Chapter Eleven
A swooping sensation weighed in his loins as fast as her words registered. Her backside brushed against him as she turned bodily in his arms to face him with determination and intent in her dewy, half-lidded eyes.
God’s Blood.
His thoughts slowed. His will stretched as thin as the linen separating his flesh from hers.
He’d be a liar if he said he didn’t want this.
Hadn’t considered every possibility of it while sleeping outside her door with the hounds.
Hadn’t examined all possible consequences.
Hadn’t dreamed about it, every damn night.
She slid her hands under the cloth of his doublet to press her palms against his chest. His heart threatened to thunder out of his skin.
He caught one of those hands in his. “You don’t mean this.”
The moonlight, falling from behind her, lit the curve of her cheek as she smiled.
“When I said you would be my chatelaine,” he added, “I didn’t mean—”
“I know your offer is honest, Jehan.”
“Take the offer then. As it is.”
“I want more.”
Her body pressed against his, her hips surging closer to where he most ached, and it took a moment for him to realize that she hadn’t moved. It was he who’d released her hand so he could curl his arm tight around her.
“Fate will not mock me anymore, I swear it.” She feathered her fingers up the side of his neck. “I have waited too long upon the whims of my father. I will take matters in my own hands.”
A cloud passed across the moon, casting a shadow over them. “Aliénor,” he whispered, “I’ll be married to another.”
“Surely your English widow won’t want to visit a little castle in Gascony.” She arched her back under the touch of his fingers. “Surely she’ll keep to her grand English manor houses.”
His control, a fraying thread.
“Jehan,” she sighed, slipping a finger across his lips. “If you finally had a future within your grasp, wouldn’t you seize it with both hands?”
***
Aliénor surged up on her toes and drew his head lower so she could capture his mouth. He groaned in a way that made his whole body rumble. He tightened his grip around her until her toes lifted rose away from the floor. She felt weightless, buffeted, gripped by a shuddering pleasure. Surely this must be how her hawk felt, set free of the leash, spreading her wings wide and vaulting toward the sky.
He whispered her name. She caught it with the eager press of her mouth. When she turned aside a fraction to catch her breath, his lips slipped up her cheek toward her temple, leaving in their wake a tingling trail. She curled her spine in response to the muffled pressure of his roving hand, wishing all the while that no wool separated his fingers from her bare back.
With a rush of awareness she realized she could make it so.
She pressed her palms against his solid chest until he ceded to her wishes and a space opened between their bodies. She slipped her hands under the cloth of his doublet and spread the edges apart. Moonlight gleamed on his body, all lean planes and shallow, carved hollows, warm and smooth against her fingers.
Warm and smooth against her lips.
His pulse jumped against her mouth and pleasure surged through her. She spread her hands wide and rasped her thumb across his flat, dark nipple. His gasp made the muscles between her legs tighten.
She hardly knew what she was doing and yet the way he responded to her touch made her curious to learn more.
She made short work of the lacings of his doublet then pushed it off his shoulders. With a swing of an arm he tossed it to some far wall. Then he crossed his arms and seized his shirt in his hands, sweeping it over his head in one swift motion. He wrapped it into a loose ball and sent it off to join his doublet in the rushes.
His small clothes hung low on his narrow hips, revealing a trail of dark hair that started beneath his puckered navel and ended somewhere beneath the linen. She traced the indentation that cut from his hip toward his loins, fascinated by the flex of a muscle beneath her fingertip. Below, his member swelled, tenting the cloth. She let her fingers trail lower to trace the ridge of his tumescence. He pulsed hard and hot against her hand.
Breathing hard, she met his gaze. The silver-blue intensity of his look proved he liked what she was doing. Yet he stood patient, his body thrumming-tense but his hands loose at his sides, his chest heaving as he let her touch him any way she wanted.
She tugged the sagging belt loose, then pulling the waist wide so his small clothes could slide over his member and fall to the rushes. Fully naked, he stood before her, a knight bereft of armor but none the less intimidating for it. The moonlight burnished the muscles that swelled in his arms and legs and rippled down his abdomen.
Her gaze dipped lower. Some deep muscle throbbed inside her as she imagined his thickness pressed into the aching hollow between her thighs.
He grasped her wrist as she reached for him.
“Aliénor, couret,” he said, half gasping, “you’re trying to kill me.”
“No, no,” she whispered, but his breathlessness undid her uncertainty. “I just want to touch you.”
“And you will.” He released her wrist to tug on the neckline of her kirtle. “As I will touch you, if you would only show yourself to me.”
He may as well have showered her with sparks. She reached behind to loosen the laces of her kirtle. She dug her teeth into her lower lip to stop herself from breathing so fast and hard, but her body wasn’t completely her own. Even her fingers fumbled with the kirtle’s back laces, missing loops and tugging the wrong ends.
