Candle in the Window (11 page)

“Who gave you such a low opinion of a
man’s kiss?”

“Sometimes the visiting gentry would kiss me,
in jest, of course, and sometimes my stepfather tried.”

“Pigs.” He spat the word. “But
those are not kisses. We shared a kiss once, don’t you
remember? Has no one else kissed you correctly?” His hand
followed a similar path to her own, petting her brows, sliding down
her dainty nose to her two quivering lips. “Has no one taught
you the pleasure brought by the meeting of male and female in the
nectar of a kiss?” He caressed her cheek with one finger.
“Has no one brought the rose of paradise to your cheek with
the glowing seal of a kiss?” Has no one brought you the taste
of delicious strawberry?”

“Sounds like an outdoor pursuit to me,”
she said with acid emphasis.

He laughed and squeezed her. “What a humbug
you are! Resolutely unromantic, truly the character of Lady Saura,
sour with the lack of love. But I lay here as an enchanting elf
cuddled me, and I remembered the innocent maiden who wrestled me in
the bath, and kissed me, and brought the taste of strawberries and
roses and nectar to a man lost to the joys of life.”

“That kiss was different. You surprised
me.”

“Ah. Will I never bring you pleasure unless I
surprise you? Then I’ll sneak up on you.” His lips
touched her ear and slid around to peck her mouth. “Or swoop
on you.” He smacked loud kisses on her chin. “Or kiss
you like an inexperienced boy.” He put his mouth on hers and
ground them together, huffing in a parody of passion until she
laughed. “And then kiss the smile on your face,” he
whispered against her lips, “until you open for me
willingly.”

His intent shifted so subtly that she did as he
said. She opened for him willingly, his tongue brushing her teeth,
then her tongue. It bore no relation to the attentions of other
men, and she wondered, for the first time, if what they had done to
her had been less a kiss than a rape. Perhaps William was right,
perhaps a kiss between a man and a woman required the correct
ingredients to make the dish complete.

She tasted him again, as she had done before, but a
different flavor rolled across her tongue. Stronger, more manly,
clarified by his breath and emphasized by his tongue. He pressed
against her now, body to body, making her aware of his manhood, and
she broke the kiss.

“I still don’t think,” she sucked
in air, “that ’tis possible.”

“We’ll make it possible.” He
began to rise above her, but she pushed him back.

“But you shouldn’t. You were hurt
today.”

“Aye, my head aches, but not as badly as
my—” He stopped short. “Pardon. That word
isn’t appropriate for a lady’s ears.”

“You needn’t be delicate. I know what
you mean, and I promise I have heard every crude word in the Norman
language.”

“All the more reason to be delicate. I swear,
you’ll never confuse me with the other men in your
life.” His breath
came lower, whispering
across her face. “What happened today cannot impair me. The
danger of our circumstance, past and present, can only add flame to
our loving.”

“Tomorrow might never come.” She
completed his thought.

Again he rose above her, and as he untied the bow
that held her chainse, he promised, “Tomorrow will come. Only
hope will greet us tomorrow.”

The string slipped through its guide, widening the
opening until he slipped the garment off her shoulders and kissed
them, first one, then the other. “Such a fragile frame for
such a fierce warrior.” He raised her hands and held them
against his face, rubbing his own beard with them, guiding her to
touch his neck and shoulders. “I like that, I like it when
you touch me,” he said.

Her hands clung to him, but she felt frightened and
odd, intrusive, somehow, and the “fierce warrior”
couldn’t find the strength in her soul to please him as he
desired. He chuckled, ever so softly, and adroitly maneuvered her
chainse until it rested at her waist. “What a delight you
are! Blessed with the ripe sweetness of a woman, yet as green and
untutored as any girl.”

He made her sound, she realized with bemusement, as
charming and pleasing with her cowardice as any courtesan with her
wiles.

