Someone was staring at her. Clio opened her eyes.
Merrick was watching her, his look sleepy and lazy and tinged with something soft that she could not identify.
He had a bruise that darkened his jaw purple under his morning beard.
She reached out with her fingertips and touched the bruise. “You are hurt.”
“Roger came back.”
“He hit you?”
Merrick shook his head. “’Twas only in fun. I was laughing at the time. ’Tis nothing.”
She frowned and moved closer to examine the bruise and the small brown-scabbed cut near his chin that was a little redder and more swollen than the rest.
“It looks like it hurts.”
He laughed. “Being hit in the helm with a mace hurts. This is naught but a scratch.” He paused, his gaze seeming to take her all in. “But I find, woman, that I like to see you worry over my fine features and high good looks.”
Even she had to laugh then and raised her chin high. “’Tis not your looks for which I fear. I was afraid the blow might have knocked some sense into you.”
“You never give in, do you?”
She smiled and shook her head.
His eyes grew drowsy; his fingers drifted over her face, touching her with a tender gentleness, with almost a sense of awe that made her forget completely that he was a fearsome warrior.
He kissed her then, his lips as warm and lazy as his stare had been when she first awoke. His mouth barely touched hers, just a mere brushing of their dry lips.
Yet her eyes drifted closed and she slipped her arms over his wide and strong shoulders, running her hand over the taut snakelike muscles there and then clasping her hands behind his hard, thick warrior’s neck.
He deepened their kiss, touched his tongue to hers, filled her mouth, stroking her and making her feel as if she were flying with the sweet songbirds that called out in the distance. They sounded so far away, as if the world itself had left them alone.
She held on to him, and he to her, shifting slightly together. She could feel the thick curls of coarse hair as his chest pressed closer against hers.
They rolled until there was nothing between the mattress and Merrick’s hard body but her soft one.
It felt so good and so right. She shifted again, almost squirming, and moved her legs apart because somewhere deep in the midst of her most private places she needed something, needed to feel him against her.
’Twas the most splendid feeling, the most intimate touch she had ever endured when he rubbed against her with his hips. Her blood flowed through her veins like spilt summer wine, hot and sweet and rapid. She felt like crying and calling out his name.
His warm palm cupped her breast and his tongue swelled in her mouth. His fingertips touched her beading nipple and played with it. She grew hotter and wet in places that should have made her flush, but her skin could not turn hotter than it already was.
Her hands slid down over his broad back and she slipped them under the thin breechcloth. Her palms stroked back and forth over the soft downy hairs that covered the top of his buttocks and felt as fine as marten fur.
He moaned something against her mouth, a plea, a desire. ’Twas only her name, she knew, but it sounded like so much more when the sound seem to come from his very soul.
She opened her eyes, needing to see his face, to see if he felt what she did. He was looking at her as he kissed her and touched her and moaned her name.
His eyes were the same warm blue of a deep English sky, his pupils the dark blue of midnight. Those eyes were no longer cold, and she wondered how she could have ever thought them hard and icy.
The passion she saw there was like her own, intense and overwhelming, and it made her want him more and more. She needed to get closer to him, to crawl inside of him, to touch him somewhere deep inside, and to have him touch her in places that just thinking about would surely send her to hell.
“Touch me.” She breathed her sinful thoughts, and he buried his face in her neck and slid his hand from her tender taut-tipped breasts to in between her legs where she needed to feel pressure and hardness and touches.
She did not care that she would burn for an eternity, that she would live through all the tortures of purgatory. She spread her thighs wider, and his fingers rubbed harder and harder against that warm wetness that should have humiliated her, but instead made her move with his motions, faster and faster, slicker, toward some higher place that had to be heaven. It had to be splendid heaven, for if this were hell, she wanted to go there.
She gasped and gripped his bottom so hard, her nails were digging into his flesh. “I’m dying,” she called out. “I’m going to die.” She felt she was going to explode, to burst, but she couldn’t stop herself.
