Ondine Read online

  “Oh! I do despise you!” She did not strike his chest again— he hadn’t seemed to notice. She slapped him squarely against the jaw, twisted from his hold, and raced to the door, opening it. “Out, my dear lord husband! You are drunk and insulting! Leave me be!”

  His strides were long and sure when he approached her. His fingers wound around her wrist, and she cried out a startled little sound as she found herself whirling back into the room. But Warwick didn’t leave it; he closed the door once more. The hinges did not squeal or groan; the wood shuddered with the force of the slam.

  “What do you think you’re doing!” Ondine choked out.

  “I wish a discussion with my wife,” he said quite softly, but the timbre of the statement was such that she trembled suddenly. Drunk he might be, but not so much that his mind did not remain sharp as a whip, and his demanding nature had not altered in the least.

  “I’ve nothing to say to a wine-sodden whoremonger!” she snapped back defensively. Then the line of his lip became so grim she was forced to remember that its power upon her nerves was nothing compared to his steel strength against her far more meager frame.

  “I believe, my love, that you’re the whore we’re discussing.”

  “Get out!” she raged, and when she whirled blindly this time, she found the beautiful blue Dutch water ewer. She didn’t notice how heavy it was; the fire of her anger gave her strength. She sent it hurtling straight for his obnoxious—and too handsome—head.

  His reflexes, it seemed, had not deserted him, for he ducked and avoided the brunt of the blow. The ewer crashed against the door, spraying him with cool fresh water. He paused, startled, then emitted something of a growl as he leapt toward her with the pounce of a wolf, honing in at last upon its prey.

  “No!” she shrieked, leaping to avoid him. And avoid him she did, but not completely. She was almost wrenched back to him, but there was a harsh rending sound. Warwick realized it was not his wife he held, but a panel of her gown. Ondine realized she had eluded her husband, but lost half her gown in the process. Dazed and desperate, she rolled over the bed, placing that barrier between them as she sought to drag the skirt of her gown to her breast while parrying his next move.

  He sat upon the bed, leaning toward her, and his eyes seemed like narrow slits of fire as he spoke.

  “I’ll know now what your whispers were to the king!”

  “You’ll not! You have no right—”

  “I’ve every right!”

  “I’ve nothing whatsoever to say to you! Not when—” She cut herself off, terrified that she would give herself away. She’d never confide in him—never! Never tell him that his gallows’ bride stood an accused traitor. And she’d never—please God!—fall more deeply in love with a man who slept wherever he liked and flaunted his affairs! He’d told her what she was to him: a commoner, a thief, a poacher, he had saved from the gallows. Nothing more.-

  She started to laugh. “Charles,” she told him imperiously, “is the king. What I say to him, milord Chatham, is not your business!”

  “Ah! So you allow his pawing. You encourage it?”

  She wasn’t wary enough. He rolled suddenly and with startling agility was on his feet before her, and his tone once more was soft. “Do you smile, my love, just to charm him as a friend? Or do you smile because you welcome his hand upon you as a woman?” He smiled, as if they chatted casually, yet she backed away, arms locked around herself as she sought to maintain what was left of her clothing. Don’t taunt him; desist, and he will leave you! Yet she could not obey that logic. Something within her was in a rare impetuous rage that demanded she fight.

  “The king is charming and courteous in all things!” she cried.

  “And I am not?”

  “You are an arrogant, demanding boor!”

  “A what?”

  She was backed against the wall; there was nowhere to go when his arms reached for her, when his fingers locked once more around her shoulders.

  For a moment she panicked; then she raised her head, her eyes flashing a blaze of fury. “Dear sir, pray do not touch me. I fear the filth of your hands, for I know that they have wandered far and wide, and upon many an odious creature!”

  “What?” Quite abruptly he began to laugh, and she was dis- armed. Yet her ease was false, for she was suddenly gasping, swept cleanly off her feet and tossed upon the bed that had so recently been her barrier against him. Stunned, she fought to regain a hold on the remaining material of her gown, tangled beneath her. Yet she could not move, for before she could catch her breath, he was upon her, a haphazard knee cast over her legs and pinning them. His fingers were like steel as they wound around her upper arm.

