EIGHTEEN

 

 

He was annihilated. Utter destruction. His reason was a void. He wanted to rip the anchor from the wall; panic and terror and fury and longing all at once, while she went naked and sat down on the stool, turned a little away from him, with the rippling black fan of her hair all down around her like a swaying scarf.

She looked back at him, her hair parting over her white shoulder, her blue eyes vivid beneath long black lashes, a face like a woman-child, like Heaven and Hell to him. Insults and rage and pleas for mercy were all the words he could form. He gritted his teeth together and swallowed shame, unable to find himself, lost off the brink and falling, falling; with no refuge but brute silence.

She huddled on the stool and gazed at him as if he were some curious marvel that had caught her attention, holding her arms around her breasts, her fingertips resting lightly on her own bare shoulder as if she covered herself modestly. It was no expression he could fathom or predict, though he had spent a lifetime learning to read the hearts of men on their faces. He could not fathom it, he knew not what she would do next, only knew with awful certainty that it would cut him open to the bone.

He had let her play this game; he had all but begged for it, giving himself away inch by inch, unheeding of the risk. But he had never known what it would be to find a woman who did not fear him. He could have laughed and wept to see himself eviscerated so utterly by a violet-eyed maid. He wanted her; he wanted this; he suffered it with a frenzy beyond any measure.

She rose slowly. He backed himself against the stone wall, gripping the cord above his fists. He had seen men on the rack with more courage than he could summon.

A faint smile touched her lips, as if she knew his thoughts. His guts went to liquid inside him. He tried to imagine her as a quarry, to find his cold shell, but she had taken it with his daggers and returned with his own strap to scourge him, to make him burn for her the way his skin blazed under the sting. All his shield obliterated, forfeited like a scrap of beggar’s cloth before he fully understood his jeopardy.

She pulled her hair together and drew it forward in one shimmering midnight tail over her shoulder. It fell down between her breasts. He had seen her do that, over chess, and adored it like a smitten boy, like a calf-head, the way he adored every move and thought and feature and limb of her. But he had had charge of himself then; he could conceal the depth of what he felt. Now her hair slid apart around a full pink nipple, split in rivers of sable down to her belly, and he could not move of his own accord to touch her. He heard himself make a sound that had no humanity in it, a groan like a simple beast.

He wished that she would raise the strap. He would have bowed down like a sinner at a whipping post; he had committed sins enough. He could bear that easy torture at her hand. But he realized what she intended too late to find any protection; he was raw skin and lost soul when she came to him, smoothing her palm down his chest to where the cloth pressed and chafed his erect rod.

With gentle fingers she drew the laces. No dream or night-sent climax, no succubus or angel could have made him impassioned as she did. He could not move away from her; he refused to swing and twist on this gibbet for pride or humiliation; he stood frozen with his boots planted apart as her hair fell down between them.

She was going to use him. She said so. He could hardly comprehend it. In her playing at queen, with him as her sport—in her game she said she loved him, a taunt that left him reeling with no defense against it.

She lifted her face and looked up at him with such a strange innocence. Such eyes like the depths of sweet blue Hell. He thought of flinging her onto the floor and ramming himself in, thought of it just as she released him to her hands and he could do nothing to prevent her.

She curled her fingers around him. White-hot bliss arced through his body; she held him between her open palms and he clung with both fists to the cord above his head, the only solid thing in existence beyond her.

She leaned on him, kissing his chest. He did not think any whore in Christendom knew the things she seemed to know; she bit and pulled on his nipples, sweet painful tugs that brought him to the edge of extinction. He clenched his teeth, enduring it, half-dying with furious pleasure in it. And then she let him go.

Shudders washed over him. He opened his eyes and looked down, panting, blinking at her bare feet and calves and her thighs. He did not dare lift his eyes any higher. The dark triangle between her legs was like some glorious secret, half-glimpsed, worth his life to reach. He would have slit the throat of the Pope himself only to see it, but her long hair swirled across it as she turned away. She left him hanging. Powerless. He made a silent moan, held inside himself, his eyes shut and his head resting back against the hard wall. His arms ached, but he was no more now than his sex, desperate to couple her even like this.

Wood scraped and thumped near his feet. He lifted his lashes and found her before him, at his height, her wide eyes on a level with his.

Without a word she kissed him hard, her mouth spread open. Her breasts pressed against him. Her hands searched and held his shaft. As he thrust his tongue in her mouth, she made a delicate feminine lift of her hips, pulling him in, sliding down on him hot and wet. The feel of it sent him almost to oblivion. She broke from the kiss and pushed back, her arms braced on the wall beside his head.

