Page 38 of Ondine

“Get out!” she raged, and when she whirled blindly this time, she found the beautiful blue Dutch water ewer. She didn’t notice how heavy it was; the fire of her anger gave her strength. She sent it hurtling straight for his obnoxious—and too handsome—head.

His reflexes, it seemed, had not deserted him, for he ducked and avoided the brunt of the blow.

The ewer crashed against the door, spraying him with cool fresh water.

He paused, startled, then emitted something of a growl as he leapt toward her with the pounce of a wolf, honing in at last upon its prey.

“No!” she shrieked, leaping to avoid him.

And avoid him she did, but not completely.

She was almost wrenched back to him, but there was a harsh rending sound.

Warwick realized it was not his wife he held, but a panel of her gown.

Ondine realized she had eluded her husband, but lost half her gown in the process.

Dazed and desperate, she rolled over the bed, placing that barrier between them as she sought to drag the skirt of her gown to her breast while parrying his next move.

He sat upon the bed, leaning toward her, and his eyes seemed like narrow slits of fire as he spoke.

“I’ll know now what your whispers were to the king!”

“You’ll not! You have no right—”

“I’ve every right!”

“I’ve nothing whatsoever to say to you! Not when—” She cut herself off, terrified that she would give herself away.

She’d never confide in him—never! Never tell him that his gallows’ bride stood an accused traitor.

And she’d never—please God!—fall more deeply in love with a man who slept wherever he liked and flaunted his affairs!

He’d told her what she was to him: a commoner, a thief, a poacher, he had saved from the gallows. Nothing more.

She started to laugh. “Charles,” she told him imperiously, “is the king. What I say to him, milord Chatham, is not your business!”

“Ah! So you allow his pawing. You encourage it?”

She wasn’t wary enough. He rolled suddenly and with startling agility was on his feet before her, and his tone once more was soft.

“Do you smile, my love, just to charm him as a friend? Or do you smile because you welcome his hand upon you as a woman?” He smiled, as if they chatted casually, yet she backed away, arms locked around herself as she sought to maintain what was left of her clothing.

Don’t taunt him; desist, and he will leave you!

Yet she could not obey that logic. Something within her was in a rare impetuous rage that demanded she fight.

“The king is charming and courteous in all things!” she cried.

“And I am not?”

“You are an arrogant, demanding boor!”

“A what? ”

She was backed against the wall; there was nowhere to go when his arms reached for her, when his fingers locked once more around her shoulders.

For a moment she panicked; then she raised her head, her eyes flashing a blaze of fury. “Dear sir, pray do not touch me. I fear the filth of your hands, for I know that they have wandered far and wide, and upon many an odious creature!”

“What?” Quite abruptly he began to laugh, and she was disarmed.

Yet her ease was false, for she was suddenly gasping, swept cleanly off her feet and tossed upon the bed that had so recently been her barrier against him.

Stunned, she fought to regain a hold on the remaining material of her gown, tangled beneath her.

Yet she could not move, for before she could catch her breath, he was upon her, a haphazard knee cast over her legs and pinning them.

His fingers were like steel as they wound around her upper arm.

“I beg your pardon?” he asked pleasantly enough. “You think that my hands have roamed too far?”

Her mind was reeling, and there was no release. Each breath she took was of him, his scent, clean and unique, something that spoke of his very masculinity. And she felt the iron-hard tension of his body against hers.

Suddenly he lifted his hand from her shoulder and placed it before their eyes, stretching the long brown tapered fingers. And then his eyes were on her, searing into her. “Is a state of guilt or innocence all that you might hold against my hand, Countess?”

And then, once more, he was watching that hand, that object of discussion.

Watching it, because it lay upon her breast, bared by the loss of her gown.

Her own gaze fell upon it, upon the fingers, so dark against her flesh, so light in their still caress.

His fingers were splayed, her nipple lay between them, and though the touch could have been no lighter, the barest movement, the slightest rotation, was a sensation that ripped into her like a shooting streak of fire, heating the entire length of her.

And for moments she lay spellbound, incapable of breathing, hearing only the rampant pounding of her heart, like a rush of the ocean.

