Honor & Roses (30 page)

“I will be ruled by you, my husband,” Cecily said, still with a giggle.

“Do I sense a thread of rebellion, my lady?” he said, his own voice warm with laugher.

“Never. Tell me what to do.”

“You said you never want to wear this gown again,” he said, more gruffly. “Help me take it off.”

She did, letting him untie the thin girdle around her waist, then slide the silk over her head. He skimmed the thin fabric of her shift then, feeling her body beneath, but he moved to take his own clothes off first before he completely disrobed her.

“I’ll warm you up,” he promised. “But if I don’t get free of these things before I see you…” He didn’t even finish speaking, intent on stripping to nothing.

Then he was nude before her, letting her see all of him. Cecily had glimpsed him once before like that, but at a distance. Now she was a little overwhelmed by him.

Then her eyes were caught by something, and she reached out touch his arm. “You still wear my ribbon,” she said, amazed.

“I have told you so, Cecily.” Alric stepped closer. “Why should I have taken it off?” Then he smiled a bit. “Or are you simply avoiding looking at me like this? Do I shock you?”

“I’ve seen you so before,” she confessed. “At the pool, when you were diving. I peeked.”

He laughed and leaned into her. “So did I,” he murmured.

“But you promised!”

“I never actually promised anything. I only told you that I’d come running if you called for help,” he argued, with perfect innocence. “I didn’t say that I wouldn’t go to the top of the rise to see you…”

“That’s the sort of legal wiggling worthy of a law clerk! But you…you truly watched me swim?”

“I watched you floating in the water, your hair all around you like a nymph’s, and your breasts and belly just out of the water, your face dreamy. The whole outline of your body clear against the dark bottom of the pool. How I wanted you then.”

He took hold of her shift and pulled it up and over her head, until Cecily was as naked as he was.

She shyly pressed her body against his. “Please tell me what to do.”

“Lay down,” he said. He let her sink to the ground and she lay on her back on his spread out cloak. “We may not have a bed in a rich chamber, but I swear in all other ways this will be as proper a marriage night as we can manage.”

He knelt beside her, and smiled slowly as he looked her over. He said, “I seem to remember a young lady insisting that she had no interest in peeking at me as I swam.”

Cecily blushed anew. “I was curious.”

“And your curiosity was rewarded?” he asked. He took her hand and laid it on his chest. “Did you want to touch me, once you saw me?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“How? Show me.”

She lifted her free hand to his face. Then she dropped her hand in embarrassment. “I know so little.”

“Then learn,” he urged, taking her hand again. “I’m yours. Learn me.”

Cecily spread her fingers and put her hand to his chest. She wanted to run her hands, both hands, all over him. But she wasn’t sure how, and her inexperience pained her.

“Touch me,” he said again. “You can never touch me enough, love.”

“But I may do it wrong.”

He smiled. “The moment I think so, I’ll tell you. But don’t wait for a reprimand, Cecily. Your touch could set me aflame.”

She laid her hands on him. She was soon beguiled by the novelty of having him so close, and lost herself in tracing the lines of his body, the muscles in his arms and the scars along his skin. Alric seemed to relax as she explored him, saying little but always watching her.

Only when she reached his stomach and began to pull away did he make a demand.

“Don’t stop,” he ordered her, seizing her wrist. “You married all of me, did you not?”

“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered.

“Ask me to show you then. You can ask me anything.”

“Show me how to touch you,” she said, her skin hot.

He drew her hand down. “Just feel me,” he told her. “That’s what you do to me, love. You make me this hard, and it’s all desire for you.”

Her breath coming quickly, Cecily touched him. He urged her on with low moans of pleasure.

Then he stopped her all at once. “Enough.”

“Do you no longer like it?” she asked.

“I love it, but I need to learn you. Let me.”

She nodded, then closed her eyes. She didn’t need to see, not when she could feel. Every touch made her warmer, made her body turn to liquid. She sighed and murmured her delight, not knowing how her voice drove him on.

He seemed to find limitless satisfaction in touching her with his hands and mouth. Cecily nearly fainted when he lowered his mouth to one breast and circled her nipple with his tongue, slowly over and over.

If he needed any confirmation that she loved it, the way her back arched against him was enough.

He laughed, and asked if she wanted more.

“Yes,” she moaned, shifting to offer him her other breast.

He bent and treated the other bud to the same wonderful touch, his tongue teasing her to hardness and sending shivers across her skin.

“More,” she begged.

His hand had been resting on her chest, just between her breasts, where her heart pattered madly. At her desperate order for more, he slid his hand slowly down her torso, to her stomach. Then lower, slipping between her legs to where she was overheated and desperate for his touch without even knowing why.

He stroked her once, and Cecily opened her mouth in a soundless sigh.

Alric gave a low moan as well. “You’re so wet.”

“Is that bad?”

“It’s perfect.” He stroked her again, and she suddenly understood what he meant. His finger slid into her body without any resistance, and she wanted to scream at the sensation.

All that came out was a strangled gasp. “Oh,” she cried.

“You like that?”

“Yes.” She loved it, loved how he touched her in this entirely new way. She grew warmer still, and her hips rose up instinctively.

He kept touching her like that until she could barely stand it. Every instant brought a new little pleasure and she never wanted it to end.

She didn’t know how long it was until he moved over her, his skin hot wherever she touched him.

“I can’t wait any longer,” he told her, as if he were ashamed of it.

“Then don’t,” she said. “I’m yours, am I not?”

With a murmured warning, he began to push into her. Though she was slick with heat and wetness, her body seemed to resist. Alric pulled back with a groan. He slipped his fingers in her once more, stretching her.