  “I beg your pardon?” he asked pleasantly enough. “You think that my hands have roamed too far?”

  Her mind was reeling, and there was no release. Each breath she took was of him, his scent, clean and unique, something that spoke of his very masculinity. And she felt the iron-hard tension of his body against hers.

  Suddenly he lifted his hand from her shoulder and placed it before their eyes, stretching the long brown tapered fingers. And then his eyes were on her, searing into her. “Is a state of guilt or innocence all that you might hold against my hand, Countess?”

  And then, once more, he was watching that hand, that object of discussion. Watching it, because it lay upon her breast, bared by the loss of her gown. Her own gaze fell upon it, upon the fingers, so dark against her flesh, so light in their still caress. His fingers were splayed, her nipple lay between them, and though the touch could have been no lighter, the barest movement, the slightest rotation, was a sensation that ripped into her like a shooting streak of fire, heating the entire length of her. And for moments she lay spellbound, incapable of breathing, hearing only the rampant pounding of her heart, like a rush of the ocean.

  Something in her cried out. Something warned her that she would not find him a beast at all. And something warned her that the consummation of her wedding vows would make her secret love for him languish in greater despair.

  “Aye!” she cried out, so suddenly that he was taken unaware. “Aye—and I’ve watched where that hand has lingered all evening! So take it back to where it has been!” Her own words renewed her anger, and she flailed against the hand that dared to touch her. She kicked in a sudden fury against the leg that held her, and attempted to arise.

  “Witch!” he raged out in return, but she had pelted herself into such a fury that she found herself the aggressor. She leaned against him, fingers clutched into fists that she pounded against his chest. “How dare you! By all the saints, how dare you!” Surely she sounded like a fishwife or a shrew; she had no thought to care. “You bring me to a place where your mistress speaks freely of your fascinating endowments, hangs on you like an accoutrement, and laughs in my face! Then you dare to—”

  She broke off, horribly aware that she was atop him and that she had now lost more than one panel of her once beautiful gown, the silk having caught beneath him. Her legs were bare, her hips were bare, and only one shoulder carried a sign of having been clad. She was all but naked, and astraddle over him.

  And she was no longer pelting him because he held her wrists. And his eyes, demon eyes, fire eyes, were upon her with amusement—and with something more, a night glitter, a primal glitter, that somehow echoed the pounding of her heart, the fury of rage and tension that sped throughout her.

  “No!” she gasped again, jerking her wrists to elude him. She struggled to rise, but then shrieked with panic when she realized that he had only released her wrists to encircle her waist and send her plummeting down to the mattress once again, his prisoner. She sought to injure him no longer, but tossed madly and futilely against his weight and power.

  “Let me—up!”

  “Oh, nay! Nay! We’ve got to talk about this, my love! Am I to understand that you are so vastly annoyed because Anne saw fit to speak about my—endowments?”

  “Let me go! I could care less abou
t your—endowments!”

  “Ah, because you prefer the king’s?”

  “Nay! Just let—”

  His head lowered, and though she tossed her own, his mouth found hers. His torso covered and held the nakedness of her chest; his fingers moved to her cheeks, stroking her chin as he kissed her. His mouth encompassed hers. His tongue flicked against her teeth with a persistence and strength that sapped her own. Warmth flooded her, and a feeling that was sweeter, more potent than any wine she had ever tasted. Ah, beyond that… it felt as if she had stumbled upon a great unknown, a dark uncharted voyage into a strange paradise where she might stumble, and yet could not, for he was her guide. He filled her mouth, tasted and plundered there, and she forgot that she must protest against him. She lay still, aware only of the taste of him, the texture of his tongue as it raked against the crevices of her mouth, leaving the most delicious feeling there, drowning her with sweetness and with force.

