A Lady Under Siege(69)

“I’m thinking I should make love to you.”

Their eyes locked. Thomas thought he could hear his own heart beating.

“Then let action win out over thought,” she said.

They came together and their lips met. Although tempered at first by an underlying wariness, his desire was real, and from the lusty way she met his kisses with her own, he was almost convinced her passion was sincere. He took her head in his hands and stared searchingly into her eyes. Once again he thought he saw Meghan there, and desired to reach her, and felt the heat of his lust stoked and redoubled by a feeling like love. He began to undress her, slowly, worshipfully. Sylvanne compliantly let his hands strip her dress from her shoulders, let his fingers and his palms explore the smoothness of her breasts. He bade her sit on the bed, and knelt before her, pulling her dress down around her calves and ankles, then lifting her feet to slip them free. As he rose she wrapped her arms around him and desperately pulled him to her, falling back upon the bed sheets.

“What’s your hurry?” he teased. “We have all night.”

“I want it done.”

“So it shall be.”

He reared up from her, standing before her as he shed his own clothes. She covered her body with a sheet. As he made himself naked she saw that he was aroused. “Come warm this cold bed,” she whispered. He climbed into bed beside her, and as before she clutched at him urgently, and fell back upon the pillows, pulling him on top of her. He rained kisses down upon her face, her neck, her breasts. For a moment he felt disoriented, and it came to him suddenly that she smelled of his wife’s perfume. This maddened him—it fed his arousal and made him an animal, a dog rising to the scent.

“Let me,” he demanded.

“I will.”

“Then let me.”

“Now who’s impatient?”

“Let me now,” he said forcefully.

He was so much stronger. The weight of his body trapped her beneath him, and he reached down with both hands to take hold of her thighs when a knife blade suddenly glinted golden in the candlelight. A sharp flicker of pain grazed his side—he saw her raise the knife again and instinctively caught her hand by the wrist, adeptly twisting her arm over the side of the bed. His two strong hands quickly stripped her of the knife. It fell, clattering harmlessly against the stone floor.

“I couldn’t do it,” she wailed. “I’ve spared you!” He was still on top of her, he still controlled her. He was so much stronger that his actions could be assured, yet almost gentle. He moved her to the middle of the bed and straddled her, pinning her arms while he looked down at the ragged rise and fall of her breasts, her flushed, reddened face distorted by humiliation.

“The knife came out earlier than I expected,” he said, catching his breath. “Why didn’t you wait?”

“I couldn’t stand to make a gift of myself to you,” she hissed at him. “I couldn’t stand to give you something you haven’t earned.”

He was strong enough to imprison both her wrists with one hand, and with his free hand he checked his side where the knife had grazed him. There was a trace of blood, but she had barely broken the skin. “You came ever so close to doing me damage, my dear,” he muttered. “An inch or two deeper and I’d have been slit open just the way a pig is bled. A more confident slice and I would surely now be dying—and you, trapped beneath me, would be drowning in a torrent of red. But though it stings, this scratch is nothing—I suffer worse on any given day of training for the jousts.”

“I spared you, don’t you see that?” She began to softly sob. “I could have plunged it deep enough to finish you.”

“Is that your story, now that you failed?” he demanded. Yet he wanted to believe her, and looked for evidence of her sincerity in her anguished face. She refused to meet his gaze. “Why do you hide from me?”

“Leave me alone,” she whimpered.

“You just tried to kill me, yet you pretend I should be grateful to you that you didn’t.”

“Leave me alone.”

“I’m trying to understand what transpired.”

“Go ask your Meghan.”

“I will. She’s told me already how turbulent and troubled your emotions are—that you’re torn between a widow’s pledge to a dead husband, and something else. A new life, perhaps—the potential for a future of happiness with a new man.”