By Arrangement Part 29

She walked slowly toward him, her expression a heart-stopping combination of pa.s.sion and love and joy and invitation.

More than he ever expected. Far more than he deserved.

The morning was a lifetime away.

She stepped up to him and placed her hands on his chest. She stretched up toward him. He lowered his head and took her kiss with more restraint than he felt. He let her lead, biting gently around his mouth. Delicately, but not so artlessly, her tongue grazed his lips and then flickered more intimately. He embraced her with one arm, reveling in the sensation of her skin beneath his hand. A slight sheen of sweat covered her and the warmth and moisture sent a flare through his whole body. He caressed her face, and broke their kiss so he could watch his hand and her body as it traced down. His embrace arched her back, and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s rose to him. Her tremor when he touched her taut nipple flowed right into his hips and thighs.

Neither one of them succ.u.mbed to the waiting frenzy. They both sought to prolong the exquisite antic.i.p.ation she had begun.

Her hands still lay on his chest and now they caressed at the loose lacing down the front of the long robe.

"It looks very exotic. Very handsome."

"Saracens know how to dress for hot weather."

She stroked his chest lazily. "The servant said that men like to be undressed by women, too."

He didn't answer, but watched as she carefully untied and pulled out the laces down to his waist. She caressed him through the gap. He closed his eyes to the heat of that small hand. It had been too long since he had even this small connection and affection from her.

She pushed the garment open, almost off his shoulders, and laid her face against him. Languidly, deliciously, with a slow care that only increased the tension between them, she rubbed her cheek against his chest and watched her hand follow his muscles.

"You were right," she said as she turned to kiss him. "Abstinence is a powerful enhancement to pa.s.sion. A part of me cannot wait and already screams for you, but another part wants to prolong this forever."

"You know how it will end. I have never failed you there. Let us enjoy the journey. We will never take quite the same path again."

She smiled sensually and nodded. Running both hands up his chest, she slid the robe off his shoulders and guided it down his back.

His control threatened to dissolve when she extended her caresses to his hips and thighs.

"What else did the servant tell you?" he asked, touching her as she did him, feeling tremors quake subtly through her.

"That men like to be kissed and touched, but I have already learned that is true." She proved it by mouthing at his chest. Rumbling shocks rocked through him with each kiss and nip. "Other things. I thought them shocking at the time. I do not find them so now."

The robe still hung from his hips. She gently shook off his embrace. She caressed and kissed down his body as she lowered herself.

He watched and waited, his breath barely coming to him. An obscuring haze of pa.s.sion clouded his mind and he saw both nothing and everything. Saw her hands push the robe to his feet. Felt her fluttering caress on his thighs and legs. Saw her fingers stroke his hard phallus while her lips pressed to his belly and hip. Her boldness both touched and stunned him. He wondered at the deceptive calm his body maintained, because desire began splitting him apart.

She caressed the back of his thighs and moved her head away. Questioning eyes glanced up at him. He bent and reached down for her and drew her up to his embrace. "Only if you want to, darling. And never on your knees."

She nestled into his arms. "Then take me to bed, merchant, so I can show you my love and honor."

He lifted her into a kiss that removed her feet from the floor. He turned and laid her down and lowered himself next to her.

The warm night air flowing through the window felt cool against the heat of their entwined bodies. He lost himself in the intimacy of her scent and swells and slick sweat. He would show her such a journey as she had never imagined.

Slowly, deliberately, using all of his knowledge of her, he obliterated her shaky control. Never touching her below her hips, he drew her toward completion. Caresses on her inner arm, biting teeth on her nipples, consuming mouth on her necka"her pa.s.sion rose with each knowing demand. She tried, despite her growing mindlessness, to give him pleasure in return, but he would not let her. He listened to her low sounds of abandon and felt her body climbing, shaking, toward its peak of sensation. She grasped his shoulders. "David, Ia pleasea"

He stilled his hands and mouth and held her. She twisted against him in rebellious frustration. Her eyes flew open.

"David!" she cried accusingly.

"Hush, darling. I said that I have never failed you."

"You mean to torture me to death first?" She pummeled his shoulder none too playfully. He laughed lightly. "It is only torture if you think only about the release. Take the pleasure of the climbs for themselves, knowing that eventually you will fly."