He could not move, forced to the depth of her in blind sensation. She stared into his eyes, her lips parted, rocking her slit against him, softly at first, and then harder, taking her pleasure of him while he was utterly subjugated. He could feel his seed leaking into her. She tilted her head and shoulders back, her womb sucking at him with hot sweet greed.

Her breasts rose before him. He lowered his head but he could not reach, he could only arch up into her as she kneaded his shoulders with soft cries, spreading her legs open and pushing her hips at him roughly. He surrendered to it wholly, lifting his head back to the wall, powerless while she clung to him and used him as any night imp would use a man; without reserve, her body pressing on him, careless of what pain or satisfaction she gave. Used him until she jerked and cried out wantonly, bursting around him.

His mind exploded with her peak. He had no thought. He had white nothingness in his vision, like sun-dazzle. He dragged down on the bonds, ramming up into her, pure pleasure as everything he was blew apart and fell away, beyond any hope that he could find it again.

She held tightly to him while he shuddered; her arms and body squeezing and throbbing around him. She rested her forehead on his bound and upraised arm, their bodies joined. Both of them panted for air. She kissed his skin, making small delighted noises. Then she lifted her face and looked up to his hands.

He was completely broken; he did not care that his wrists burned within the cords, or his shoulders ached with strain if she would stay leaning against him so that he could feel every breath she took. He turned his face and kissed her ear and her cheek, searching for her lips.

But she lowered her head and drew free, stepped down and away, leaving him. She released the cord with a suddenness that was bright pain. He rested his arms on his head, the only move he could yet make, letting blood flow into his joints.

She hurried away to the far side of the chamber. He slowly let down his arms before him, his wrists still bound together. He stepped away from the wall, found the end of the knotted cord around his hands and freed it with one tug. His fingers burned with blood returning. He held his wrists and flexed his fingers, breathing through his teeth. He fumbled at his breeches and still felt stripped naked even after he’d laced himself.

She came to him, her loose hair all about her like a veil. She held his belt, with his daggers sheathed on it again, and the stiletto in her hand.

"Careful," he said, his voice cracked and harsh, a grasp at recovering himself.

Bowing her head, she knelt at his feet. As if she were a pageboy, she lifted the waist-belt, her hair a black waterfall over her hands and arms. He looked down at her in amazement as she girded it around his waist, her moves graceful and lovely at the humble task. She buckled the leather and smoothed it with a reverent touch.

He could not find words. In wonder he let her open his arm and slide the dagger into the bracer’s sheath. She pressed her forehead to his wrist and his open palm and then kissed it.

He sank to his knees before her. He took her face between his hands and lifted her chin and stared at her. Her lips were shell-pink and soft, a little reddened and swollen from violent kisses. She looked into his eyes steadily, that open marveling look she had, as if the world were as new and fresh as dawn to her; the blue-violet depths of lakes and oceans and infinity beneath her lashes.

"You are my queen," he said roughly. "I have no other sovereign."

She smiled a little, like a pleased child. She nestled her face against his hand and closed her eyes. He felt the mingled touch of their breath, the brush of her hair, the confiding press of her cheek in his hand.

Conquered. Beyond the force of armies.

 

* * *

 

At tierce on their third day of waiting, she rolled over in the bed and lay against him, her hair in her eyes. The bells were faint; they had sounded each morn and None and Vespers every day since he had brought her here. He could see that she was listening, as if she had just heard them.

"We should make confession," she whispered, staring at the canopy above.

He understood her. The things they had done together must be mortal sin. Any priest on God’s earth would judge them acts against nature—for a man to submit to a woman, to take carnal pleasure in the pain and shame she gave him.

He could not repent, but he did not want her to be in danger. He brushed the hair back from her face. "I’ll ask Gerolamo if he’ll take you in secret," he said, tracing her cheekbone with his finger. "I think it can be done."

"And you," she said quickly.

Her eyes slayed him yet, each time she looked into his. Immeasurable depth of blue and purple, gazing up at him with unguarded honesty. He shook his head with a faint smile. "I cannot, beloved."

"In secrecy..."

"I cannot," he said again softly. He saw her remember, and realize. He could take no sacraments, nor wanted to. He only felt sorrow for this to come to an end, these brief days of serving her at any ruthless delight or sin she desired. When she was cleansed of it, and penitent, he did not think she would command him again that way. As well for that, too, for he had no defenses left to him if she did, and the world outside would make no games of weakness.

