Bride of the Beast (23 page)

The glare or his sage words must've worked, for thick silence issued from behind the drawn curtains.

Thick silence and the muffled rustlings of the wee beastie making himself comfortable again.

The ghost of a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. Marmaduke turned his back on the great four-poster and his soon-to-be-slumbering nemesis.

Naught but the chill air stood between him and his first

true attempt to introduce his bride-to-be to the mysteries and enchantment of the love he hoped to share with her.

Even his demons had been routed for the night, soundly banished by his abysmal desire not to let anything hinder him in wresting at least one sweet sigh of pleasure from his lady's tender lips.

His vision now accustomed to the dimness of the sparsely lit chamber, his gaze probed the shadows ... and quickly found her, her place of refuge in the draughty window embrasure revealed when the hiss and crackle of the nearby cresset lamp's guttering wicks drew his attention.

The bronze lamp swung on its chain, its sputtering flames casting odd patterns onto the walls of the little alcove. She huddled on the cushioned seat, a furred skin tucked around her legs, her
arisaid
gathered loosely about her shoulders, the whole of her bathed in the pale silver glow of a sickle moon. Blessedly, she faced the night-darkened sea, her back conveniently turned his way... the self-same back she'd favored several times during their toil on the strand earlier that day.

A back he knew must still ache from exertion.
The excuse he needed to touch her.
His smile returned, this time with a decidedly wicked slant Drawn by a powerful urge to put all the years of empty nights behind him—and assault a few of her dragons as well—he crossed the rushes until he stood a scant heartbeat behind her.

Scarce daring to breathe, so loudly did his blood pound with need, it took him a full minute to recognize the roar in his ears not as his own, but as the muted thunder coming trough the opened window... the rhythmic crash of the waves breaking against the rocks far below.

Not even considering his overtures might be met with scorn, Marmaduke flexed his fingers and heaved a great breath to strengthen the hope in his heart.

Then, feeling much the benighted heathen out to achieve his goals by any means, fair or foul, he placed his hands on her shoulders.

He kneaded the tension there, much affected by the moonlit wonder of her, wildly distracted by the warm silk of her braids brushing the backs of his fingers.

She stirred at once, gifting him with the soft sigh he'd hoped for as he'd made the winding climb to her chamber, delighting him further by twisting around to give him a sleepy smile.

"T
hank
you," she said simply, and lifted her braids out of the way, leaving his fingers aching to reclaim them, then surprising him even more by shrugging her
arisaid
off her shoulders.

His sharp intake of breath at her unmistakable willingness to accept his proffered ministrations—
his touch
—didn't surprise Caterine.

He couldn't know she'd been aware of his presence since the moment he'd cracked the door of her chamber and stepped inside, couldn't know she'd been waiting for his arrival.

Or that she'd caught his whispered words to Leo.

Truth tell, once he'd entered, she'd sat still as stone, burning inside, and silently pleading him to join her in the window embrasure and ... place his hands on her.

Sitting up straighter on the cushioned seat, she leaned her head forward to free more of her neck and shoulders to the magic of his bliss-sending fingers.

"You are surprised I enjoy your touch." The softly spoken words were a statement.

Another of her frankly stated truths.

But one that streaked right through him to land squarely

in his groin.

"I am pleased," he said, opting to be as candid, amazed he could push the words past his teeth, so fierce was the heated tightening in his loins.

So great the swelling of his heart.

"I knew your back—" He broke off the instant the word passed his lips.

'Twas her shoulders he kneaded through the soft linen of her camise, not her back, and some weird magic lying thick in the silver-kissed air made him half-believe even thinking his wishes this night might spur the oddest results.

And voicing them, more dire consequences yet.

Like her asking him to glide his hands lower down her body and massage her aching back as well.

Trouble was, the raging need straining thick and hard against his hose couldn't withstand such a temptation.

His exalted prowess and stamina, roundly defeated by the supple curve of a single camise-encased back.

"My back aches more than my shoulders," she said.

Even before she reached up to circle her hands around his wrists and lift them from her shoulders, Marmaduke knew what she was about to do.

Holding his breath, he squared his own shoulders against the challenge he was about to face, stared past her out the tall, arch-topped windows, and waited.

Far out to sea, high above the horizon, a horned moon sailed from behind a cloud, its wan light spilling little more than a thin thread of silver across the night-black waters, but somehow managing to illuminate each unveiled inch of creamy skin she revealed to him.

And, t
hank
s be to the advantage of his great height, that blissful view encompassed the naked globes of her lush breasts ... including their deliriously thrusting nipples!

"Saints, Maria, and Joseph," Marmaduke breathed, borrowing Duncan MacKenzie's pet oath, well past caring if
^s
he knew she'd set him on his ear by peeling down her un-dergown clear to her waist.

"I've surprised you again," she said, looking up at him over her bared shoulder, her blue gaze as guileless as the
 
newborn day, her full breasts, moon-washed and glorious. Aching to be caressed.

Her hardened nipples demanded to be administered to in ways that would make the devil beg forgiveness.

"Are you not cold?" Marmaduke cringed at the stilted sound of his voice. A eunuch could have addressed her more smoothly!

"Are you?"

Nay, I can afire with wanting you,
his fully-charged shaft tossed back at her.

"I am anything but cold as I believe you must know," he said, matching his words to the directness she preferred.

He even let his gaze drop to purposely linger on her nipples. "But I am puzzled."

