions that might be made to your fair sex when you tricked me. Your promise will be fulfilled—with or without your cooperation. It is the one thing that I have vowed. A promise I made to myself, Genevieve, while I lay dying in a rocky grave.” He tilted his head slightly, and his bitter smile was back in place. “Come here, milady. We begin now.”
She shook her head. “I’ll never come to you—never!”
“Then, Genevieve,” with a slight mocking bow, “I will come to you.”
“No. No!” she choked out in rage and desperation. He strode calmly toward her, and she spun blindly about to run—anywhere. But his hands were entwined in her hair, and as she tried to bolt he dragged her back. A cry of pain and frustration escaped her. She was spun into his arms, her golden web of hair tangling about his shoulders and chest.
Now his hands began to move with purpose, touching her throat, easing down it and slipping to her bare shoulders. An impatient flick of his fingers sent her torn gown sliding to her feet. Genevieve gasped out in horror as her naked breasts came in contact with the hairy roughness of his bare chest. She tried to raise her fists against him, but he pinned them in a steely grasp. She tried to kick him again, and instantly found herself off her feet and in his arms. His hold was like rock around her; no matter how she choked and tried to tear at his flesh, she was imprisoned. She raised her eyes to his and saw no sign of mercy; the grim line of his mouth showed no pity. “No!” she shrieked.
But he was oblivious to her cry, and terribly purposeful. He walked to the bed and tore back draperies as he tossed her on it. “I’ve yet,” he told her quite calmly, “to really see this great bounty I’ve been—promised.”
She tried to roll off the bed. He was beside her, leaning on an elbow and pinning her by the hair. He reached serenely for the bedside candle, brought it high above her, and surveyed her as she lay there—trapped, exhausted, spent, gasping, and trembling. Then he sniffed with disdain, blew out the candle and returned it to his post.
He rose, and for a moment she was free. She could not look at him. She heard his breeches drop to the floor, and then a lighter sound, that of his hose falling.
Like a wounded animal, Genevieve kept fighting. She rolled from the bed and sprang to her feet, but in the darkened room she could see nothing. She stumbled at the edge of the dais, and cried out when she felt Tristan’s hands on her naked flesh, his rough palms, his long and powerful fingers. He lifted her, and in the pale ghost of moonlight she met his eyes, feeling tears rise to hers in earnest now. “You are a beast, an animal of the lowest form!” she cried. “Never have I met a man so atrociously cruel!”
He went deathly still for a moment. She felt all the tension in him like a great wall of heat.
“Cruel, lady?” he snapped back to her. “You know nothing of cruelty! Cruelty is a knife in the belly, a line of blood about the throat, the murder of an unborn infant!”
He moved again, with erratic steps now. He tore at the draperies and ripped them from the canopy. Clinging to him, Genevieve knew a whole new terror—and remorse.
What had she said to him? Why had his face taken on such heedless menace, such a threat of ruthlessness? She shivered furiously, suddenly aware that he was completely naked, as was she. That his hands were on her flesh, hot burning brands. That his body was hard like rock, and that it was heated, explosive power where it touched hers.
Dazed and newly terrified by the change in him, Genevieve could fight no longer. He tossed her down onto the mattress. And then he was beside her, on her; she felt his masculinity against her thigh, and it caused within her a great heaving shudder—for his huge sheath pulsed like thunder against her naked flesh. He was one length of muscle, hard and unrelenting. As hard as the hell’s fire promise of his eyes. No weakness, no vulnerability: his hatred of her was now fully unleashed. Genevieve was too stunned by the primitive, raw maleness of him, taut and rugged and overwhelming, to even move.
He raised himself over her, that fire in his eyes, a ruthless clench to his jaw, and at last she cried out; she had failed, she was a coward—but she was ready to cry for mercy.
“Please!” she whispered raggedly. “Please!” His knee had wedged between her own; she felt him against her inner thigh, hot against the portals of her virginity. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she hated herself, but she had to plead. “I fought the only way I could. I—please—I never really wished to kill! Don’t you understand? I was desperate. You had the strength . . . you still have the strength! I had to use what weaponry I had. I—” Her voice trailed away in a whisper as she stared at him, with naked beseechment softening her eyes to crystal mauve.
Again her words seemed to strike a chord. His determination remained, and he did not shift from her. But his lashes lowered warily, and it seemed that the line of his mouth softened.
“Please what?” he asked her hoarsely. “Do you still think that men line the chamber, my lady? That they will come to your rescue at any time? They will not, I assure you. Tonight is it, my lady. The fulfillment of your promise. So tell me—honestly, if you are capable of honesty—what it is you seek?”
She closed her eyes, shuddering, and her voice came out as nothing more than a whisper. “Please—don’t hurt me.”
“Then remember your promise, Genevieve. Your vow that night, to come to me as tenderly as a bride. Seek to hurt me no longer. I have borne the brunt not only of a poker well wielded in your hands, but the rage of your fists, your nails, your teeth—and your knee.”
