Page 12
Turning her back on her husband, Kathryn hesitated to disrobe, still awkward after her uncompromising encounter with Gavyn as she washed his back. Any woman married two years should have some notion what type of man she had wed. Not Kathryn. She felt ignorant, nervous.
All because she had misplaced something—a part of her that had become essential to her wellbeing. Aye, she had lost the protective barrier that she had built betwixt the world and her heart. It had begun the day she decided that her only choice if she was to have the life she wanted, meant making Gavyn fall in love her, which would be fine if only she knew how.
The day they had wed, she had barricaded her mind and body behind a wall of anger that was almost physical, fuelled it with her resentment o’er the deaths of her family. Then every day that he remained in France she had helped the days pass by playing a game of self-deception, a game named hope. Now that obscuring blindfold she had worn around both eyes and heart had been ripped away and its loss left her staggered.
The difficult measure would be keeping up the pretence that naught had changed, that she was still of a mind to dislike him.
Ach, the difficult decision to make him love her had been easy when compared to what it would cost her to win his heart. A sudden turnabout in her fiesty mood was more than likely to make him suspicious. It wasn’t as if he would be filled with vanity, the kind that expected all the lasses to fall at his feet.
No, his scar precluded that happening.
Deep in thought, Kathryn slowly raised her hands above her head and began removing the ivory pins that held her long braid close to her scalp. With Lhilidh off tending to Geala’s body, accompanied by Nhaimeth, she hoped that by the time they reached the wee house crouched outside the palisade in the dark, the maids Abelard had sent there ahead of them would have taken care of the worst of it.
With nae other choice, she began performing without thought the ritual of undressing, fingers working to the slow rhythm of her heart, her mind set on a problem that could not be solved.
Why did the longest day of her life suddenly feel far too short?
Farquhar padded up behind her, his footsteps almost silent, but not enough that she couldn’t sense his approach. Her heart ceased its banging against her breastbone in slow heavy thuds and began to race.
“Let me help ye with that,” he murmured, his breath warming the back of her neck, stirring the loose strands of hair that constantly escaped her braid. His hand lightly caressed her shoulder, and her skin quivered. Could he tell? She couldn’t bear him to know his touch affected her, not so soon.
Careful , she told herself.
“No need,” she said, her voice thready, strained. “I can manage myself. Being the youngest sister meant I didn’t always have a maid to tend me.”
“But I want to. Please let me..”
Kathryn nodded and dipped her head, revealing the curve of her neck to his view. What else could she do when he insisted so nicely? She felt strange, confused, had done so ever since she touched his spine, felt how his skin fitted tightly over hard muscles. No matter what Brodwyn had told her, the sensations she felt as Gavyn touched her were like a portion of a different story. Her cousin hadn’t mentioned drowning in a heady, breathless feeling, or that her limbs would feel as soft as loch weed swept away on the current.
Worst of all, she didn’t want these feelings to invade her body, her mind—to lose control. Her plan had been that she would steal his heart, not that he would simply steal hers away as easily as he stole her breath.
This man, this husband had been her enemy—had been at her father’s death—how could she forget that? She felt bewitched, bespelled, unable to help herself. She liked to be in control … needed to be in control. Open-mouthed, seeking to breathe, she wanted to scream, to protest against her bodily needs and wants. Instead, she dragged in air and shivered, though she felt over-warm. Her breath came swift and shallow, then her skin grew hotter still as Gavyn swept her hair o’er her left shoulder to fall across her breast.
His hands moved swiftly, and the laces holding her kirtle on her shoulders melted away like ice in spring—undone, as was her resistance. The fine weave of her kirtle felt rough against her sensitive skin, something that had never troubled her when Lhilidh helped her disrobe.
Standing in a shift that had replaced the one he soaked with hot water from the tub, the one she’d peeled off and left in a sodden heap for Lhilidh to clear away, she no longer worried what the lass had thought. In truth, any worries she felt then had been replaced with something new, something inexplicable. Desire.
Kathryn had nae notion of how he had brought her to this state. From the moment they had left the Chieftain’s apartments to attend the Hall, Gavyn had barely graced her with his touch. Apart from him taking the decision about Geala away from her, all speech between them had been commonplace.
Why, then, did her skin quiver each time his eyes grazed her face, or asked her to explain who folk were and their position in the Comlyn household? Distracted, her answers had become vague, her attention drawn inward. Though she sat at the high board, her mind roamed their chamber, remembering how her heart had fluttered when she saw the way his prick appeared to move in her direction, as if it had a mind of its own and was searching her out.
Before she came to a conclusion, his hands were on her shoulders, sliding her shift in the direction of her kirtle. Soon there would be naught betwixt them but his linen shirt.
“Lovely lass,” he groaned, his voice a rough-hewn caress that followed the path of her spine. Her hands formed fists in the fine linen of her shift.
