Page 19 of A Lover for Lady Jane (The Welsh Rebels #5)

“It’s fine,” he said, clearing his throat.

Yes. As long as she stayed at the barn with him, it was fine.

Besides, she needed to dry her clothes. That was the priority.

He could not have her uncomfortable or worse, catching a chill because they’d tried to preserve her modesty.

“But if you’re cold, you could always drape one of the blankets around your shoulders. ”

“Of course.” She gave him a grateful smile that melted his bones. “Why didn’t I think of that? Well, I will go and put these next to your tunic and shirt then,” she said, gesturing at the gown and shift she was holding.

Leaving him to stare at her swaying hips, she made for the field at the back of the barn. Once she was hidden from view, Griffin focused on breathing again and set his mind on the task ahead.

Forget the lady in russet, he had a door to repair.

“Can you pass me that piece of wood over there?”

Jane made to lift the largest of the planks Griffin had deposited against the wall earlier that morning.

His preferred method for reinforcing the crumbling barn door had been to dismantle the whole thing and build it again, using the half dozen planks old Enid had gathered from kind neighbors as a base.

“Sometimes it’s better to start anew, rather than try to patch up things that will end up needing attention later on, anyway,” he’d argued.

She couldn’t agree more, and she had enjoyed watching him in a carpenter capacity.

A noblewoman raised in a castle, Jane had only ever seen men undertake duties and tasks that befell noblemen.

Her world was inhabited by knights riding destriers and sparring with swords and maces, by lords reading through ledgers and ordering servants about.

The grooms in the stables had been the only men she had seen doing any sort of manual work, but that had always revolved around horses.

She had certainly never seen men hammering nails into pieces of wood, roasting rabbits over a fire, patching up their own boots or digging holes in the ground, all things she had seen Griffin do in the last few days.

She took hold of the plank and let out a yelp when a sharp sting hit her. “Ow!”

“What’s the matter?” In the blink of an eye, Griffin had dropped his hammer and rushed over to her.

“’Tis nothing. A splinter.”

She held her hand to the light to see where the offending piece of wood had lodged itself—in the fleshy part of her left thumb. It was sticking out slightly and would be easy to remove, at least. As she raised her other hand to do just that, Griffin wrapped his fingers around her wrist.

“Let me.”

Before she could agree, he’d taken her thumb into his mouth.

Her body instantly went liquid, for the sensation was incredible.

She felt his tongue move slowly over her skin as it tried to locate the splinter and she remembered what he had done to her with that wicked tongue the night before, when he had soothed the pain of his possession.

The place between her thighs, the one he had licked with thorough deliberateness, started to throb in remembrance, then to burn, indicating in the only way it could that it wanted to be licked again.

Griffin didn’t seem aware of what was going on inside her.

His attention was wholly focused on the task at hand, removing the splinter that was hurting her.

He didn’t seem to think that having her thumb inside a man’s mouth would arouse a woman but, though Jane did not understand why that might be, it was undeniable.

She was aroused. All too soon, sharp teeth closed over the shard of wood and pulled.

Looking her straight in the eye, Griffin spat the offending splinter on the floor.

Jane’s core spasmed and she groaned in disbelief.

Dear God, but she was turning into a veritable wanton.

“I’m sorry, did I hurt you?” Griffin asked, concern in his eyes. He’d mistaken her groan for a sign of pain.

“N-no.” With her legs reduced to the consistency of stewed apples and her tongue melted to a puddle, she could hardly stand or talk.

“Is it not too painful?” His thumb caressed over the place where the splinter had been.

“N-no,” she repeated, utterly under the spell of the moment.

They stared at one another a long time, him towering over her with his chest golden in the dying winter sun, her with her heart reduced to a quivering mess.

She thought of Sian, who’d told her that while she was courting Christopher, he had once licked honey from her fingers, and she had almost passed out from the sensations.

Jane had thought at the time that her sister had exaggerated but she now understood that she had not.

Griffin had only taken her thumb in his mouth, very briefly, and she had almost swooned.