Her pa.s.sion had receded and the frenzy had pa.s.sed. Her arms surrounded his shoulders and he turned his head to kiss the bend of her arm while his hand stroked down her body. "Again, then," he said. She clung to him and opened her legs and accepted his touch. Her folds and pa.s.sage already throbbed with her arousal, and he deliberately caressed her in ways that would bring pleasure but not fulfillment. She rebelled at first, and tried to move toward more productive touches, but then she relaxed and took the streaks of pleasure with joyful gasps and low moans.

He saw the glorious ecstasy on her face and nearly lost control himself. He touched her differently and watched her climb again, higher this time, as it would be every time. He took her to the peak and kept her there, tottering on its exquisite contracting edge, and let her taste the first tremor before he withdrew his hand.

Her nails had dug into his arm and shoulder. He kissed her and soothed her with soft caresses.

"That was wonderful," she whispered. "Does it keep getting better each time?"

"Up to a point."

"Do you plan to do this all night?"

He laughed. "I seriously doubt it. Love has made me very n.o.ble and chivalrous, but I have my limits."

She regarded him. "I think that two can play this game of yours, David. Would that please you?"

"Very much, if you desire it."

She rose up and pushed his shoulders down on the bed. She gave him a smug little smile full of unwarranted self-confidence. She kissed him fully before moving her hands and her mouth down his chest. He closed his eyes and stroked her back.

"Nay, David. You did not let me touch you, so you cannot touch me."

The luxurious spots of heat she created moved lower. He sensed her pause to consider the situation. Then he felt her turn and draw up her legs and lean against his stomach. He had taught her to please him with her hands, and her caresses drove him close to delirium. When she paused again he opened his eyes just as she lowered her head.

He knew no thought after that. He looked through a cloud of engulfing sensation and pleasure at the erotic lines of her back and b.u.t.tocks and the two delicate feet tucked beneath her. He knew his limits but she did not. As he neared them he reached down and slid his fingers along the cleft of her bottom.

She groaned and shifted and accepted his touch. He rearranged their bodies so that his mouth could reach her. Bracing himself for control, he let them share the ecstatic pleasure a while longer as he brought her as far as she had him, to the very edge. Finally it was too much for them both and she sensed it. She released him and turned toward him and as she did he lifted her body and brought her down straddling his hips.

For an instant she seemed surprised to find herself there. Then wordlessly, instinctively, she rose up and took him into herself.

His sigh met hers in the s.p.a.ce between them. She closed her eyes at the sensation, then slowly rose and lowered again.

Pa.s.sion veiled her eyes when she opened them. She moved again and sighed. "This is incredible, David."

He reached up and caressed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s so she could see just how incredible it could be. He rubbed the taut nipples between his fingers. Her head fell back and she lolled sensually into a wonderful rhythm as she repeatedly drew him into her tight warmth and released him. Enhanced by abstinence and love, the pleasure moved him in ways he had never known.

He pulled her down toward him.

"Come up to me. Move forward a bit," he instructed.

She slid up but halted. "I will losea""

"You will not. Come up to me."

She lowered and he eased her forward until he could take her breast in his mouth. She hovered above him breathlessly, her body barely still joined to his. He felt her grasping to absorb more of him, driving him mad with the mutual caress they created.

"David," she gasped, her body shaking from the combination of tantalizing pleasures at her breast and between her legs. He stroked her back down to its lowest curve and continued to arouse her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He felt the first deep tremor and knew what it meant even if she did not.

"David," she cried again, frantically this time.

He released her and she slammed down on him with a needful cry. Burying her face in his chest, she moved hard again.

"Aye, it can happen thus, too," he rea.s.sured her, and he held her hips firmly and took over and helped her find that different, more elusive fulfillment.

He had never seen a woman reach such a violent and complete release. Wonder, desire, and love echoed through her cries. She kissed him ferociously and gazed into his eyes as her pa.s.sion peaked and her open acceptance of the magic made the intimacy fuse their souls as it always had. Her whole being seemed to fold in on itself, taking his own essence to its burning center, before flying out in all directions. At the end she rose up in a magnificent display of sensual ecstasy as she cried her abandon. Their mutual fulfillment momentarily obliterated time and s.p.a.ce and consciousness. She collapsed on him and he floated with her in their unity. Her love awed him and filled him with its innocent peace and grace. The hungry and needful response of his own soul astonished him. Her face lay buried near his neck.