Something in her cried out. Something warned her that she would not find him a beast at all. And something warned her that the consummation of her wedding vows would make her secret love for him languish in greater despair.

“Aye!” she cried out, so suddenly that he was taken unaware.

“Aye—and I’ve watched where that hand has lingered all evening!

So take it back to where it has been!” Her own words renewed her anger, and she flailed against the hand that dared to touch her.

She kicked in a sudden fury against the leg that held her, and attempted to arise.

“Witch!” he raged out in return, but she had pelted herself into such a fury that she found herself the aggressor.

She leaned against him, fingers clutched into fists that she pounded against his chest. “How dare you! By all the saints, how dare you!” Surely she sounded like a fishwife or a shrew; she had no thought to care.

“You bring me to a place where your mistress speaks freely of your fascinating endowments, hangs on you like an accoutrement, and laughs in my face! Then you dare to—”

She broke off, horribly aware that she was atop him and that she had now lost more than one panel of her once beautiful gown, the silk having caught beneath him.

Her legs were bare, her hips were bare, and only one shoulder carried a sign of having been clad.

She was all but naked, and astraddle over him.

And she was no longer pelting him because he held her wrists. And his eyes, demon eyes, fire eyes, were upon her with amusement—and with something more, a night glitter, a primal glitter, that somehow echoed the pounding of her heart, the fury of rage and tension that sped throughout her.

“No!” she gasped again, jerking her wrists to elude him.

She struggled to rise, but then shrieked with panic when she realized that he had only released her wrists to encircle her waist and send her plummeting down to the mattress once again, his prisoner.

She sought to injure him no longer, but tossed madly and futilely against his weight and power.

“Let me—up!”

“Oh, nay! Nay! We’ve got to talk about this, my love! Am I to understand that you are so vastly annoyed because Anne saw fit to speak about my—endowments?”

“Let me go! I could care less about your—endowments!”

“Ah, because you prefer the king’s?”

“Nay! Just let—”

His head lowered, and though she tossed her own, his mouth found hers.

His torso covered and held the nakedness of her chest; his fingers moved to her cheeks, stroking her chin as he kissed her.

His mouth encompassed hers. His tongue flicked against her teeth with a persistence and strength that sapped her own.

Warmth flooded her, and a feeling that was sweeter, more potent than any wine she had ever tasted.

Ah, beyond that . . . it felt as if she had stumbled upon a great unknown, a dark uncharted voyage into a strange paradise where she might stumble, and yet could not, for he was her guide.

He filled her mouth, tasted and plundered there, and she forgot that she must protest against him.

She lay still, aware only of the taste of him, the texture of his tongue as it raked against the crevices of her mouth, leaving the most delicious feeling there, drowning her with sweetness and with force.

He drew away from her, and still she could not move, not thinking to fight him.

No humor remained in his eyes, just the darker thing, haunted and tense.

His knuckles played over her cheek, swept like air over her throat, then between the valley of her breasts.

Once more his dark head bent, and his mouth closed over her breast, the tongue that had been so potent in its play upon her mouth now delivering a sensation so sweet that she cried out.

Her body strained with shock, with pleasure.

Just the tip of his tongue, stroking again and again, over the tip of her breast, with all the warmth of his mouth around it.

And then the force was harder, a suctioning, a caress, drawing rivulets of flame from her, until she did not know where the sensation came from, it had invaded her so.

Nor did she understand the soft sounds that came from her, the compulsion that drew her fingers to his hair, to lock there, to find fascination in the thick brown locks.

His teeth held her nipple, gently grazed it, released it, but she was not free of his touch, for his palm moved over her, his eyes burning her with a fire of sensation.

His hand, his fingers, traveled over her, her waist, her hip, her belly, her thigh.

His voice, too, was encompassing, husky, deep, male, a play upon all the things awakened inside her.

“Ah, Countess, never have I quite realized what bounty I did take from that hangman’s noose. What beauty . . .” His lips touched upon her belly, and his whisper was so warm against her flesh. “Be there a comparison of endowments, I would well call yours the finest ever fashioned . . .”