She lowered her lashes. He leaned on his elbow, watching her, taking pleasure in animal sensation; in their legs entangled warmly under the sheets, in her hand resting in light possession on his waist. She was thinking, and he could expect some unforeseen slant to her thoughts when she spoke them—he would be amused or confounded or alarmed, he did not know which.

She had discovered things in him. Things he had not known himself until she touched them.

"You fix my penance," he murmured, burying his face in her shoulder, his arm across her breasts. "Your punishment is like bliss for me."

She turned her body full toward him, so that he could not hide his face in shame for what he wanted. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Her eyes were very close; he could feel her lashes on his skin when she blinked, the brush of butterfly wings.

"Is it so for all men?" she asked shyly.

"No," he said. "You know it is not." He heard the trace of helpless anger in his own voice.

"Only you?"

"Oh, God." He turned away onto his back. He stared upward, looking into the abyss of himself that he had not known existed. "I know not. Haps all the angels despise me, and give me pain for pleasure."

She raised herself over him, her hand splayed across his chest. He bore her contemplation like a blade against his soul. Even her position, subtly governing, her light touch a mastery, made his body stir again. "I love your pleasure," she said.

"Jesu," he whispered, tilting his head back, his bare throat exposed to her, his rod growing stiff against her hip.

She slid her hand down and covered the tip. He stilled, with fear humming through his veins. She pinched the tender hood between her fingers until he panted, gripping the sheets beside him. Then she drew down his sheath and scored fire across the head with her nails. He made a hoarse sound, arching to her.

They both knew, they both had learned these small cruelties and delights quickly, as if demons whispered instruction in their ears. His body wanted to roll and take her down and cover her, but she would kill him then, she would tie him to the wall and he was more afraid of that than of the pain. The vision of it sent him near to spending in her hand.

She let go, the only thing that saved him. But she rose over him, sitting across his chest. Her hair fell down in waves over his throat. The scent of their couplings drowned him as she held him, his body pinned within the compass of her spread legs while she reached back with one hand and caressed and pinched and tortured his cullions and shaft with her fingernails. She made the tip of his rod slide over the velvet skin of her buttocks, exquisite pleasure as she hurt him. He thrust into her palm with a rough sob, his muscles working hard against the pain that was utter bliss.

Then she brought her body forward, releasing him just as he could no longer endure it, and knelt over him with her hands against the wall and her rosy slit to his mouth, allowing him to suck and worship her. He felt it like a gift, that he could taste the depths of her and make her tense and rock and arch back in ecstasy.

His shaft throbbed and burned for her, still sore from her hand. When she moved back with an eager panting he followed her, turning over, rising with fervent obedience as she commanded him to serve her. She took a stance before him on her knees and arms, to be mounted like a lovely she-demon. She had abused him so that it hurt to enter her, but he was lost in it, gloried in it, his mind gone near to roaring blackness as he looked down at the sight of her pale back and sable hair, her round buttocks and his rod plunging in. He held her hips and shoved deep; he heard her whimper and cry, but it was delight and demand, and he answered fully, commanded by her even as he spilled his seed in blinded ecstasy.

Afterward he lay with her close in his embrace, curled around her body. His pulse still beat loud in his ears. She was soft and warm and delicate. He felt it fiercely, that she was under his protection, and the idea mingled and twisted in his mind with the way he submitted to her rule, a strange and sweet confusion, hardly bearable.

Lethargy tried to creep into this limbs. He drew a breath, to deny it and clear his brain. He threw back the sheets, setting her away as he rose. She made no protest, only watching him from amid the dark tumble of her hair as he sat on the edge of the bed.

He looked across a space of infinity to where his daggers lay.

With another deep breath, he stood and dressed himself in clean breeches and gray hose of Gerolamo’s provision, aware all the time that she observed him. He tied off the laces. His belt and bracers lay tangled in his father’s chair. Without looking at her, he crossed to them and drew his stiletto, gauging the edge with a stroke across the back of his arm, shaving a patch of hair sheer as a razor. He sheathed the blade and took up the arm guards one by one, strapping them on.

"What manner were you punished as a boy?" she asked suddenly. "With scourging?"

He gave a slight laugh, like a harsh breath, and shook his head. "That is not punishment."

"Worse?" she asked.

"I was not punished," he said. He reached down for the waist belt. "Not as you mean."

She lifted her brows. "Never?"

"If I erred, he would have killed me," he said simply.