"Do you think anyone heard us?"

"Us?"

She giggled and playfully swatted his chest. "All right. Me?"

He thought about the open window and the silent city night. The whole household and half of Caen had probably heard her. So much for pretending that they were not content together. It would not matter now. If the Comte thought to use her in that way, he would have already come for them both.

"I am sure that no one heard, darling."

She moved and settled down next to him. He had never known such peace and contentment, and he let himself savor it, knowing it would not last long and might never come again. He probably should have told her everything.

Eventually he would have to. This love would not permit long deceptions, even for her sake.

"Have you ever been there?" she asked. "To Senlis?"

"Twice. The first time some years ago, and then again recently."

"Did you go inside?"

"Aye. The Comte was not there, and I entered as a traveling merchant with luxuries to sell. No one will remember. The vanities absorbed the women, not me."

"Do you want it? Senlis?"

"Who would not?"

She rose up and looked in his eyes. "You might not."

All the same, a choice awaited. "It is your fate that I decide as well as my own. I would know your will in this."

"I would have you with me forever, alive and whole. That is all that really matters to me, but I know that you will not make your choice for your own safety, and I will not ask it of you. As to the rest, there is no clear right and wrong here, is there? Both hold some pain and betrayal. England and France both have a claim on you. Both men, Edward and Theobald, deserve your loyalty." She paused, considering the dilemma. "I think that you should choose the life that you were born to live, whichever you think it was."

To the heart of things. Life with her would be fascinating.

"And what about you, Christiana? What about the life that you were born to live?"

She smiled and rested her face against his chest. "I was born to marry a n.o.bleman, David. And you have always been one of the n.o.blest men I have ever known."

Chapter 21.

Christiana awoke to an empty bed and the early morning light streaming in the chamber's window. The mellow memories of the night vanished at once. She rose and quickly dressed. He was meeting with them now. It was being done. She could not pray for one outcome or another, even though she knew which she would prefer. He could give them the port, become the heir to Senlis, and live the life that few men had. Or he could refuse, be deprived of his old life but not given a new one, and maybe be killed. Not much of a choice to her mind, nor, she hoped, to his either. All the same, despite the status of Senlis and all that it entailed, she did not look forward with any enthusiasm to living in that strange place so far from home.

She paced the room but the confined s.p.a.ce only increased her worry. She left the chamber and sought the stairs that led to the flat roof of this tall building with its many chambers for sleeping and storage. Tubs of summer flowers and vines dotted the roof. As she stepped out onto it she heard the sounds of activity floating up from the city below. The usual drone of commerce and movement had been replaced by a din of wagons and horses and men shouting orders.

David stood by the low wall surrounding the roof, looking down into the city streets to the west. Another man of middle years with a thick build and long brown hair watched beside him. David turned and noticed her. He held out his hand.

"My lord, this is my wife, Christiana Fitzwaryn. This is the Constable d'Eu, darling."

Christiana met the inspecting gaze of the chief military leader of France.

"I am Theobald's cousin, my lady, and so a kin of your husband's." He glanced at David. "The daughter of Hugh Fitzwaryn, no less. You did well for Senlis. Theobald is pleased that your wife brings such blood to the family."

Christiana stepped to the wall beside David. In the streets beyond, she could see the feverish activities of an army preparing to move.

It was done, then. She glanced at David's impa.s.sive face.

"My lady, your husband will be staying here in Caen," the constable said. She looked from one man to the other. Something was wrong. She could feel it.

"Are you saying that I am still a prisoner?" she asked.

"You are free to go. I will arrange an escort to take you to Senlis."

"Then my husband is now a prisoner?"

"A guest. Until the English land. He can join you then. He is not trained in warfare, and this battle is not his."

"I would prefer to stay with my husband."

The constable looked at David. David didn't react at all. The older man smiled. "As you wish," he said, and he turned away and walked across the roof to the stairs.

She waited until he had gone.

"Why must you stay here, David?"

"He does not trust me. He fears that I have lied to them. But your choice to stay with me has rea.s.sured him a little."

"But why keep you here if the army moves?"

"Theobald will take the army. He has already left the house. But the constable has decided to remain in Caen with a small force, to be available in case Edward comes a different way. The King's chamberlain is here, too. He agreed that this would be wise."

"And your uncle agreed to this?"