He pushed up her skirts, his hand parting her thighs, and slid her closer until she was poised at the edge of the table. His blunt fingers stroked into her, quick and demanding, until she was shaking with longing and dampening his hand.
“Yes,” she whispered with a small cry, her fingers digging into the corded muscles where his neck met his shoulders. “Yes, my love, now,” she demanded as the need swept through her, hot and jagged. “Take me and don’t stop. Don’t ever stop.”
A sound of hunger tore from deep in his chest. He caught her wrists and pinned them behind her, taking both in one hand with an iron grip. With his other hand, he fitted himself to her, the velvety steel of him entering her the barest, most tantalizing inch. Then he speared his fingers through her hair and took her mouth, thrusting his tongue against hers—and in that same moment he fully joined their bodies with one stroke that left them both groaning with the sweet violence of it.
He was part of her, all the length and weight and thickness of him. She kissed him, hard, burning with his intensity as he locked her against him and began to thrust, deep, fast. He ravished her, making love to her the same way he had fought for his life on the battlefield, with the same volatile power. It was rough and fierce and overwhelming and it swept her away and drew all her awareness into him.
She reveled in the strength of his body as he moved. The massive lines of his chest and shoulders. The raw scent of him, mingling with her own muskiness. The wet, gliding fullness of him inside her. The tingle of her skin rubbed raw by the roughness of his beard.
He moaned and she made the same sound, her voice and need matching his. Passion wiped away all awareness of pain, of danger, of anything real—how many days were left, the future, the past.
All she cared about was him. All she loved in the world was this one man. Her scoundrel knight. Her Black Lion. Ravenous and untamed. Tender and loving. They were together, they were alive—closer than they had ever been before, more alive than they ever would be again.
He released her wrists, his arms catching her close as her hands twined around his neck. She wrapped her legs around his hips, taking him deeper, her hips arching into his with each stroke. The tension that clenched deep in her belly began to unravel. He was so hard and powerful within her, his rhythm so primitive and glorious as he drove into her, mercilessly sweeping her toward release.
Their joined bodies heated the darkness of the tent. Surging, straining, they moved together until all their differences vanished. Hard and soft, taking and taken, medieval and modern—all blended and melded until the world spun away, and there was only the two of them and what they gave to each other. Love and passion. Two made one.
Celine clung to him, her body tightening around his as the tremors began sweeping through her. Her whispers of pleasure came out as his name and urgent pleas for him to make it last. Now Tomorrow. Forever.
But neither of them could make it last. The world exploded around them in a sudden burst of brilliance as he emptied himself into her, deeply, at the same moment she surrendered to her own climax. He lifted her and she was soaring with him, far from this place, this dark pavilion. Flying in his arms, washed with hot needles of pleasure that left her shattered and whole. She felt it to the depths of her heart, just as she felt him embedded to the depths of her body. Love and joy that banished all else.
Banished even the small, nagging fear that she harbored about the bargain she had made this morning—her secret bargain with God.
Chapter 26
Moonlight and night air flooded in through the window in Gaston’s bedchamber. Leaning out through the open shutters, gripping the stone sill, he glared up at the blue-white orb that so dominated the tiny stars glimmering around it, the bold, distant sphere that scribes and troubadours always praised so lavishly. He wished he could rip it from the sky.
It had brought her here to him. Celine, a sweet and sudden and unexpected gift. But soon it would steal her away just as abruptly.
In a mere four days.
That damnable, almost-full moon. He had come to think of it as an enemy, one he must battle for the greatest prize he had ever set out to win. But the shimmering silver glow was not an opponent he could fight with muscle or blade. It eluded and defied him, shining across the bare floor of his empty chamber, as if mocking how equally empty his life would soon be.
Gaston thrust himself away from the window. He stalked about restlessly, rubbing his sore shoulder, staring at the bare walls and floor. The room had been swept clean of rushes. His furnishings and belongings had been taken to his new home in the north weeks ago. Royce kept his own chamber on one of the upper floors, saying he did not feel right taking the lord’s chamber when he was not a lord.