Teresa Medeiros - [FairyTale 02] (29 page)

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible.” He paused, his mouth tightening. “They belonged to my mother.”

The ribbon slipped through Gwendolyn’s fingers. She smoothed the pleated taffeta skirt of her gown.

“My mother was a practical soul without a vain bone in her body, but my father delighted in surprising her with the most beautiful bolts of fabric Paris and London had to offer.” Bernard picked up the book and leafed through its gilt-edged pages. “The books were his. He always hoped I’d take more of an interest in them, but I was too busy hunting and hawking. I fancied myself a warrior, not a scholar.”

“He was very proud of you, you know.”

Bernard tossed the book on the table. “ I didn’t prove myself to be much of a warrior the night Cumberland took the castle.”

“You stayed alive, didn’t you?”

“Only because one of Cumberland’s officers was a cunning bastard with a hatred for all things Scots and an unnatural appetite for pretty young boys.”

For a moment, Gwendolyn couldn’t even draw breath. “He didn’t… ?”

“He wanted to. Oh, it was subtle at first—a ribald jest here, a threat there, a casual touch. Until the day he cornered me in the woods on the march to Edinburgh.” Bernard inclined his head, his face shadowed by an old
shame. “He held me down. Tried to put his fat, filthy hands on me.”

“What did you do? “

He lifted his head, meeting her fierce gaze with one of his own. “I killed him. I gutted him with his own knife. When it was done, I stood over him, my hands dripping with his blood, and I felt nothing—no shame, no remorse, no regret.”

If he had thought to disgust her, he had failed. Gwendolyn felt nothing but a savage gladness that the man was dead.

“They would have executed me, but they decided it would be more fitting to let the Royal Navy break my spirit. When they took me aboard the ship in Edinburgh, the captain had me locked in the hold, in one of the compartments that had once been used to transport slaves. It was no bigger than a grave, and they gave me just enough bread and water to keep me alive long after I began praying to die.”

Gwendolyn closed her eyes, trying not to imagine that proud, bright-eyed boy, who had spent his entire childhood roaming the mountains and moors, locked away in the darkness, choking on the stench of his own filth.

“How did you keep from going mad? “

He shrugged. “Maybe I didn’t. By the time we reached England, I was little more than an animal, unrecognizable even to myself. When we docked, they dragged me out of the hold and threw me at the feet of
a Royal Navy admiral. At first I thought he was like the other one. So I lunged at him. If I hadn’t been so weak, I might have succeeded in tearing out his throat with my teeth. He could have had me hanged for that, but instead he ordered that every man on that ship be stripped to the waist and given twenty lashes for so sorely abusing a child.” He shook his head. “All I could think was ‘How dare
the bastard call me a child?’
“

Gwendolyn bit back a tremulous smile.

“Admiral Grayson was a decent sort for an Englishman, rather stern, but not unkind. His wife had died before she could bear him a son, so he took an interest in me. When I was old enough he purchased a commission for me, and when I left the navy he prevailed upon his well-heeled friends to invest in my shipping business. I had always planned to return to Ballybliss someday, but I felt it only fair to wait until after his death.”

For the first time, Gwendolyn could understand Bernard’s loyalty to a people who were supposed to have been his sworn enemies. She could understand why he had learned to talk like them, to dress like them, and to fight at their side.

As she drifted toward him, the plaid slipped from her shoulders to the floor. He watched her approach through wary eyes, but made no move to stop her, not even when she reached up to touch her fingertips to his cheek. She had once searched his features for some terrible disfigurement, but now she realized the scars she had been seeking weren’t on his face, but his soul.

“My poor Dragon,” she murmured, stroking the
curve of his jaw. “They treated you like a beast, so you had no choice but to become one.”

He caught her wrist in his unyielding grip. “Damn it, Gwendolyn, I don’t want your pity!”

“Then what do you want from me? “ she implored, tilting her face to his.

“This,” he whispered hoarsely, shifting his hungry gaze from her eyes to her lips. “I want this.”

B
ERNARD
BROUGHT
HIS
MOUTH down on hers. His tongue was hard and hungry as it pressed into her, licking to life a searing flame of desire. Gwendolyn twined her fingers through his hair, the sweet, hot flicker of her tongue inviting him to work his dark magic, even if there be nothing left of her when he was done but a smoldering heap of ashes. She should have been afraid, but this place, this night, this man had cast a spell upon her, banishing all of her fears and inhibitions.

She sighed as his lips abandoned hers, but that sigh deepened into a moan of pleasure when they blazed a scorching trail from the corner of her mouth to the softness of her cheek.

“God, I love your dimples,” he muttered. “And I intend to taste every one of them before this night is done.”

He pressed his lips to the vulnerable hollow at the base of her throat. Nuzzling his way past her pounding
pulse, he captured her earlobe between his teeth, then sent his tongue swirling through the wildly sensitive shell of her ear.

Gwendolyn gasped, unprepared for the sharp explosion of longing in her womb. Bernard caught the helpless sound in his mouth, muffling it with a groan of his own. She had believed he meant to feast on her, but she was the one being sated, by every hungry stroke of his tongue, every greedy brush of his fingertips against her skin. She was so lost in his kiss that she wasn’t even aware that his deft hands had unfastened her bodice and bared her to the waist until she felt the cool night air caress her naked breasts.

Before she could shield the generous globes with her hands, Bernard had covered them with his own. He filled his palms with her, then caught her throbbing nipples between forefinger and thumb, gently teasing and tugging until a mewling sob of pleasure escaped her.

“I can’t believe you don’t know how beautiful you are,” he whispered in her ear. “You’re so soft, so sweet, so round in all the places a man most wants to touch.”