She didn’t dare open her eyes or trust the hint of amusement in his tone. But she could feel him with all of her being, with the length of her body and flesh. She was acutely sensitive to him, aware of him; his hair-covered legs and chest; his lean hips—corded, hard muscles; his pulsing . . . masculinity.
He was still above her, very still for a long, long time. Then his weight eased beside her. She could not open her eyes.
Then he touched her again, but now his touch was so light that she almost arched instinctively to feel it more. His palm grazed over her, over her midriff, over her hip, in a slow, stroking motion. It moved and moved . . . His palm came to rest on her breast, and his fingers closed gently there, testing the weight, coursing over her nipple. She made a little sound, a ragged gasp of protest, and he whispered something that she did not hear, and yet the spell of it caused her to remain still, trembling beneath his touch.
“Be still . . . lie easy.”
It seemed that she lay there forever, trembling, taut, as he stroked her, whispering. She had fought; she had lost. She could fight no more. She could only close her eyes to his touch.
He was gentle and patient; in time she ceased to tremble. He lulled her, bound her by a certain spell. It was not acquiescence, and yet . . . the fear slowly drained from her. The feel of his hands was not hurtful . . . but soothing. As if it played upon something deep inside of her, something that could not help softly responding . . .
In the pale moonlight his magic played on. His patience was endless. She vaguely realized that she was surrendering on a level far different than merely succumbing to his overwhelming strength.
His touch . . . she became achingly alive. Her body was cool, yet where he touched she felt heat, and where he did not touch she began to long for him. Not for Tristan de la Tere, her enemy, but for the male force beside her. In a corner of her mind she knew who he was, but that corner began to recede, pushed there by the rising sensations that left room for nothing else. Genevieve was alive as she had never been before.
She whimpered again when he shifted, lowering his dark head against her, taking her breast into his mouth, and playing the nipple subtly with his tongue. The pressure of his mouth increased, then he was tugging slightly, surrounding, and just touching the nipple again.
She couldn’t remember how they got here, but her fingers were entwined in his hair. Unconsciously she raised her knee slightly, angling one leg slightly over the other as a sweetness suddenly grew inside of her. She inhaled the rich scent of him, clean and musky and male, and the sweetness increased, seeping like a slow fog throughout her, but most intense at some secret, intimate center.
His lips moved to the valley of her breasts, hovered there, then he nursed the other. She gasped. Her hands fell to his shoulder and she trembled at the feel of muscles beneath his skin, at the strength under her fingers. As a man, he was beautiful: strong and hard and lean; healthy and virile. And . . .
At last his mouth came to hers. He stared at her just a moment in the darkness, then took her cheeks between his hands and touched his lips to hers. He moistened her lips with his tongue, then with a gentle force parted her lips. The kiss was deep, his mouth open wide, his tongue plunging ever deeper; and in the moist heat and intimacy, Genevieve found the same invading sweetness. She should be hating him, but she could not hate the sensation; and in his spell sensation was all that the night had become.
Instinctively she gasped as his hands roamed her body again, sliding, stroking her thighs, forcing her knees apart. She whimpered a protest against his mouth and he slowly broke the kiss, whispering to her with lips just above her own. “Easy . . . easy . . . let me touch you.” She clung to his shoulders, trying not to jerk or protest, and his mouth met hers again, hungry and fusing, distracting and not distracting her from the movement of his hand along the flesh of her thigh at the juncture of her legs. Her nails dug into his back at the searing sensation and the shock of the intimacy. He looked at her and smiled slightly—still a demon’s grin, still mocking, yet he looked so much gentler than the man she had thought would kill her earlier. “Easy,” was all that he murmured to her again.
He touched her lips lightly, and then she felt a delicious shudder, filled with that sweetness as the heated length of his flesh rubbed against hers slowly. Again her breasts felt the touch of his tongue, her belly was teased by it, and then her legs were parted—and he touched her with an intimate caress of his mouth that shot through her like wildfire, causing her to shake and cry out. She wriggled; his hands caught hers and clenched them tightly, and the delving of his kiss and the play of his tongue caused lightning to cascade all through her. She tossed her head back and forth, whimpering that she hated him, then whimpering that . . . she could bear no more. She heard him chuckle; at last he rose above her, his hands still laced with hers, and for a moment she did hate him for the look of triumph on his face. Still she felt a surge, like molten lava, where he had been. He pressed her hands beside her head and lowered his face to hers, kissing her mouth again, slowly, slowly lowering the weight of his body over hers, spreading her legs still farther with his own. She was shaking, twisting; wanting him, and wanting to free herself from him; and yet she could not even unwind her fingers from his—she clung to them desperately.
“Is this your first time?” he muttered to her.
She bit her lip and answered hoarsely, furious, insulted, that he should ask. “Aye!” She hated him for speaking; his words broke the spell he had woven.
“Then I cannot ease it completely,” he told her. She felt her dislike of him deepen. It was a night’s worry for him; but for her it was a moment in life that would never come again.