She lifted her chin and Marmaduke would've sworn he caught a flare of...
disappointment?
... flash across her beautiful face when he lifted his gaze from her bared breasts.

"I simply want you to touch me. To massage the knots from my back." She turned her face to the sea again. "It will feel better without my camise obstructing your fingers."

Marmaduke narrowed his good eye at the back of her fair head, his desire to win her charms, and her love, with careful and leisurely deliberation, hard at war with the beast she'd called forth with her boldness.

"You are full blunt," he said at last, his voice tight with the cost of his restraint.

"I told you, I am a woman of plain words," she reminded him. "I am also practical."

She leaned forward then, and a swath of moonglow spread slowly down the length of her naked spine.

"Please," she urged, the breathiness of her tone near as bewitching as the satiny skin awaiting his attentions. "My back aches and your touch is ... soothing."

Marmaduke swallowed.

His hands obliged her.

Smoothing, stroking, kneading.

Spending her every ounce of pleasuring his roving fingers could supply, and driving himself to the brink of madness.

"Think you I can do this and not desire to touch the breasts you've bared as well?"
That
part of him borrowed his tongue. "Be warned, lady, I am not an inexperienced stripling to be tease—"

"Nor is it my wont to provoke you. I do not mind if you touch my breasts," she said, and his tarse lengthened another full, aching inch.

Marmaduke stood silent, unable to speak.

Or move.

His hands stilled on the small of her back, his entire body tighter than a full score of tautly drawn Welsh bowstrings.

Twisting her head around, she peered up at him again. "You want to know why I do not mind." She read him as clearly as if he wore his thoughts emblazoned across his forehead.

"I do not mind," she went on, her sapphire gaze as earnest as her tone, "because it felt good when you gazed upon them just now."

Marmaduke's shaft swelled to such a painful degree he almost embarrassed himself.

A lesser man would have.

"You enjoyed having me glimpse them?" He could scarce push the words past the dryness in his throat.

She nodded, her lovely face shadow-cast in the moonlight. "I have not known much physical pleasure. I would like to address that deficiency," she said, the words coming out in a rash.

As if, despite her frankness, she sought to have done with them before they damned her.

Marmaduke inclined his head, his hands moving again, but kneading less and caressing more. Sweeping in ever more intimate circles up and down the length of her spine, his fingers itching to curl round her ribcage and brash against the side swells of those lush, heavy breasts.

Dying to slip beneath the bunched folds of her under-gown and comb through the thick tangle of golden curls he knew awaited him betwixt her shapely thighs.

A luscious nest of intoxicating sweetness he ached to explore in great depth and leisure.

A ragged groan rose in his throat, but he swallowed it whole. He needed his every breath to form the question searing the tip of his tongue.

"You wish to know pleasure?
Carnal pleasure?"
The words came as mere rasps, scarcely audible, but hanging so heavily in the air between them, not even the brisk night wind could sweep away their portent.

She scooted around to face him, the front of her fully exposed, her magnificent breasts, wondrous bare and as unashamedly displayed as if she'd merely extended a hand in casual greeting.

"Aye, sirrah, I wish to experience such things, and in all variety of nuances," she said, the admission—and the view—sending veritable sheets of molten fire sluicing through him.
"Desire,
as the lady Rhona once informed me I am sorely in need of." "She told you that?"

She nodded again and the movement caused her full breasts to sway a bit. "She suggested such the very day she told me I'd best send for a champion." "And you did."
"She
did."

This time Marmaduke nodded. "And now you have one."

"Aye, I do. A champion, a soon-to-be husband, a... man."

Marmaduke bobbed his fool head again, his senses too
befuddled from studying the tightly ruched areolas, the hard,
elongated peaks of her nipples to draw breath, much less
speak coherently.

"I have decided I am as much in need of the third as the first two," she explained, leaning back on her hands so her breasts thrust slightly upward and forward, so their stiff peaks looked him straight in the eye.

Her
eyes gleamed bold as Bathsheba's. "For good or ill I am not a shy woman," she said, taking his hands, lacing her fingers with his.

"My body has been seen and ...
used
... by too many for me to hide behind pretenses of false modesty. Now, I find I would indeed enjoy exploring the fleshly delights the bawds sing of when they think all ladies have left the hall." She guided his hands toward her breasts, holding them prisoner mere inches from her hardened nipples.

So close, he could feel the heat streaming out from them. "Will you send me such pleasure?" Marmaduke scarce heard her, so thick was the haze of his arousal, so achingly sweet, the powerful verging of his need. "Can you indulge me? Will you do so knowing I wish to keep all emotion out of any ...
physical intimacies
... we practice?"

That he heard.

But his protest died in his throat, overrun by a moan when she brought his hands even closer to the tips of her breasts.

Clearly mistaking the pitiful sound for his acquiescence, she touched his fingertips to her nipples.

"Jesu God," the oath burst past his lips the same instant his passion broke.

"Then you agree?" Her matter-of-fact voice pierced the fog swirling round him.

Marmaduke nodded, unable to deny her aught in that moment.

Even such a fool proposal as she'd just shielded. One he had no intention of keeping. But now,
this
moment, he had greater concerns on his troubled mind.

Such as how to keep her from noticing the tell-tale stain dampening his hose and the front flap of his tunic.

For he, Sir Marmaduke Strongbow, champion of fancies and slayer of dragons, had just joined the ranks of lesser men.