He rubbed faster and faster. “Come, my sweet, come.” He whispered in warm breaths against her ear. “Let it go. Feel it, feel it.”
The intensity of what was happening to her was so strong, so very powerful, that the moment she burst she saw nothing but flashes of stars and felt her blood all rush and pool in her nethers, throbbing as if her life’s blood were spilling from her. It went on and on, forever, this warm wet feeling that was better than dying.
He stared down at her, his expression so tender and so full of feeling that she had to blink to see if perhaps she were dreaming.
“Again,” he whispered, and when she shook her head and tried to move, he slid his hands up her arms and pinned them above her, while his lips skimmed down over her thin linen shift that was twisted like a cloth belt between her breasts and around her waist.
He released her, lifted her hips and buried his face between her legs and kissed her there. ’Twas more than she could bear and she cried out and tried to twist away again.
His mouth followed her and kissed her so intimately that she almost fainted. His tongue went deep, as if it were only delving inside her mouth, then he sucked and took all of her in his hungry mouth until she burst apart again and again.
Between Prime and Terce, the same sin happened more times than she could count, until she had no life left in her. She lay there limp and wilted, her lips bruised and her body flaccid as a flower, swept away by the sheer power of the wind and rain.
Merrick, however, seemed to have an inordinate amount of life, as if he had slept all night. He got out of the bed with so very much vigor in his step that his motions almost made her dizzy. He washed and dressed with more enthusiasm than she’d have thought a king’s earl was capable of.
Somehow she’d imagined him as a warrior, someone who was not human, just a being whose duty was war and guarding the borders and making Camrose into a stronghold so massive that no enemy could ever pierce its stone walls.
She propped her head on her hand and watched him. He confused her, this gentle man who touched her as if she were his world. Part of her wanted to sleep, to escape this confusion. But with him humming and whistling and preening she could not sleep.
He looked up after toweling off his face. “What has you scowling so?”
“You stole all my life,” she said, plucking impatiently at the bed linen and pulling small down feathers from the bed.
“If you keep picking apart the mattress, we shall have to sleep on that old hay tick.”
She swiped at the feathers, which curled up into the air and then floated to the floor. “’Tis not fair, you know. I have no life left, not even enough to get up, and you are footslogging around this chamber as if you have fire under your …” She paused.
“My what?” He was grinning at her.
“Your big feet.”
He laughed loud and heartily and tossed the towel aside. “You know what the old wives say about big feet.”
Before either of them could speak, there was a horrendous pounding on the chamber door. “Merrick! Merrick!”
Seeming to ignore Sir Roger, Merrick slipped on his leather jack and crossed the room as he buckled on his sword belt.
He stood over her as the pounding went on. He bent down and pressed his hands flat on the mattress, pinning her just inches from his face.
She looked up at him, her gaze drifting all on its own to his sensual mouth, then to his bristled cheeks and his warm blue eyes. His face was so very close that she could smell the sweet soap scent on his clean skin—thyme and heather and mint. It made her heart speed up and her wits go walking all at the same time.
“Roger is still angry with me for foisting Old Gladdys off on him.”
The door rattled again, then came Roger’s loud voice, “Are you going to lie abed all day, Merrick? Get up, you sloth, so I can whip your arse on the practice field!”
Merrick dropped a quick kiss on the top of her head instead of her mouth, where she wanted it.
By the time she opened her eyes to scowl at him again, he had crossed the room and jerked open the chamber doors. He stood there in all his tall glory. “Well, if it isn’t Sir Roger the Ravished.”
Even Sir Isambard choked back a laugh.
Roger leveled a vengeful look at Merrick. “Your wit astounds me.”
’Twas then that Merrick clapped him on the shoulder and apologized. Merrick de Beaucourt, the Red Lion, told Roger he was sorry about the old Druid.
Clio was shocked. She could not have imagined him admitting he was wrong, let alone telling anyone he was truly sorry.
She felt strange and uncomfortable, as if she had just walked around a corner and seen someone important naked, like the pope or the king. Had she been that very wrong about him? About his hardness and character? Perhaps she was the one who had been too stubborn to give way.