“No, please, no. Let me get into bed and wait for you there … please. I’m nervous, and I can tell you’re impatient. Let’s make it easier for us both. You finish undressing while I slip into bed.”
He kissed her ear, whispering, “If that’s what makes you happy, lass. But be assured it will happen, though I’m all for making it easy for both of us.”
Contrary to the expected, the fear that might have paralysed her sent Kathryn running from his arms towards the bed. Pulling back the top covers, she revealed the clean creaseless linen sheets. Unlike her, Lhilidh had been only too eager to help spread them over the mattress once she realised it was the Laird who’d arrived flying the Raven on his shield.
Try as Kathryn might, she couldn’t see Gavyn as that anymore. Tonight he was simply a man eager to get inside his wife. At that blinding thought, she almost froze with a clutch of covers in her fist as her female centre tightened in panic.
She heard Gavyn’s belt drop to the floor, buckle jingling. A sound guaranteed to unfreeze her limbs. Swift as a linty, she climbed upon the bed. Eyes tight shut, she dragged her fine linen shift up around her waist then waited, her whole body atremble.
“Ach, Kathryn, lass,” he laughed softly as he approached, “do you think this is what a man, a husband wants to find waiting in his bed? His young beautiful wife laid out as stiff as a plank?”
She felt the mattress dip as he joined her in bed, form a hollow at her back as if it sighed the way Gavyn did. In the space of a heartbeat, Kathryn was rolled onto her side and pulled back against him, held close to his hard chest.
The heat of his body seared hers, burned, and at the instant he bent his head to kiss her nape, the flames in the fire leapt up the chimney and the candles flared white hot as she capitulated to need.
Gavyn felt the moment of her surrender. Recognition of the gift the gods had presented him with became more obvious as his hands rounded her ribs and cupped the fullness of her breasts. Their softness filled the cup of his wide palms, though the feel of her linen shift gave him pause for a moment. “You should be wearing silk,” he told her, lying utterly still with his cock pressing against the warm crevice separating her buttocks, content a for a wee moment until greed swamped him.
With both hands he moved o’er the fullness of her breasts, smoothing his thumbs around their nipples, rubbing the tempting flesh in firm yet teasing swirls until the hardening points poked out betwixt his fingers.
His fantasies had helped the passage of time in a foreign land, but naught could compete with the reality of the true weight of her breasts in his hands, or the sweet taste of her honeyed skin in his mouth as he pressed his tongue into the hollow at her nape and licked her there.
Kathryn squirmed in his arms, her body arching with pleasure. Kissing his way across the slope of her shoulders, he turned her onto her back. Grasping the neck of her shift in both hands, he pulled it apart, bared her breasts to a gaze made hotter by the long-awaited sight before him.
He had imagined her, aye, but naught, nae vision compared with reality.
The King had done well by him. Not only the Laird of the Comlyns, but husband to the most beauteous woman he had ever beheld.
Kathryn, his wife.
Even while he surveyed his prize from end to end, her sable-coloured lashes shaded the blue-green of her eyes to lie softly against her high cheekbones. Rose-gold hair flowed in a stream on the sheet from her nape to her hip. Short, bright gold curls shielded her entrance—a treasure trove indeed, a trophy that would soon be his and his alone.
That was the instant he understood that he dared not let her know the depths of his desire, or tell her too often that he regarded her as a vision of loveliness.
Kathryn, being a Comlyn, would be sure to take advantage of his weakness. Aye, he would take her, make her groan with need and want, but he would ware against speaking sweet tributes in her ear. That was to take the devil’s road, a way that could lead to his doom.
Her eyelashes fluttered, and her eyes, the light blue of aquamarines, watched pouting as he eased her up off the bed and released her ripped shift from beneath her body, murmuring, “If the loss of a shift bothers ye, mayhap you should wear silk afore they’re all shredded, A fine silken shift would excite with glimpses of what lies beneath its folds … though I admit to enjoying the process, and the expression on your face was something to behold, bonnie lass. However, it’s past time for a wee taste of what’s mine by right.”
He buried his mouth in her neck, tasting the different flavours without making a single comment to reveal the pleasure he found there. Now it was Kathryn who sighed, Kathryn who groaned when he sucked her rose pink nipples deep into his mouth and lathed them with his tongue.
She squirmed as he slid a hand between her thighs, caressed the creamy skin, soft as velvet, while he ran his tongue around her navel. Soft gasps of air escaped her lips as her head rolled from side to side on the pillow, as if his kisses held her captive; but for Kathryn he promised no escape.
She was wet, weeping from her core, just waiting to be filled.
But Gavyn wanted more—for both himself and his little virgin wife. And for that she needed to be prepared.