  He drew away from her, and still she could not move, not thinking to fight him. No humor remained in his eyes, just the darker thing, haunted and tense. His knuckles played over her cheek, swept like air over her throat, then between the valley of her breasts. Once more his dark head bent, and his mouth closed over her breast, the tongue that had been so potent in its play upon her mouth now delivering a sensation so sweet that she cried out. Her body strained with shock, with pleasure. Just the tip of his tongue, stroking again and again, over the tip of her breast, with all the warmth of his mouth around it. And then the force was harder, a suctioning, a caress, drawing rivulets of flame from her, until she did not know where the sensation came from, it had invaded her so. Nor did she understand the soft sounds that came from her, the compulsion that drew her fingers to his hair, to lock there, to find fascination in the thick brown locks.

  His teeth held her nipple, gently grazed it, released it, but she was not free of his touch, for his palm moved over her, his eyes burning her with a fire of sensation. His hand, his fingers, traveled over her, her waist, her hip, her belly, her thigh. His voice, too, was encompassing, husky, deep, male, a play upon all the things awakened inside her.

  “Ah, Countess, never have I quite realized what bounty I did take from that hangman’s noose. What beauty…” His lips touched upon her belly, and his whisper was so warm against her flesh. “Be there a comparison of endowments, I would well call yours the finest ever fashioned …”

  Once again his kiss fell. His fingers strayed in her hair, and she floated in that drugged state that told her this was worth dying for; this was the stuff of ballads, of history’s great passions, of—

  Comparisons!

  Oh, God! That he should think to compare her to that viperous Anne and to a host of others.

  “Oh!” she screamed aloud in fury, wrenching his hair in her grasp, shoving her knee against his endowments. Quite startled, he grunted in pain—and she was free.

  “You! You, my lord Warwick Chatham, are nothing but a giant rotting codpiece! You made a promise to me! You—”

  “I am what?” he demanded, and his tone seemed laced now with fury as he threw his legs over the bed and rose to face her. “I made a promise to you! Well, what is it, then, my love? Homage to the king, but not to the lord of your own manor?”

  “Oh, stop this prattle about the king! You are—oh!”

  He was on his feet, not touching her, but grasping the tattered remainder of her gown, and then she wore nothing. She could not escape the determined glitter of his eyes. No anger now could save her, and so she sought belatedly to plead his good graces. “Warwick! Nay, your temper—”

  “Is sorely vexed. Just as my—endowments are injured by your less than gentle touch! Yet we’ll ease them of such stress, shall we not?”

  “Warwick—”

  She backed herself once again to the wall, and that was where he pinned her, her hands held in his own. She expected fury and found it in the first onslaught of his kiss, one that conquered and bruised … but did not, could not, remain brutal. Even in searing panic and desperation she felt again the call to her senses, to all her aching, yearning excitement and desire. To her love. Again the nectar claimed her, the honeyed feeling, so alive and vibrant. It made her tremble, made her hunger …

  Her fingers slowly, slowly curled around his. She did not know when it began, but her lips sought his touch as surely as he gave it. Again it seemed as if the pulse of the tide beat within her, as if only the rush of the sea ruled her heart and mind. Her head fell back as he raised her in his arms, her arms entwined around his neck, and there were no words between them, only the golden determination in his eyes and the drugged daze in her own as he returned her to the bed. She thought he would come to her arms; he did not. He shed his boots and his velvet coat, then paused and knelt at the side of the bed.

  And then he took her foot into his hand.

  He held it first, as if it were a fine porcelain figure. Then he stroked the arch, and the heat of his kiss glazed her toes, an exotic feeling, one that teased, one that burned.