“Come,” Merrick said in a completely different tone from the one he used when he’d said that very word to her. He must have noticed, too, because he turned back and looked at her.
Something hot and intimate passed between them. A sweet and sinful memory.
Roger straightened and peered over Merrick’s shoulder at Clio. “Tell me that is not Lady Clio, the sweet and innocent maiden, lying in your bed.”
She gasped and pulled her covers over her head, curling into a ball of humiliation.
“’Tis her bed now,” was all Merrick said.
“What are you about?” Roger asked with some tone of censure.
“She is still a maiden.” Merrick’s voice was all too cocky.
Clio lay beneath the covers and gritted her teeth together until they ached. How very splendid of them to stand in the door to her chamber and discuss her virginity as if it were the day’s weather.
“Good day to you, my lady,” Merrick said pointedly and closed the door.
Merrick and Roger turned to leave, and something hard thudded against the heavy bedchamber door.
“The iron candleholder?” Roger guessed.
Merrick shook his head. “Too muted. I’d say her shoe.”
Roger nodded in agreement as Merrick turned to Sir Isambard. “Have one of the men, no …” Merrick paused for a thoughtful instant. “Have three of the men watch over her today.”
“Aye, my lord.”
Merrick and Roger went down the stairs side by side.
“I came earlier,” Roger said almost too casually.
“Oh?”
There was a glint in Roger’s eye. “To get you up.”
“I went to bed late.”
“I heard the lady shouting,” Roger said, then was pointedly quiet.
A tense moment passed, the kind when time seemed to stretch out before them.
Roger looked at Merrick and smothered his grin. “Then tell me, my friend, did she die?”
“Aye,” Merrick said without missing a step. “She died the sweetest death I’ve ever seen.”
Chapter 27
A piebald gelding charged toward the quintain with Thud bouncing atop his flat training saddle in the same floundering way a puppet bounces on its strings—arms flying out, legs loose, and ass rising a good foot in the air.
With every full stride of the horse, Thud’s head flopped about his neck as if it were broken, his hair slapping his brow and face.
“God’s teeth,” Merrick muttered. “How the hell does he stay on?”
Sir Isambard stood there rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Stubborn determination.”
The lad hit the quintain at a full, yet somewhat flailing run. Thud grunted loudly; it sounded as if someone had belched up a north wind.
The wooden target spun round so fast that Merrick closed his eyes and winced.
There was a loud
thud
!
When Merrick opened his eyes, the boy was sprawled on the ground a good five feet from his mount. Thud’s lance had slipped from his loose grip and shot backward like an arrow from an upside-down bow, then rolled uselessly to a stop at Merrick’s feet.
Tobin and some of the other squires were doubled over, crowing with laughter.
Thud adjusted his helm and shoved the visor back. He stared at Merrick, his eyes looking dazed.
Merrick stood there watching him, then pointed toward the horse.
Thud understood him and awkwardly got to his feet, then half stumbled toward his horse. He stuck one foot in the stirrup and gripped the saddle, then tried to mount.
On the wrong side.
Confused, the horse danced around in a backward circle with Thud hopping on one foot and trying to pull himself up.
The squires were all but rolling on the ground they were laughing so hard.
Sir Isambard cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Switch sides, lad.”
Merrick groaned and shook his head. “Don’t you think the lad should learn to ride before he tries the lance?”
“Aye. But the boy insisted.”
Thud had managed to mount the horse, and he rode— using the term loosely—back toward the starting mark.
Merrick walked over and handed him the lance. “Here, lad.”
Thud took the weapon.
“Tighten your knees on the horse and move your body with him. Will keep you from bouncing off. Grip the lance tightly under your arm and try to keep it straight.”
Thud nodded, listening intently and wearing a face that was serious with concentration.
“Aim for the target’s torso.” Merrick pointed at the practice dummy. “Right there, where the heart would be. See the splintered marks?”
“Aye.”