Kathryn let out a scream as Gavyn parted her legs and fitted his face between them. She would have sat up, but he pushed her flat with one large hand while the other continued to sweep up her leg from knee to thigh. His tongue circled as his mouth sucked gently, almost tenderly. Soon, she didn’t care what he did, only about the pleasure that he wrought. Her hands clawed at the sheet under her until she gathered it up into fists that were the only thing holding her on this earth, the only thing stopping her from flying into the sky amongst the stars, until naught but his lips could hold her down. Her body arched and bucked as she flew, elated by a pleasure she had never known existed, until the moment she crashed to the ground, felt her body broken, splintered, as if there wasn’t enough air in the world to fill her lungs.
Gavyn reluctantly lifted his head away from the vessel of honey he had supped from—so sweet, so pure. The lover in him wanted to share his findings with her, but the warrior in him knew he had to defend himself from his Comlyn wife.
While she still lay lax and almost squandered, he knelt between her thighs and spread her before him, as if for his delectation, which it was. She protested slightly as he slid her towards him till her thighs encircled him and he could see her wet and wanting like a pink diamond in a field of gold as he pushed into her, slow, easy. She was hot, tight, and he was determined to do no damage.
God’s blood, this was his wife, not some slut roaming the fringes of a battlefield after easy pickings.
He began to rock, holding her by the hips, opening her, wider and deeper until he hit her barrier. He held his breath for a few moments, tamped down the urge to ride right in and claim what was his. “Are you all right lass?”
Her eyes looked huge in her face, a glazed blue that dazzled with moisture, but she nodded and said, “Aye. It feels peculiar but not too sore.”
“Not yet, but I’ll have to hurt you. This time, Kathryn, there can be no pretence, and the blood that I spill will be yours.”
“I’m not frightened.”
Even as she said the words, he realised she might not be frightened, but he was. Scared he would damage her tight wee flower, and with that close the tentative breakthrough he had made in their fragile relationship. With care, he bowed his back, held her hips with both hands and stared into Kathryn’s eyes as he plunged and left them both gasping for air. Then he began to move, taking her with him. Faster, longer—fierce strokes that he could no longer control, as the dream that had carried him over all these miles, kept him sane in all these battles, was finally within his grasp.
He felt Kathryn clasping him as he moved, holding him tight as he thrust until he felt her female climax with every push, circling him until he plunged over the edge and yelled her name, “Kathryn!” and toppled full length on top of her.
He was built like an oak, solid, yet she didn’t mind the way it pushed her deep into the mattress as if she would never want to get up again.
Brodwyn had lied. Certainly it had hurt, but only a little until the pleasure had taken o’er. Aye, Brodwyn hadn’t told her about the pleasure. And Kathryn was of a mind not to let on that she had experienced any. It would be her secret, though it would be difficult keeping it from Gavyn. Her tongue might keep it close, but her body had surely given her away.
Yet when Gavyn began to move, she was of a mind to keep him where he was, and clutched at his shoulder, not quite pleading though she wanted to.
“Comfortable as I am, lass, I need to clean you up.”
Even after all she had experienced that night, a blush was her first reaction when he bundled up her torn shift and wiped the blood from between her legs, showing her evidence with a gruff, “Proof, if I’d needed it. But I didn’t. You were so tight I knew straight away I was the first to ride you.”
Kathryn’s colour rose again, suffused her face. She was used to men, surrounded by them daily, none who would have used the word ‘ride’ to her face unless talking of a horse. She supposed his was a warrior’s way, and she would have to get used to it, or attempt to change him.
The former would definitely be easier.
Gavyn took the ruined shift over to the fire and, setting it upon the flames, added another log to force it down. “Only you and I know that this was our true wedding night.”
He turned his wrist to look at the thin bright scar crossing the inside. “And nary a soul will ever know how we deceived them.”
“I never thanked you for saving my face,” she murmured, shy again as he slipped under the covers behind her and pulled them up higher to cover their shoulders.
He chuckled. “Did it never occur to you that what I did saved my face as well? However, that’s all behind us now. We’ve both had a long day and now it’s time to rest.”
“You don’t want to do it again?” she asked, unable to hide her surprise.
“It? No, not tonight, you’ll be sore and we have tomorrow and all the rest of the nights that lie ahead of us to make fine, strong sons.”
She struggled slightly with that concept. If making bairns was all it was about, why go to the trouble of making sure the act was so pleasurable, for both of them.
And what about daughters?
She grappled with her conclusion. If they had both enjoyed it so much, surely she was part way to making him love her, or did men only need the act without the emotion?
She wondered as he wrapped her in his big arms and pulled her in tight against his chest, saying, “Sleep now, this is but the beginning.”
She felt warm and safe in his arms, better than she had since her father died and left nothing behind him but angst and confusion. Soon her eyes began to droop closed and, as she fought against sleep, a smile shaped her lips at feeling Gavyn’s length rise hot and hard against the curve of her bottom.