Secret Thunder Part 26

"Aye." Luke heard a soft whisper of silk as she left her pallet and joined him on his. He wrapped his arms around her gratefully and pulled her down to lie next to him.

She kissed his neck. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Images swam in the darkness. He sorted through them, knowing he couldn't tell her everything, wishing desperately that he could. "There was a boy..."

"Aye?"

"I didn't remember him," Luke said softly, so as not to awaken the others, "until this afternoon, when Griswold reminded me about that day... the day we took Cottwyk Castle." Drawing in a fortifying breath, Luke said, "He was a Saxon. I wounded him, and he fell to the ground about ten yards from me. Some of the others, they..." He shuddered. "You don't want to hear this."

"Tell me," she whispered firmly.

"Oh, Christ. They ripped off his chain mail and disemboweled him."

Her arms tightened around him reflexively.

"I told you you didn't want to hear this," he said.

"What happened then?"

Luke rubbed his chin on the top of her head. "I hadn't wanted to remember the rest. I'd stopped myself from remembering all of it this afternoon, but it came back in my dream, what happened after that."

She waited patiently.

"He looked at me, the boy. First he looked at my crossbow, and then he looked at me, and he said-well, I couldn't hear him, but he looked right at me and said, in English, 'Please.'"

"Oh."

"He was begging me to kill him, Faithe."

"Yes."

"And I didn't."

"Oh, Luke."

"I turned and walked away."

"Why?"

"Because I was a monster, without conscience or pity. I was less than human."

"You were under the influence of those herbs. You could never do that today."

That was true enough. He was incapable of such cavalier brutality today. "You've tamed me."

"I didn't have to. 'Twas the herbs that made you walk away from that body, not your own nature."

Luke nodded. The herbs. They'd surged through him, taken him over, like a demon inhabiting the sh.e.l.l of his body.

"I'm sorry you were forced to remember that," she murmured.

"Being here, among my old mates, talking to Griswold... I'm remembering more and more of what happened that day." Why was the wh.o.r.e screaming? "I'm not sure what to make of it all."

"Don't try to make sense of things you did or experienced while you were chewing those herbs. 'Twould be like trying to find reason in madness. Put it out of your mind."

More truth-more good sense. But that awful day, shrouded in a bloodred haze, wouldn't let him put it out of his mind. The haze was slowly burning off, like fog. As it dissipated, and the events of that day were clearly revealed to him, yet more questions arose to torment him.

Why was she screaming? Why?

"Think no more of this tonight," she whispered, holding him close. "Try and get some sleep."

"I doubt I'll be able to sleep now." He quivered with tension.

"Then let's make love."

"What?" he chuckled. "Here?"

"Aye. Here." She licked his throat, one hand snaking down to his hips to pull him toward her.

"We can't," he protested, even as his body insisted that it most a.s.suredly could.

"Why not?" She moved against him in a frankly s.e.xual way that aroused him intensely. To look at her, one would never guess that she could be so sweetly wanton. The contrast between the demeanor she presented to the world and the sensual creature she became in bed had the power to flood his loins with heat.

"How can you even ask why not?" he demanded in an incredulous whisper. "Stop that." He banded his arms around her to still her.

"Don't you like it?" Insinuating a hand between them, she molded it to his erection; he sucked in a breath. "You do," she accused in a whispery little giggle. "I can tell."

"Of course I do," he growled low in his throat. "But we're not alone here."

"They're asleep."

"We'll wake them up."

"Not if we're quiet." She ma.s.saged his turgid flesh through his chausses.

"Don't do that," he said hoa.r.s.ely, but he couldn't quite bring himself to stop her.

"Don't do this?" She stroked him firmly, just the way he liked.

"Oh, G.o.d." Luke found himself on his back, with her hovering over him. He heard a silken rustle, sensed her raising her skirts, felt her knees on either side of his hips as she straddled him. "Faithe, no. Not here."

Leaning down, she breathed into his ear, "Have you never done this with others nearby?"

"Aye." Of course he'd tupped women in the presence of others. He couldn't count the number of times he'd shared a woman with his comrades, or found himself in a brothel with enough wenches to go around, but only one room. But he'd been a soldier then, eager for nothing more than physical release, and the wenches had been... "They weren't like you, those women. You're-"

"Highborn and refined," she finished, mocking him with laughter in her voice as she untied his chausses. "Convent-bred. Easily disturbed. Easily shocked."

"Does nothing shock you?"

She laughed softly. "I rather enjoy a little shock from time to time. It keeps the bodily humors in balance."

He moaned softly at the first touch of her bare hand on his throbbing organ. Her fingertips slid over the little drop of moisture at the tip. "You're ready for me," she said. "I'm ready for you, too." She found his hand in the dark and pressed it between her legs. He probed her slick heat and heard her breath quicken.

"Let's go outside." He wrapped his hands around her waist, but she seized them and forced them onto the pallet on either side of his head.

"Don't make me hold you down," she whispered laughingly.

They'd been his words, that stormy afternoon in the barn, words meant to subdue, to control. Her turning them around this way took him aback, and he stopped struggling for a moment-long enough for her to maneuver him into her, just a bit.

"Oh, Faithe. Don't..."

