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S HE HELD OUT her arms to him in silent invitation, not wanting to speak. Not needing to, as he quickly joined her on the bed, covering her with his beautiful body. As they kissed again, he worked his hand beneath the hem of her shift and slowly, slowly, pushed it upward along her naked thigh.

She gasped when his hand slid between her thighs, to caress her there, too.

“Are you frightened, Bea?” he asked gently. “Would you like me to stop?”

“No,” she answered honestly. “I…I think I like it.” He stroked again. She closed her eyes and answered in what was almost a purr. “Indeed, I like it very much.”

He smiled to hear her answer, delighted that she felt no hesitation, that she so obviously enjoyed her lover’s touch. For love her he would, tonight and every night, if that was what she wanted. He was hers to love and hers to desire.

This time, he would take his time. This would be no quick coupling of the sort he’d had when the urges of nature grew too strong, or the sordid seduction he’d practiced on those other young women all those years ago.

He was going to make love with Bea, loving her as he’d never loved a woman.

And as he kissed and caressed her, he truly understood that this was true.

What he’d felt for Celeste had been merely a combination of admiration and desire.

He had never imagined a life with Celeste.

Never dreamed of her holding their child in her arms. Never wanted to sit by the warm flames of a hearth with her, listening to her talk about the cook or the laundry or the hundred other little things that made a life complete.

“My dearest, sweetest angel,” he murmured, brushing a kiss upon her forehead and then the tip of her nose. “I love you. I’ve loved you for weeks— months. I think I started to love you the moment I saw you standing on the steps in courtyard of Tregellas. But I thought…feared…”

“It doesn’t matter now,” she assured him. “I love you.”

“You make me so happy, Bea!”

“I’m very happy, too.” A sultry look came into her blue eyes, a look that made her seem far older than her years. “But unless I’ve misunderstood something, we’ll be happier yet if you don’t stop. Please don’t stop, Ranulf.”

His pleasure slipped into sensual desire. “I shall happily obey, my queen, my empress. My love.”

He kissed her lightly, his lips barely touching hers, and with that same teasing touch, he moved down her neck to her collarbone.

“What have we here?” he whispered as his fingertip traced the neckline of her shift. “A barrier. I shall have to storm it.”

“How do you intend to do that, sir knight? There’s no room in this bed for a trebuchet or other siege machine.”

“I believe…with my teeth,” he murmured, biting the end of the drawstring that tied the neck of her garment and pulling until the knot came undone. “Success.”

“And now?” she whispered breathlessly.

“Now I claim the prize that lies within.”

She closed her eyes and sighed as he insinuated his hand beneath her shift to cup her breast.

“Very nice and worth the storming,” he murmured as he nuzzled her shift lower. “Worth the waiting, too.”

Arching, she ran her hands over his broad shoulders. “I didn’t like the waiting,” she confessed. “But now you and your magnificent body are mine.”

His tongue found her nipple and swirled about the taut tip, sending a fresh wave of need over her. “I’m delighted I meet with your approval, my lady.”

“Oh, you do,” she sighed as she bent her knees, the better to bring her body close to his.

“Not yet,” he cautioned. “I intend to have my way with you, and it’s a very slow way.”

“But—”

“But me no buts, my lady. I want you to be so sated and satisfied, you’ll never look at a younger man.”

“As if I’d want a younger man!” she returned, wiggling against him in a way that nearly sent him over the edge right then and there. “I want a mature man, not a boy.”

“If you keep doing that,” he warned, “I might prove to be as impetuous as the greenest lad in Christendom.”

“Impetuous? You?” she teased. “That I would like to see.”

“I can be impetuous,” he vowed, shifting slightly until she could feel his shaft against her body. “I believe I’m impetuously about to make love with my betrothed.”

His betrothed! She had only a moment to savor the words as he began to lave her breasts with his tongue and stroke between her thighs.

His actions awakened an urgent, primitive need in her, one that must be satisfied, and quickly.

She didn’t want to wait another moment, as she’d waited all these months, and she reached down to guide him.

He gasped as her hand encircled him. “I was supposed to be the impetuous one,” he said.

“Then be impetuous,” she ordered, “for I swear, Ranulf, this anticipation might be the death of me.”

