“I wonder,” she said softly, her voice dull from weeping, “what will be worse? Married to another and never seeing you again, or married to another and seeing you every day, knowing we can never be together.”
He lifted a dark eyebrow. “Never seeing you again.”
She sighed, raking her fingers through his hair gently, memorizing the feel of him. “I have been only thinking of me, Rhys. What of you? I will be married and bearing children for another man. But you… if you stay to serve me, what will you do? Will you never marry again?”
He shrugged. “I have not thought on it. I already have a son; I do not need to marry to produce an heir.”
“So you would waste your life serving a woman you can never have?”
He pursed his lips. “You cannot have it both ways. You cannot have me serve you and also never see me again. Make your choice, lady, and I shall abide by it.”
She could see that he wasn’t truly frustrated; he was, in a mild way, attempting to force her to think of the coming years. Now that they were both calming, she was able to think far more rationally. Emotions always wreaked havoc with her thought processes.
“I would want you with me, of course,” she said softly.
“Then it shall be so,” he replied. “But I will make one thing perfectly clear if that is indeed your choice.”
“And that is?”
“There will be no physicality involved. I will not conduct a physical relationship with you while you are married to another man. I do not share, and I do not take another’s leavings. I either have all of you or none of you. This I must do for my own sake as well as my own moral convictions. Is that clear?”
Surprisingly, she did not flare. She continued to gaze up at him, the deep green eyes red from so much weeping. Then she sighed softly.
“It is,” she whispered. “As painful as it is for me to say, it is abundantly clear. My position will be precarious enough without the added complication of a lover. It would be used against me and you would be pulled into something as dark and deep as you can imagine. But it does not mean that I will not love you with all of my heart until the day I die, Rhys. Nothing will ever change that.”
“You may very well grow to like your husband, you know. You may even grow to love him.”
“And you may fall in love with another woman and leave me altogether.”
He conceded the fact. “Anything is possible. But at the moment, I am only thinking of you. If I cannot have you, then at least I can serve you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Never more strongly about anything.”
She felt strangely happy and strangely crushed all at the same time. Her hands began to move over his head, his scratchy cheeks. Without another word, she lifted herself up and kissed him fully on the lips. It was a sensual kiss, one that sent bolts of excitement through his big body. He pulled her into a crushing embrace and slanted his mouth over hers, suckling her sweet lips for a moment until his tongue demanded entry. Elizabeau’s mouth instinctively opened for him, the new sensations of his wicked kiss filling her brain with a new kind of madness.
It was the second time that their passion came in the grass. Rhys rolled over on his back, taking her off of the damp earth so that she would be spared. His hands were in her hair, moving down the small of her back and feeling her sweet body against him. His hands, as large as trenchers, were moving by pure instinct; as his mouth ravaged her neck, his fingers found their way onto her buttocks and he gripped her tightly, holding her pelvis against his.
Rhys’ thighs were apart and Elizabeau’s legs between them. Though she was a maiden, she knew enough about the ways of men and women to know that Rhys had a very hard arousal that was pressed against her Venus mound. His enormous hands were covering her buttocks, holding her against him as his lips and tongue sucked every last thought from her head. She should have been shocked, embarrassed at his blatant physical reaction to her, but she found that she was not in the least. His excitement fed her, causing her head to swim and her breathing to come in strange gasps. All she knew was that she very much wanted to explore whatever they were feeling between them. She was positive she would never experience such passion, or joy, again.
“Rhys,” she murmured as his lips suckled hers. “Show me how a man and woman respond to each other. Show me everything.”
He growled deep in his throat, his furious kisses easing. “I cannot and you know it,” he said hoarsely. “You cannot go to your prince compromised.”
“But you love me.”
“Aye, I do. I love you enough not to compromise you in that way.”