When the kiss ended, he kept his hand on her waist. His staff strained against her hip, the veins bulging, the head deep purple.
“Since you answered my questions, Deorwynn,” he said huskily, “you may ask me some in return.”
Oh, they were still having a conversation?
She finished her wine in one gulp and handed him the empty cup. For the first time she noticed there was a third goblet on the little table. Had Sybilia sat there with him earlier that evening? Had the two of them talked like this? Had they kissed? She pressed a hand to her pounding heart as the wine burned on its way down. Unfortunately this gesture drew his white hot gaze to her breast. He exhaled with a hiss between clamped teeth and it felt as if he’d fastened them around her nipple.
“You…you were born in Brittany?” she stammered.
He nodded and sucked on his lips. She imagined his mouth pulling on her breast likewise.
Think Deorwynn. Remember who you are. Do not melt in a puddle before him again.
“And you came here with William the Bastard of Normandy?”
“No. I came here with my own men six years ago. We were mercenaries for hire.”
Ah, he was a looter, a rampaging, rapacious criminal.
“But then I joined King William,” he explained with another lopsided smile. “I became reformed, respectable.”
“This is your opinion of respectable?” She glanced down again at his rearing manhood.
He chuckled softly, his fingers tapping her waist, his head tipped sideways against the fur as he looked up at her. She should tell him not to touch her, but she couldn’t find the words.
“Then the King decided I was in want of a wife,” he said. “He means to burden me with domestic troubles and a dozen ungrateful brats.”
“I’m sure you and Sybilia will be very happy.”
“But I grow bored quickly. One woman can never be enough for me.”
“You are wrong.” She laid her free hand to his bare chest, unable to resist. “A man should give his body and his heart to only one woman and make her content.”
“Sounds very dull. And foolish. I would not put all my coin in one coffer. Why would I put all my heart and body in one wench’s hands? The more the merrier for me.”
She stared at the planes of his chest, hardly aware that those were her fingers tracing patterns on the ridge of sun-browned muscle. How could she not touch him? It was impossible. “I would not share a man I loved.”
The air in the room suddenly seemed very thick and hot. She hadn’t meant to say those words. What was she thinking?
Snatching that hand away from his gently heaving chest, she felt her brow, as if it ached suddenly. “I should return to my bed. The wine goes to my head.”
He ignored that because he’d just noticed the scars on her knuckles. Taking her hands in his, he turned them over, demanding to know what happened.
“The nuns at the convent,” she said simply. “I told you I am a sinner. They could not quite whip the demons out of me, although they tried.”
* * * *
His heart lost its rhythm. He looked at her hands. “You will not be hurt again,” the words choked out of him. “Now you belong to me.”
“No human being belongs to another.”
“You dare quarrel with me, Deorwynn?”
She wrinkled her nose. “It is not quarreling to express an opinion.”
“Women don’t have opinions.”
“Then I must be a man, because I have plenty.”
He chuckled at that, because she was indeed all woman and he was glad of it. His cock was hard and hot, his balls heavy. As she fidgeted beside him, her linen shift touched his crest and he almost shot his load there and then. Even in conversation she did this to him.
“Remove your shift. I must look at you.” He had not yet seen her naked body in full light, only in cloudy water and then in swathes of shadow. It haunted him, the need to look at her and know every inch, inside and out.
“That would do neither of us any good. My lord.”
He forgot, for a moment, that he knew what was best for everyone. “Why not?”
“Because I will never be your leman. Looking at me will only frustrate you, because you cannot have me.” She sighed. “It would be cruel to tempt you. Poor man.”
He would have thought she was serious, if not for the poor man. This wench felt no sympathy for him and he knew it.
“Cannot have you?” he growled.
“I would not let you put your over-used, pompous Norman prick in me if you paid me a thousand silver pieces. Your wife told you how much I despise your kind, did she not?”
It seemed the wine had increased her bold mouthiness. “You’re making me angry, woman.”