"Don't what?" Holding his wrists down, she lowered herself onto him, taking his full length inside her. He felt her hot flesh close around him, felt the delicious, intoxicating pressure of her body squeezing him...

He moaned.

"Shh."

"I cannot believe you're doing this."

"Lie still. Don't talk." He felt the soft glide of her hair on his face, her warm lips against his. "Don't talk."

She kissed him, her tongue mimicking the slow, steady rocking of her hips. He did lie still, although it would have been an easy matter to wrest his hands from her and pull her off him. Something in her tone and manner had stripped him of his will in this matter, absolved him of accountability, and he found, to his astonishment, that he liked it.

He liked having her hold him down and take him, almost but not quite against his will. He liked lying motionless in the dark, with strangers sleeping nearby, and letting his gentle, well-bred wife tup him senseless. He liked the tight little bands of her hands around his wrists, the hot luxury of her mouth plundering his, the slippery-snug embrace of her most intimate flesh. Each lazy stroke coaxed him closer and closer to completion.

He arched his hips to meet her thrusts. Instantly, she raised herself until they almost uncoupled. "Nay!" he whispered.

"Don't move," she reminded him. "And don't speak."

He forced himself to lie still, with his loins on fire and his heart on the verge of exploding. She resumed her maddeningly slow lovemaking. He felt her body tighten, heard her breath come swiftly as her own climax approached.

"Faster," he whispered desperately, his body taut and shuddering.

"Shh."

"Oh, G.o.d, Faithe." It pained him to lie unmoving while this mounting urgency consumed him. His chest heaved. He was drowning, submerging in this intolerable pleasure.

He groaned.

"Don't-"

Swearing harshly, he whipped his hands out of her grasp. She tried to rise off him, but he seized her hips and rammed her down hard. They moaned in union. Her fingers bit into his shoulders.

He thrust upward as he worked her hips, whispering her name, wild curses, things that made no sense. She whimpered as her body contracted around him, setting off his own sudden, frenzied climax. Pleasure erupted from him, consumed him entirely. He forced what might have become a scream into a low, ragged growl of gratification.

Breathless and shaking, they held each other tight until the last of the tremors coursed through them. And then they kissed and kissed, stroking each other's hair, laughing softly into each other's mouth, breathing endearments and declarations of love against each other's lips.

Faithe grew heavy in his arms; he pulled his blanket over both of them. The other day in the barn, she'd threatened to seize the reins he held so tightly and show him what it would be like to let go of them-and that's exactly what she'd just done. She was wise in strange and mysterious ways, his sweet little Saxon bride. She'd turned the tables on him, exercised a s.e.xual authority he'd thought to be his exclusive domain.

She'd shocked him. And he liked it.

As he drifted off to sleep, he reflected with a smile that his bodily humors had never felt more perfectly in balance.

Chapter 17.

"Aquitaine," said Isaac Ben Ravid in his guttural accent the instant Faithe removed the mantle pin from her pouch. "'Tis from Aquitaine."

d.a.m.n. Luke closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Aquitaine? Are you sure?" Faithe asked.

Isaac's warm gaze grew chilly for the briefest moment, as if she'd insulted him.

"I don't mean to doubt you," she said. "But you barely saw it. Are you sure-"

"Put it here." The old man pointed to one of several anvils on the huge, scarred table in the middle of his workshop-a large room at the rear of his house. Morning sunlight poured into the chamber from two tall windows behind him, which flanked a small furnace. His handiwork, in various stages of completion, was displayed on shelves all around the perimeter of the room. There were gold and silver caskets, cups, circlets, girdles, brooches... even a few items, like a large silver chalice, that had obviously been commissioned by an officer of the Church.

Isaac sat at the table and picked up a tiny hammer, one gnarled hand automatically tucking his long white beard into his robe to keep it out of the way. He leaned over the brooch, so that all that could be seen of him was the top of his strange, pointed hat.

"This design around the edge," he said, pointing with the slender handle of the little hammer, "is typical of the southern regions of the Frankish empire, as is the way the gold has been burnished."

"But why Aquitaine?" Luke managed. "Why not Tolouse or Gascony?"

Old Isaac smiled a bit condescendingly. "There's a world of difference between a mantle pin from Tolouse and one from Aquitaine. This" -he tapped the pin with a fingertip- "reminds me of the kind of thing I saw in the cities of Ventadour and Perigueux. The jeweler who created this piece is from that area."

"Perigueux?" Faithe said. "It's from Perigueux?"

Luke clenched his jaw until it hurt.

"Aye." The old goldsmith lifted the pin and inspected it closely. "Or Ventadour, or perhaps Brive-la-Gaillard. Somewhere in that area." Turning the pin over, he read the inscription out loud "'To my youngest son. Be strong and of good courage.' Did this pin belong to a soldier?"

"That's what we think," Faithe answered.

Isaac nodded. "Those sound like the words a father would say to his son when he sends him off to war." He rubbed his thumb thoughtfully over the piece and then handed it back to Faithe. "Why are you looking for him?"

She tucked the pin back into her pouch. "He murdered someone. My first husband."

The old man's expression sobered. "Then he should pay."

"I intend to see that he does," Faithe said quietly.