He gathered a handful of her hair in his fist and
raised it to his nose. “Ah,” he sighed, “every
wine should have such a fine bouquet.” His big fingers combed
through her hair, and began a deep, marvelous massage at the base
of her neck. Her head tilted back, baring her neck to his gentle
kiss. She had never imagined such riches. Then he massaged her
scalp, feeding her pleasure through his fingertips until he reached
her forehead and his touch changed to a wisp of
curiosity. She recognized the light touch as he
outlined her eyebrows, skimmed her nose, caressed her lips. He was
reading her face.

Perhaps she was shy as a green girl, but he
disguised his need to see her with a lover’s embrace, and his
faint reserve endeared him to her as nothing else could. “Do
you think I’m pretty?” she asked, encouragement and
pleasure in her tones.

His fingers paused, quivered, traced her cheeks.
“A lovely bone structure,” he muttered and cuffed her
lightly on the jaw. “And a willful chin.”

Laughing, she stretched as he caressed her
shoulders, her arms, her neck. She braced for rough hands that
fumbled at her lower body, and his unexpected care left her
breathless with pleasure and longing for a more intimate touch, but
where?

“I like it when you touch me,” he
repeated. “Won’t you show me where you wish I would
touch you?”

Again he raised her hands, but left them hovering
in the air between them. She flexed her fingers until her sense of
foolishness overcame her timidity and she could reach for the
muscles of his chest, and with an astonishing lack of coordination,
landed on his shoulders. At once his hands found her shoulders and
waited, waited until her palms stroked over the joints. Then his
palms stroked over her joints. Her fingers slid down his ribs. His
fingers slid down her ribs. Her fingers twitched, rushed, twisted,
and in a rush found his chest. His fingers performed none of the
convolutions, contained none of the hurry, but they floated to
their mark with such smooth precision that she suspected he knew
where to search.

Conscious thought left her mind as his hands
enfolded her breasts. As pure a sensation as she had ever
experienced, the
press of flesh to flesh
unified them in one crystal moment of communion. Her eyes drifted
closed, her breath sang out in one ecstatic cry. One perfect
moment, complete in itself and promising treasure.

“More?” his voice murmured in her
ear.

She nodded in leisurely agreement, whispering,
“Please.”

“How?”

Her hands searched for his nipples, buried in the
mat of curling hair, and her thumbs rubbed them in a circular
motion.

“How straightforward you are,” he
marveled. “Most women would prefer this.” Like the
leaves of autumn drifting to the ground, his fingers swept and
danced across her skin, cultivating the sensitive underside of her
breast, complimenting with unspoken admiration. Sensation swelled
within her, the reaction of an inexperienced student to the work of
a master. She wanted, desperately wanted, his hands on her nipples,
but coherence had fled, coordination had fled.

Then he granted her desire, closing on her and
squeezing in a light and steady rhythm, and the thinking part of
Saura had fled and in her place writhed this sensual being on the
pallet.

“Still more?” he asked.

It took three deep breaths before she could
stammer, “What more can there be?”

His mouth took her nipple, and every muscle in her
body flew to rigid attention. He suckled as she worked her leg
beneath him. Then he licked every inch of her breast until she
wrapped her legs around his waist in open supplication, and then he
repeated the treatment on the other breast. When he pulled away at
last, the chill of the room struck her chest, damp with his loving.
It brought a little rationality to
her mind, a
little organization to her thoughts, and she wanted to speak, to
beg him.

He murmured, “Cold, little one? Let me cover
you.” Slowly, so slowly, he descended on her body, covering
first the vulnerable skin of her belly, then her breastbone. Her
nipples nestled into the rasp of his hair and the weight of his
chest descended on her, flattened her, opened her to the miracle of
flesh on flesh for the first time.

Her life usually rumbled along, dull and routine or
horrifying and terrifying, broken occasionally by golden moments.
This moment she relished the most. Her golden man. His lips floated
across her eyelids, his spice teased her nose, and she lifted her
head and captured his kiss with her own, as fresh and ardent as any
apt pupil’s.

Now his lips opened under her probing, now he let
her lead them down the path to paradise, and when they came up for
air she was gratified to hear the gasp of his breath and feel the
heavy thump of his heart, so close to her own.