“I do hate you!” she whispered harshly. His smile was bitter as he took her lips again. He freed her hands, and she wrapped her arms around his back, to steady herself against his kiss—demanding and plundering, somehow still coercive, sweeping her again into the realm of sensation. He shifted, and his fingers played intimately with her again, bringing a fresh rise of whimpers from her throat.
But when next he shifted the pain was a shock; choking and gasping, she longed to wrench him from her, but he held her steady. His voice held no trace of mockery.
“Be calm, be easy . . .” he repeated the words, remaining still, allowing her to adjust to the burning shaft of himself inside her. Hot tears stung her eyes, but he continued to whisper little things, and he moved his palm over her breast again, then suckled it with his mouth, then kissed her lips with an all-consuming passion as he began to move slowly, fluidly.
She would never know where the pain ended——and the sweet, driving rapture began. At first he seemed so alien—a presence that split her asunder, too hot, too thrusting, too deep and hard, to ever be absorbed. But her body did absorb him, melded and fused and writhed to his rhythm. His movements were at first long and slow, and then sped up, with a wild and wanton eroticism. The dulcet tones of a melody seemed to streak through her. She shivered and quaked, and felt the fluid motion of his body, its hardness next to hers, the bunch and tremor and play of his muscles, the pressure of his lean hips. A throbbing started in her, the thunder of his thrust increased, and she pressed her face against his shoulder, crying out. The throbbing, hungry need within her soared. A blinding, reckless beat swept through and around her, and she spun on clouds, tempestuously thrown to the heavens by the relentless crashing waves of the cliffside sea. Something seemed to ignite and explode, and for one glorious moment nothing else existed except for the sunsweet beauty of the sensation, drenching her and filling her. She was barely aware as he drove into her one last time with a shattering force; he groaned and relaxed as his seed spilled into her.
Staring blankly into the darkness, Genevieve realized with a sudden and painful clarity that she had totally capitulated to him. Her pride, her fear—all seemed to crumble about her like a shower of broken glass. Here, tonight, she had lost the one real battle she had been given to fight.
She turned from him, her shoulders covered in a fine sheen of sweat, and pressed her face into the pillow. A ragged sob escaped her and she tried to pull farther away; she could not, her hair was splayed beneath his body.
She felt his thumb, grazing over her cheek.
“You’re crying now?” he asked her.
Careless of her hair, she wrenched furiously from his touch. “I believe that mine is quite a customary reaction to rape!”
He started to laugh, and the sound increased her humiliation. “Lady, I hope you never learn the true meaning of the word.” For a moment he was silent.
“You will certainly walk again,” he told her acidly. “I say it again: you have yet to know true cruelty—or the meaning of real atrocity. And though you did not perhaps leap into my arms, you did, my lady, do quite well—for a start—in the fulfillment of your promise.”
“No ...” she protested feebly. “I hate you!”
“Hmm. Well, dear Concubine, hate away. I’d say that we’ve begun.” He ran a finger along the length of her arm. She tried to shake him away.
“Don’t! You’ve done your damage! Leave me alone!”
Again his laughter filled the night, and now there was honest amusement in it, warm and lulling. She could not protest him when he forced her around to face him.
“Nay, lady! Done my damage! Why we’ve just begun! I wouldn’t dream of denying you a true chance to prove your worth, and discover deeper delights!”
“Delights! I scorn your touch—”
“Always the liar, aren’t you, Genevieve? But we’ll see if we can’t cure you of that!”
She instinctively lifted a hand to strike him; he caught it, still chuckling. And when he lowered his head to kiss her, dulcet tremors raked her spine; her flesh, attuned now to his, burned and trembled with anticipation.
But he broke away from her, still amused. “A pity I’m in desperate need of sleep,” he told her, rising and reaching for his shirt. “But don’t despair—I’ll see that you’re not neglected.”
Genevieve made a mad scramble for the covers, pulling them about herself and watching him with wary surprise. He had said that he needed sleep, yet he was dressing. Thank God! she assured herself quickly, yet she didn’t understand or trust his departure.
“You’re—going to leave me alone?” she asked, lowering her head quickly at the hopeful tone of her words.
“I told you—I need to sleep,” he said curtly, stepping into his breeches. “And lady, I’d never turn my back on you.”
Carrying his boots, he headed for the door. Genevieve called out to him.
“You—you mean that I may keep my own chamber? Alone?”
He smiled. “Alone except for those times when I choose to occupy it.” He shrugged. “Aye, you may keep it. Unless, of course, I tire of torturing you. Then you may be ousted to a dungeon. I haven’t quite decided yet.”
“Dear God,” Genevieve said slowly, her voice lowering to a growl as she began to understand her role in his life. “You are the most vile, most loathsome, most—”
“Good-night, Genevieve,” he told her coolly, and left.
She stared at the closed door for a long moment, then flew from the bed heedless of her nakedness.
She hurled herself against the door; as she had expected, it was barred from the outside. Shaking suddenly from the cold, she slowly sank against it, folding her arms over her tender breasts. She became suddenly aware of the feel of him still about her body.
Genevieve burst into a ragged fury of tears.