  That elusive, maddening touch continued—the stroke of his fingers, nails, the caress of his kiss, the spear of his tongue— taunting, evoking along the length of her. She did not think that she breathed the air; she just lay there, spellbound and sated with each new experience of his touch. The movement of his fingers, his kiss, slowly finding erotic places—the back of her knee, along her inner thigh, the down juncture where her limbs met …

  A gasp, a whisper, escaped her. A soft cry that she must, must escape his intimate caress, one that blinded her, elated her, made her feel as if her entire body ran rampant with a hot honeyed elixir. She tried so hard to twist from him, yet succeeded only in curling to him, abetting him with the swift and sudden discovery of desperate passion. She knew not where she was, or even who; she did not know herself at all, not this creature who cried out, who writhed and twisted, moaning inarticulate things. She did not know the woman who grasped at his hair, bringing his kiss at last to her lips, bestowing delicious pleasure with her tongue, which nipped and sought and sank, deeper and deeper into the wonder …

  Suddenly she was bereft. Cold and bereft. He was gone. Dazed, she opened her eyes to the glowing candlelight. He was not gone. His eyes were on her, fire in that light. His features, shadowed, dark and tense. She closed her eyes, trembling as reality came to her. She loved him… and she wanted him, she wanted … this.

  She felt his fingers first, the tips, just streaking along her thigh. Instinct brought her to tense against that pressure; he did not note that last defense of something she held moral. He but leaned down to capture her lips, and the pressure of his knee came between hers, the wonder of his strength enwrapped her. His touch, his warmth, returned her to that mystical plain where she could seek nothing but satiation to all the liquid, burning hunger that rioted throughout her being…

  She could not have desired any man more, yet neither could she prevent the jagged shriek of agony that escaped her lips when he moved into her at last, a knife that split and tore. She heard him emit a startled oath, and pain helped fuel the anger that speared her, even with his touch. Tears stung her eyes—he had truly thought her so hastily involved with the king, or elsewhere, prior to their marriage. She choked on her tears and could say nothing against him; she pressed her palms desperately against his chest, but she could not move him. And even as the pain blazed and then slowly faded, she heard him again, not in oaths or in question, but in tender phrases, gentle, husky words, words that eased, that lulled …

  That seduced again… seduced with the movement of his hands, his kiss, his stroke upon her breasts, seduced so thoroughly that the ragged moment of agony was quickly but a distant memory.

  She would not think till later that he was but the most expert of lovers. That he but knew the trade very well …

  Now he was a part of her, filling her with bursting wonder, as if he entered every pore of her body. He urged her with whispers, with his fingers cupped about her buttocks, caressin
g her breasts, lifting her once again. It was a dance, a thing of beauty … his shoulders, slick and gleaming golden in the candlelight, his eyes a fire of wanting her … He was beautiful, taut, sinewed, a work of art, a man …

  This was the wonder, the sense of mercury and excitement, that which she had yearned for long before she knew—this sizzling heat that seared the body, made her blaze and soar, ache and yearn… explode—with a cry from her lips, a groan from his. Shattering, volatile… Oh, sweet Lord! It was crystal magic, enwrapping her, caressing and emcompassing her with the seed of his body. She had something of him … Oh, she had never, never suspected that such pleasure could be on this earth!

  It took moments, long moments, for Ondine to drift down from that pinnacle of sensation. Yet when she did, she could not look at him. She could not face the wanton display of passion that had seized not him, but herself. She could not believe that she— certainly no fool!—had fallen into his arms … arms that had so recently held another and would most probably do so again.

  Without a word she buried her face into the pillow.

  And it seemed now, too, that Warwick had nothing more to say. She felt him shift; through webs of her hair she saw him rise, still splendid in taut muscular nakedness, and extinguish the candles. She felt him lie down beside her, near, but not touching.

  Time ticked by. She lay as tense as stone. How much time? she wondered. She dared to shift, still hiding behind the mantle of her hair. Did he sleep?

  He did not. His eyes were on the ceiling, far above him. In the darkness she could not read his eyes. She saw only that his features seemed grim; there was a sense of the ease of the wine about him now. His fingers were laced behind his head, and he seemed to stare at that ceiling in deep thought, pensive and severe.

  She froze as he moved, determined to feign sleep.

  He rose above her and pulled the hair gently from her face. She kept her eyes tightly closed, and whether he believed she slept or not she did not know.