“Pleasure,” he said, his voice out of
control and amplified by the bare room. He moderated his tone and
repeated, “Pleasure is a marvelous thing. It can be slow and
fiery, burning every inhibition in its path.” Leaning
sideways across her body, his hand glided from its resting place on
her ribs and down to her hip. “Our conflagration has ignited
everything. Saura, I’m on fire.”

Almost inaudible, his eloquence meant less to her
than the fine tremble in his arm as he supported himself above
her.

“Saura, show me what you want.”

She found her fingers shook, too, as she gathered
his hand in hers and put it on her pubic bone, but he asked no
further urging. It was a honeyed delight when he opened her to his
probing. One by one he found, and recognized, the organs of her
response, showed her that all that had gone
before was a preparation for this. When first one
finger, then another, skimmed inside her, her soul began the slow
glide to pleasure. Not his whispered warning of pain, not his
careful probing, not the slow introduction of his essence into her
body could stop the updraft that lifted her.

Her tissues yielded slowly: not all her will could
force her body to part for him. Yet the discomfort was nothing
compared to the agony of rapture his hands supplied her. His litany
of, “I can’t wait, I can’t wait,” meant
only that he eased into her in tiny increments, backing off and
returning until she clawed at him in frustration. Then he fought
his way past her maidenhead and chuckled in choked amusement when
she groaned, “At last!”

Her impatience blossomed. She kneaded his waist,
pulled at his buttocks, gasped his name. That ignited his
spark.

What had been a patient and gentle loving grew to a
tumultuous fierceness. Unbearable delight, gratified distress,
she’d never been here before. William pulled her into the
center of turbulence and propelled her from one extreme to the
other until her body could no longer demand, could no longer
receive. She captured him in her arms and legs, hugging him,
following his dance, and she found that place of color and
light.

In this blessed place, there was gold beneath her
fingers, gold in the scented air. There were golden sounds for her
ears and golden dishes for her taste. The gold ebbed and flowed
with William’s thrust, grew to be more than gold under his
encouragement, and in one glorious revelation they welded
themselves into one entity. William and Saura, Saura and William.
Together, where the treasures of their bodies transformed into the
treasures of their souls, and lodged there past the time of
passion.

Perhaps, Saura dreamed, these treasures would never
disappear.

She returned to a kind of consciousness when his
weight collapsed on her. “Sorry,” he groaned and lifted
himself from her body. Regret made her hug him close for one last
moment, and then she released him. Understanding her with an
affinity that dazzled, he settled himself and brushed her hair back
from her face. “There’ll be more for us,” he
promised.

“Aye,” she said, not because she
agreed, but because she hoped. Strength returned to her limbs, and
in a surge of activity she shoved the blankets to the foot of the
pallet and complained, “I’m so hot.”

In the night, she put her feet on him and he woke
with a jolt. “Damn, woman, you’re freezing
again.”

“Aye.”

“If you’d keep the covers on
you—”

“You can warm me,” she suggested,
snuggling tight under his arm.

“Aye, you wanton, I could. But I
won’t.” He cuddled her close and kissed the top of her
head. “You’re too inexperienced and
I’m—stop that! Where’d you learn that?”

She raised her mouth from his nipple. “From
you. Don’t you like it?”

“I don’t know.
’Tis…different. I suppose I like it.
Stop
that!” He caught her under her chin and
held her while he shifted so they were face to face. “Wait
another night, love, and I’ll bring you satisfaction again.
There’s too great a difference between us for you to be
comfortable with further joinings tonight.”

“Don’t you want me?” Her voice
quivered with rejection.

“Not want you? God, woman,” he took her
hand and wrapped it around his organ, “that’s as large
a want as I’ve ever had. But more than that, I love you.
You’re the most honest woman in the world. And generous and
clever.”

“I sound like a nun again.” She
sighed.

“Oh, nay.” He laughed and shook his
head in an emphatic negative. “You’re also stubborn and
determined and feisty and I’ll never put a rock in your
way,” he raised her hands and kissed them, “when my
head is close and I’ve made you angry.”

“I’ve never hit anyone before,”
she protested. “At least, not with stones.”