“I could help,” he murmured, with a teasing gleam in his eye, “if you wish.”
Truly, how could she concentrate with him standing before her, a half-smile on his face, while her imagination tumbled in unsettling directions? She breathed an unsteady half-laugh and gave him her back. While he made quick work of the laces, she tugged her neckline loose and went to work on the laces at her wrists. She’d hardly loosened a single sleeve before he slipped his knuckles under the neckline and yanked her kirtle to her feet, where she stepped out so he could sweep it away.
His eyes widened when she turned to him. She still wore her fine linen shift. Her nipples had gone tight, tingling under his gaze. With the moonlight at her back, she knew he could see the whole outline of her body, every curve and shadow.
He likes what he sees.
The thought was like a jolt of strong wine. She gathered her shift in her hands, pulling it up so the hem rose above her knees and then her thighs. There, she hesitated, but it wasn’t for modesty, it was for something a bit more wicked, something teasing and sly. She was to be his mistress now. There was pleasure in the way he looked at her so hungrily. A soft laugh came out of her that didn’t sound like her at all.
“Couret.”
The word half warning, half plea. She swept the garment off, sending it flying in its gauzy splendor into the shadows, leaving her in nothing but her hose, tied with ribbons at the thigh, and her leather slippers.
He caught her by the waist, his hands rough against her skin. She held his head, her lips aching for his kiss, but he didn’t satisfy her wish. He lowered himself so his hair brushed against her jaw, her throat, her chest, her breasts, where he made her gasp by sucking a nipple into his hot mouth.
His tongue worked magic as he curled his arms around her and her legs went limp.
“I have dreamed of you like this,” he murmured, lifting himself away from her breast for a moment only to kiss her nipple again.
Words filled her throat, but her mouth struggled to form them.
“I have dreamed of your body against mine,” he said. “Your breast against my tongue. Your heart beating hard like this, under my ear.”
She ran her hands down his broad, muscled back, allowing herself to be wooed by the troubadour in him.
“I will make you happy,” he said. “I swear it.”
He hefted her up by her backside. She rose dizzy-high in the room, his head still clutched in her grip, as he moved her out of the moonlight. Then he swung her down, lowering her until she felt the softness of pelts against her back.
His hair fell shaggy on either side of his face as he loomed over her, pouring over her naked body with his gaze until she flushed.
“Are you to spend the whole night looking,” she whispered, as the moment stretched, “or are you going to kiss me?”
With a gentle laugh, he did as she bid. Her breasts brushed against the hardness of his chest. She felt him, the male part of him, straining against her thigh. He shifted his weight so he could run a hand, flat-palmed, from her shoulder to her breast and over her belly and lower, a sweeping touch that made her shudder with pleasure.
Even more so when he wove his fingers between her thighs.
His breath hissed through his teeth. “You’re ready for me.”
His fingers found a tight, aching point of pleasure. He stroked it in tender little circles until she found herself make odd little noises of surprise and yearning.
She was half arched off the bed when he stopped. She groaned in protest, opening her eyes to find him hovering over her, a vein throbbing in his brow.
He shifted his weight and nudged her thighs wider with his knees. Cold air brushed across her privates, making her all the more aware of how wet she was, how exposed, how sensitive and aching.
He whispered against her cheek. “Tell me you want this, Aliénor.”
“I want you,” she said, her heart racing.
“No regrets.”
“Come inside me.”
He shifted. The hot tip of his member slid into her cleft. She clutched his shoulders at the feel of it there. Every thought and feeling focused on how warm and slick and hard he felt, poised, and how intensely he looked down at her, his hair falling over his brow, his jaw tight with control. He seemed to be waiting for something, but she was going to shatter into fragments if he didn’t press deeper. She arched against him, rolling her hips. Then, as he groaned, his mountain of shoulders moved under her hands.
She dug her fingers into his back as her body stretched to accommodate him, bringing a twinging sensation of both pain and pleasure. He pushed in and paused, making a sound to match hers. After waiting a space, he pulled halfway out, making her plead not-so-silently for his swift return. He plunged deeper, with bated force. Shudders rippled through his body to match those shuddering through hers.
Soon he stopped pausing between strokes and moved in and out of her with more urgency. His back flexed in marvelous ways beneath her hands. A rhythm overcame them. She felt an urge to arch her back and spread her thighs wider. He ran his lips along her jaw while he plunged to the root, his breath harsh. Within her, an ache swelled with sudden intensity. Her inner muscles tightened around his member. Then she heard herself saying his name, over and over, while something glorious burst within her, making her whole body throb with pleasure.
Moments later, he stiffened, pressing his forehead against hers. She listened to his deep-throated groans with a rush of satisfaction. Then she floated into lassitude, gliding into a deeper comfort as she held him closer, thinking I love him.
I love him.