What she would have felt if he’d licked and sucked each of her fingers in turn did not bear thinking about.

“Jane?”

She blinked. “Yes?”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. I’m all right.” Or at least she would be in a moment, when her sanity had returned.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I’m all right. I’m sure.” He arched a questioning brow. She reddened and then repeated. “I’m all right. Yes. Thank you very much. Please carry on. With the d-door, I mean, not with the… Yes, with the door, I mean.”

Looking as if he were fighting a smile, Griffin nodded and resumed the hammering of the wood.

It took longer than she had anticipated, but by the time he declared himself satisfied with his work, Jane was able to think straight again.

“So, you really are left-handed then?” she asked, looking at the hand holding the hammer.

“Yes.” He arched a brow. “How did you know I was?”

Heat invaded her cheeks. Why did she have to ask the question when the reason she suspected he favored his left hand was that she had marvelled at his dexterity in the forest, when he had brushed at her folds with such expertise.

She had wondered at the time if he would have been as skilled with his right hand.

Although, he probably would, now that she thought of it. The man was made to pleasure women.

“I didn’t know for sure, but I suspected it from the way you handled Eryr,” she lied.

“Mm.” he didn’t seem convinced, but mercifully, he let it go. “Let us see to the cottage door now,” he said, picking up the rest of the tools. “It should not take long, as it’s only a case of seeing to the hinges.”

“I’ll go get our clothes back before the chill of the evening sets in.”

They would be dry by now, so she had better bring them inside the barn before they got damp again. Though she had placed them in the sunshine earlier on, she found them in the shade, Still, she was pleased to see that they were indeed dry when she gathered them up.

“ Noswaith dda ,” a masculine voice said from behind her.

Jane’s heart stopped for a moment. Was this one of Geraint’s men?

Had the rebels found her? Dropping the clothes at her feet, she turned around.

No sense in trying to run. If this really was one of her abductors, she would not get far.

But it was not. A ginger haired man she had never seen before was standing behind her, smiling.

Everything within her relaxed. Not one of the rebels who had abducted her, only a villager.

“Good evening,” she echoed, smiling back in her relief.

“I’m the cooper’s son, freshly arrived in the village. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before?” he asked, leaning against a tree.

“No, you wouldn’t have. I’m only here because of the storm. Old Enid offered her barn for the night.”

“Did she? That’s kind of her.” He gave a big sigh and smiled again. “Would that you had come to me for help. I would have offered you something more welcoming than a haystack.”

In other words, his own pallet—with him in it.

Jane was not fooled. The way the man was ogling her, with his gaze lingering on her breasts, reminded her that the dress she was wearing had not been made for a woman as generously endowed as she was.

There was a glint in his eyes she had not seen in Griffin’s gaze while they worked side by side all day.

Seeing her in a dress too small for her had understandably lit a flare of desire in his body.

But after the initial shock, he had made a point of not making her feel ill at ease.

Keeping the blanket around her shoulders had not been practical while she’d helped with the door, so she had soon abandoned it.

Griffin had already seen all of her, so there was no cause for embarrassment with him, and she had minded more the way the dress prevented her from lifting her arms than she had worried about the way it exposed too much of her bosom.

The man was renewing her discomfort, looking at her as if he were imagining her naked and under him on his pallet.

“Don’t worry about me,” she said, picking the clothes up again and holding them against her chest to hide her exposed bosom. “The barn was perfectly adequate.”

It had been more than that, it had been the perfect cocoon to welcome her and Griffin. It had been the place where she had discovered how wonderful it was to lie in a man’s arms, in his arms. Nothing could have been more perfect that that.

“I’m sure it was. I’m Cynan by the way.” Jane’s unease increased tenfold.

Why did he have to share his name with the man she was fleeing?

With the man who had threatened her with rape?

It was time to tell him she had not come to the village alone, but with her husband Rhys, as Enid thought.

Why had she not thought of that before? It was the best way to make him think twice about bothering her. “And who might you be?”