“I can’t have that, my lady,” he said, the words ending in a sound between a sigh and a groan as he pushed inside her.

Bea felt the membrane tear and his hard shaft filling her. There was pain, and likely blood, but she didn’t care. The rest was too wonderful and now they were as good as married, husband and wife. Joined in love and passion.

“Did I hurt you?”

“A little,” she confessed, trying not to think about it, to instead enjoy the feel of his skin beneath her hands, the muscles tight and powerful, to explore her beloved’s body.

“I’m sorry,” he said huskily, and she knew he was trying to hold back on her account.

“I love you, Ranulf. This pain is nothing.” She pushed her hips up to meet him, instinctively grinding them against him and being rewarded with a sensation like a different sort of kiss. “Not when I can feel this, too.”

A brief smile crossed his face and then that, too, was gone, submerged beneath the passion and the need when he began to thrust.

She threw back her head, squirming with desire and pleasure as his mouth, his hands, played upon her body, urging her to new heights of anxious expectation.

Overwhelmed by the sensations, too new to this great bliss, she let herself be swept along, guided by his knowledge, his touch, his whispered endearments, the gasps when she touched him, too.

She could make him feel the same fierce need? The same excited longing? Her uncertain caresses, her hungry kisses, could arouse him as he aroused her?

Empowered, delighted by the unexpected revelation that she could be his equal in their bed, she met him thrust for thrust, his partner in this play, his match in passionate craving.

She was free to be herself, unrestricted by conventions, by the role she so often had to play.

Here she felt no need to explain or talk to hide her insecurity.

Here she could be the woman she had always longed to be.

Yet she was a new Bea, too—one who was completely a woman, beloved of the man she loved.

With a cry, her body tightened, taut as a rope holding a ship anchored in a stormy sea. And then it was as if all the desire, all the longing, all the need met in a thunderclap. She was set loose upon that sea, tossed and tumbling in the currents of her passionate release.

As she gripped him tightly, his thrusts grew more frenzied, more powerful, as if his body was no longer under his control—and perhaps it wasn’t, as hers hadn’t been.

With a groan, he stiffened, then bucked as if only the release commanded his flesh, until he collapsed, sated, his head upon her breasts.

For a long moment, neither said a word. They simply lay entwined, panting, satisfied and happy.

S URREPTITIOUSLY WATCHING those of his crew who’d come ashore with him, Pierre added another board from what remained of Gawan’s boat to the fire before him in the grotto. As the flames shot up, one of his men left the other fire and staggered toward him.

Barrabas’s shadow loomed to grotesque proportions on the cavern wall as the big man with the shoulders of a bull and arms like a bear splayed one hand on the side of the cavern to steady himself. In his other hand, he held a nearly empty wineskin.

“We’ve been talking,” Barrabas announced in his sailor’s patois, an amalgam of French, German and Italian that Pierre readily understood. “We all think you ought to forget this plan to take that woman and sell her in Tangier. It’s a long way to Tangier and women at sea are bad luck.”

Pierre moved his hand slowly and cautiously toward the dagger in his belt. He’d sailed with Barrabas for over ten years, but he’d no more trust him that he would his whore of a mother. “Surely the mighty Barrabas isn’t afraid of a mere woman.”

“It’s bad luck. And it’s too risky to stay here with that knight in the castle. He’s not like the other one, the fat one who fell off his horse.”

“I tell you this woman will make our fortunes,” Pierre replied. “Besides, even supposing I agreed with you—which I do not—how do you suggest we leave? Our ship isn’t due to fetch us until tomorrow. What is one more day?”

Barrabas sat heavily on a large rock on the opposite side of the fire. “If we hadn’t wrecked that boat, we wouldn’t have had to wait. We could have gone to Dieppe and met them.”

“You would have sailed across the channel in that fisherman’s boat?”

Barrabas took a swig of wine and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “We could have done it.”

“Or we might have drowned.”

“At least we wouldn’t have had to be holed up in this miserable cave, wasting time and waiting for that dolt to bring us bad luck.”

“We would not have to hide among these rocks if you had killed Gawan properly. Nobody would know if he was alive or dead, like those other two.”