She gave a low cry, startled by a sudden burst of pleasure that left her breathless.

“That’s what finished you?” he asked, above her. She didn’t even know what he was talking about, or if he was speaking to himself and not to her.

He shifted again, stretching over her until she felt him nudging her again. She closed her eyes, smiling at the feeling.

“Cecily, my love. This will hurt,” he said again.

“I don’t care,” she whispered, not sharing his concern. How could it hurt when she felt so delightful?

He pushed again, and when he entered her, Cecily gasped, her hands tightening around his shoulders. Her nails sank into the flesh of his back.

With a groan, Alric thrust into her body all at once.

She moaned, feeling the strangeness of him being inside her, filling her. But there was no pain.

He thrust again, and again. She heard him moaning, saying words she couldn’t understand. But she had no need of words, not when she had wave after wave of feeling rushing over her.

And then he stiffened, and spilled deep inside her, the final consummation that made her his.

He withdrew from her a moment later with a long sigh.

Cecily draped her arms about his neck, keeping him close.

“I love you, my Alric,” she whispered. “I’ve always loved you.”

“Cecily,” he groaned. “My god, what have I done?”

“Just what I asked you to do.” She smiled at him, reaching up to sweep his damp hair from his forehead. “Did you not want this?”

“More than anything.” He shifted so his weight wouldn’t press her so. “I hurt you. I must have hurt you.”

“No,” she promised. “I was warned that it would hurt, but it didn’t.”

“You may not notice till later, love.” He reached to pull her next to him, so he could hold her with one arm and cradle her head on his chest. “If I did hurt you, know that I didn’t want to.”

“I know that,” she said with sigh. “You think I need you to tell me so?”

He kissed her head gently. “
I
needed to tell you, for I can’t think clearly anymore. Too much has happened.”

She lay on her side, one leg across his body. He drew the cloak around them both, and kept her even more tightly against him, his arm encircling her waist.

“We could stay here,” she murmured sleepily.

“This island?” he asked, his voice rumbling beneath her head, which rested on his chest.

“Yes. We could disappear into the Ardenwood. Leave our names behind. Pick new ones. We’ll start a new life together, and no one will ever know. We’d be safe.”

He kissed her hair before he replied, “Part of me wants just that.”

“But?”

“You would let the ones you love think you dead? Pavia? Agnes? All your people at Cleobury and Meaholt and the other manors?”

“Oh.” Cecily couldn’t bear to hurt anyone like that.

“Besides,” he said. “Octavian would keep looking for us, once he heard we were missing. Not to mention Pierce, or Theobald, for different reasons.”

“I don’t want to think of them now.”

“Then don’t,” he said. “Forget it all until sunrise. Until then, our island is the world.”

“And we rule the whole world,” she added with a low laugh.

“Every inch,” he agreed, running his hands over her body. “Every beautiful inch.”

“Alric,” she breathed. “Once more, please.”

“Is that an order?” he asked in low voice. “Am I your master or your servant?”

“You’re my love,” she said simply. No other distinction mattered to her then.

“Ah. In that case, I’ll do anything you ask.”

Which was exactly what he proceeded to do.

Alric awoke when a beam
of sunlight hit his face. He blinked and found himself in the green shaded clearing in the middle of the little island. It was utterly secret and private. His lover had been clever to find it in the first place.

No, not just his lover. His wife.

He looked over at Cecily, who was curled up in his cloak, which they shared as a blanket. Locks of gold covered part of her face, and he stopped himself from brushing them away. He didn’t want to wake her.

Well, he did want to wake her, but largely so he could remind himself she was real, and had truly vowed to be his wife, and the previous night had not been a dream.

However, the night was over, and he had many other things to worry about. He sat up, careful not to disturb Cecily.

Alric walked to the shore and washed in the bracing river water. Ravenous, he returned to their camp to find the rest of the rations William had packed in the saddlebags.

Cecily stirred just as he retrieved some food: bread, cheese, a few apples. He wished for meat. Or anything hot. He could hunt, though he feared to spend too much time on it.

In any case, they first had to leave the island. Alric walked back to Cecily and knelt down, putting the food on a corner of the cloak.

“Eat something, love. We’ve a long day ahead.”

“I’m so hungry I’d eat a tree if you told me to,” she said. As she reached for her clothes, she caught sight of her left hand. “Oh!”

Alric smiled. “Do you like it?”

She now wore a ring on her finger, a wide gold band with a large square cut garnet. A cross was engraved on the flat face of the stone. The ring had been his father’s, and his grandfather’s. Besides his sword, it was the most valuable thing he had with him. He’d slipped it onto her finger while she slept last night.

Cecily looked at the ring and nodded happily. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

He caught her hand in his, touching the ring. “I’ve nothing more to give you yet. But I will. I swear, Cecily…”

“What must you swear?” she asked. “I know you, Alric. You’ve given me your word, and I need nothing more. We exchanged vows. We’re as married as if a priest performed the sacrament in church.”

“I love you.” He kissed the palm of her hand, her skin warm against his mouth.

Just touching her was enough to arouse him again, and he kissed her palm again, then moved to her wrist, then her arm, tasting the soft skin, loving how flushed she became.

“You’re the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“That cannot be true,” she said with a shy laugh.

“I think it is,” he said. “I am your husband and your master now, so you must agree with me on this matter.”

She smiled. “Very well.”

He pushed her back to the ground gently, despite his good intentions to be traveling south early. “I would keep you here all day, love.”

“I would not mind at all,” she admitted.

For a moment, he allowed himself to enjoy her, taking advantage of her undressed body and her awakening interest.