“My wife.”

The two words answering the question were little more than a growl. Jane wavered on her feet, relief sweeping through her. If Griffin was here, she would be fine. The man wouldn’t dare try anything. An arm snaked around her waist, offering welcome support, when her whole body sagged.

“Are you all right, Jane?” he murmured in her ear in English.

He’d guessed her conversation with the cooper’s son had made her uncomfortable, then.

Not that it would be difficult. Placed behind her, he would have been able to see Cynan’s face, and he would not have missed the glint of lust in the man’s eyes or failed to understand what had provoked it—her scandalously low bodice.

“I’m fine.” She gave him a smile and tightened her hold on the clothes.

“Let’s go,” he said louder, and in Welsh. “Our friend Enid has offered to let us sleep in the barn tonight also. A basket of food is waiting for us. Come, wife.”

Without so much as a glance toward the other man, he led her back toward the barn.

“The man didn’t touch you, did he?”

Griffin sounded mightily aggrieved by the notion but no, the man had not touched her, only made her feel uncomfortable.

“No,” Jane assured him. “He’d only just stared talking to me when you arrived.”

He mumbled something under his breath, and she thought she heard the phrase drooling like a bloody dog .

She could not help a smile. Now that she was safe in the barn with only Griffin to see her, she hadn’t thought it necessary to change back into her own clothes, even if her breasts were in constant danger of slipping out of the bodice.

There was no rush. She could give old Enid the dress back tomorrow when they left, the woman hardly needed it for the night.

Jane swallowed her mouthful of boiled egg pensively.

Without knowing why, she guessed that Griffin would not touch her once they’d taken their place in the hay.

He might be worried she would be sore after their lovemaking in the morning, but she sensed it was even worse than that.

He’d asked her this morning if she regretted giving herself to him.

She didn’t, and she had told him as much, but it was clear he regretted having given in to her.

As soon as the last bit of the cheese had been consumed, he stood up and started to arrange the hay into a comfortable hole big enough for two. At least he would not refuse to lie next to her, which was reassuring. But when she sat down next to him, he cleared his throat in embarrassment.

“Good night,” he said, his voice gruff. “I’m afraid the work of the day has quite exhausted me. I need to sleep.”

“Of course.”

There was no other choice but to agree, but really, what sort of fool did he take her for? As if a man like him would even register the effort of lifting a few planks of wood. By helping, she had lifted almost as much weight as he had, and she did not feel the slightest strain.

He was signaling, as subtly as he could, that they would not share any intimacy tonight.

After one last nod in her direction, he lay down and closed his eyes. A moment later, he was asleep, and Jane was free to stare at him to her heart’s content.

To her delight, he had remained bare-chested and the cracks in the wood were numerous enough to let the light of the bright moon penetrate the dark interior.

Fascinated, she watched him fling his arms to either side of his head, the movement causing his biceps to bulge.

She imagined the parts of him she could not see.

The flat nipples she wished she had licked last night, the muscles on his stomach stretching underneath the blanket.

Then her thoughts took on a lewder turn.

Just how big was his manhood? Was there a lot of difference between its normal state and when he was aroused?

It had felt enormous to her but that didn’t mean much, as she had no point of comparison and to an untried virgin, any size would have felt big.

But perhaps him being very big would explain why his first possession had hurt?

She regretted not having asked to have a look at it before he possessed her.

Would she get another chance? Would he take her again before they reached Castell Esgyrn?

Would they even have the opportunity to make love, out in the open?

She feared she would not feel his arms around her ever again, because if he was determined not to give in to temptation, she wasn’t sure she would find the courage to beg him to take her again.

She’d already asked him to take her maidenhead; she didn’t want him to think her utterly scandalous and a slave to her womanly desires.

Concluding there was nothing to do but try and sleep as well, Jane placed her head on Griffin’s shoulder and her hand on his smooth chest. Without waking up, he covered her fingers with his. She smiled.

It felt as if she had found her rightful place at last.