As if to prove his point, he slid his hands from her breasts to her bottom, urging her hips against him. He lavished her mouth with kisses as he rocked against her, the rigid length straining against the front of his kilt seeking an even deeper softness.

Gwendolyn gasped as that exquisite friction ignited a fresh spark, one so wild and so hot it threatened to incinerate her where she stood. Sliding her hands beneath
his shirt, she feathered her fingers against the taut plane of his abdomen. His heated skin quivered at her touch.

“If your fingers stray so much as an inch lower,” he said through clenched teeth, “this wedding night will be over before it’s begun.”

Gwendolyn slid her hand upward, stroking the lightly furred muscles of his chest. “I’ve waited over half my life for this night. I want it to last forever.”

“Then I’ll do all I can to stop the dawn from coming.”

As Bernard gathered the voluminous sacque gown and slipped it over her head, she closed her eyes, thankful that there were no corsets or petticoats to hinder him. He gently urged her drawers down her legs until there was nothing left for her to do but step out of them and stand before him, as naked as a newborn babe.

He gazed down at her, the glint of appreciation in his eye so keen that she thought he might lift his kilt and take her right there against the door.

Instead, he swept her up in his arms and carried her to the bed. After spending most of her life with her feet planted firmly on the ground, Gwendolyn found it a heady thrill to be lifted like that.

Bernard followed her down to the feather mattress. His weight should have crushed her, yet she welcomed the possessive thrust of his tongue, the hot and heavy fullness of his manhood pressing against her belly.

When he leaned away from her to drag off his shirt and unwrap his kilt, she quivered in anticipation of his
return. Bars of moonlight fell across the bed, making her his captive once more. They bathed her in a lambent glow, but left him in darkness.

She could only imagine how she must appear to him—sprawled naked across the satin sheets like one of those wanton, voluptuous demigoddesses who gazed down upon them from the mural above. Although his eyes were in shadow, she could feel his gaze upon her, making her flesh tingle.

When he spoke, every trace of his years in England had been banished from his lilting burr. “This was my room when I was a lad, you know. I spent many a sleepless hour lying on my back, gazing up at that accursed mural. I used to dream that one of those goddesses would come tumbling out of the heavens and into my arms.” His breathing was audible in the darkness. “And now she has.”

A flush crept up Gwendolyn’s throat and her breasts began to tighten and ache, as if begging for some small morsel of attention. It was sweet torture, knowing he would touch her, but not knowing when or where.

A shiver of yearning rocked her as he lowered his head and touched the very tip of his tongue to one of her throbbing nipples. She arched against him, her fingernails scoring the sheets as the gentle tug of his teeth and lips coaxed a surge of molten nectar from between her thighs.

Before she could catch her breath, he was pressing a reverent kiss to the dimple at the inner curve of one
knee. His beard-roughened cheek tickled her calf, but his lips were moist and warm. As his mouth began to drift higher, urging her thighs apart, she began to tremble.

He ran his hands over the virgin cream of her belly. “There’s no need to be afraid, my bonny angel. I’m not a beast tonight. I’m simply a man who wants nothing more in this world than to make love to his bride.”

His bride.

Gwendolyn had almost forgotten that such sinfully delicious delights could actually be sanctioned by God. Which was why she wasn’t prepared for the shock of Bernard’s big, warm hands curling around her bottom, lifting and spreading her to accept the sweetest and most unholy of kisses.

She clutched at the rough silk of his hair as unspeakable pleasure curled through her. Gazing up at the goddesses in the mural through dazed eyes, she wondered if they’d ever known such forbidden ecstasy. Persephone gazed back at her with knowing eyes. Psyche’s flushed cheeks and parted lips were a mirror of her own.

Then Bernard shattered both her and the heavens with nothing more than the artful flick of his tongue. She was still shuddering with tremors of raw bliss when his mouth closed over hers, feeding her the ambrosia of her own desire.

“Had I known being fed to a dragon would be so sweet,” she murmured into his mouth, “I might have gone willingly to that stake.”

“Ah, but the taste of you only whets my appetite,” he growled, grazing her throat with his teeth.

The hungry stroke of his fingers left no doubt as to what would satisfy him. He pressed two of them deep inside of her, using the dew his mouth had coaxed from those lush petals to prepare her for what was to come. As his shadow covered her, blocking out the moonlight, Gwendolyn began to tremble again.

He cupped her face in his hands. “You were brave enough to defy a dragon in his own lair. Don’t tell me you’re afraid now.”

“I’m not,” she whispered, tenderly stroking his hair from his brow. “I’m terrified.”

Bernard gazed deep into her eyes. “So am I.”

His hoarse confession gave Gwendolyn the courage to open her legs to him. As he buried himself deep within her, a ragged groan tore from his throat. Gwendolyn might have cried out herself had his pleasure not seemed to be so much more powerful than her pain. The ache of accommodating him was quickly eclipsed by the primal thrill of being filled to the brink by his throbbing length. There would be no escaping this stake, and as Bernard began to glide in and out of her, each thrust driving him deeper, Gwendolyn realized she no longer wanted to escape.

She wrapped her arms around him and clung for dear life. He could no longer hold himself apart from her—not the boy she had adored, nor the man she had loved.

She arched against him, eager to embrace all that he was and all that he ever would be—angel and demon, boy and man, beast and prince, husband and stranger.

She no longer rebelled against his tender mastery, but rejoiced at being a captive to the pleasure he would lavish upon her.

Bracing his palms on each side of her head, he rocked into her, all the while gazing into her eyes with an urgency as fierce and driving as the ancient rhythm building to a crescendo between her thighs. “You told me you were once half in love with me,” he reminded her. “Well, I’m a greedy bastard and I’m not willing to settle for half. I want it all.”

At that moment, he shifted his body, angling his strokes so that each plunge of his hips abraded the tender bud nestled at the peak of her damp curls.