He felt her gazing at him as he drew each dagger and inspected their points. She hugged the pillow and made a grieving sound.

He had a sudden dread that she would shed tears for him. He girded on the belt and buckled it. "It was what I thought, at least," he said, sliding leather through the keeper. "Doubtless only a boy’s fear."

"How well you lie," she said.

He strode across the room and caught her hand and gripped it hard in his fist, holding it up to his mouth to kiss her fingers. "Dress for travel, my queen. The time has come for me to prove it."

 

* * *

 

The old priest was loyal, a Navona himself, distant blood-tie still clinging to this poor remote sanctuary in the hills beside the lake. The house of Navona had been scattered and decimated, the castles razed, the villages burned. It lived in hiding now, a veiled web of shared hate for Riata, a promise of revenge and blood and fidelity to the bastard son of Gian Navona.

But he did not let himself be seen; he wanted no eyes to recognize him, no more acquaintance or complications than he must have. Gerolamo had arranged it; the priest would shrive a veiled woman of her sins and give her communion and ask no untoward questions of who she might be or why she sojourned here. For the character of the sins she had to confess, Allegreto thought, it would seem plausible enough that she came here because she dreaded to voice them to any but a stranger and God Himself.

He stood with her at the water’s edge, under a tangle of reeds and overhanging olive bushes. The lake lapped softly, rocking the little barque as he held it ashore with his boot at the prow. What village had once clustered about the pale stone church was deserted now, the houses burned, the small piazza gone to goats and weeds. At the last moment, as his man made a signal from the arched shadow of the church door, Allegreto held her back. "When you confess—do not say that we adultered," he said, leaning down close to her heavy veil. "Do not mistake that we committed such a sin."

She turned her face toward him. He could not see her beneath the cloth. It had only occurred to him in that instant, that she might remember the island, the false bedding, and think she had fornication, too, on her soul. He did not want any speculations or guesses of such a thing, even by ancient silent priests, but mostly he found that he did not want her to believe it.

"We are wed before God," he said. "You had no troth to the Riata, no free consent."

The moment that he said it, with such insistence in his voice, he wished it taken back. He could see her pause, and think of things that she had not before. He cursed himself for a sotted fool, that he had even spoken to deny it, to remind her that she had never given free consent to him, either.

She bent her head without reply. In full black, her face hidden, she could have been any widow from city or countryside, come to light a candle for her husband’s soul. She carried a small basket of eggs for the priest, with a gold coin in the bottom of it.

He felt a wave of desire for her, a wild thought that he would go down on his knees and beg her not to go away from him into light and grace. She would return a stranger, made innocent again as she had been when she first came to him. She might even forget, or not want to remember. He thought of forcing her into the boat and back to the tower, a dream of locking her into it forever with him as her servant and defender; so satisfied with all he did for her that she would never want to leave.

Such thoughts were a blink in time. He did not touch her. "Go now," he said. "I will wait here."

He watched as she walked out into the sunlight. It was a small church, and old; bare white stone with blunt corners and a single slit for a window above the door. He knew it inside, knew what it would be to step from glare into the sudden murk, to pause a moment and kneel, accustom his eyes to the golden pinpoint light of a few candles. The odor of incense, the stone floor, the massive columns marching into shadow, painted with spirals of red-and-white that led upward to a few faded saints who smiled down at the center aisle.

He stood there exiled from it, with a longing at the back of his throat. As she reached the door that Gerolamo held open for her, and passed under the arch, he turned away.

She would come back. If she did not, he would go and seize her, and the old Navona priest would be no bar if it came to that. Better in haps if he did seize her, for then none could claim that she bore his society willingly, or defied the decree to shun him from any Christian relations.

He stepped aboard the boat, making a final tally of their provisions—clothing sufficient to see them into the mountain passes, small coin and walking staves, a tinder-pouch. Clouds had begun to roll over the peaks to the north where the steep flanks plunged into the lake. Gerolamo stood guard by the church door.

It creaked open again, far sooner than it should have. Allegreto glanced up, looking through the tall reeds.

She appeared in the entry with the priest at her side. The old man held the basket. They paused for a moment at the door, the priest speaking urgently to her as Gerolamo drew respectfully away.

She shook her head beneath the veil and put her hand on the cleric’s sleeve with a small reverence. Then she left him, her head bowed low, and walked rapidly across the open ground toward Allegreto, her feet kicking aside her skirts with determination.

He stepped back onto the sandy bank, signaling Gerolamo to retire with a jerk of his chin. "What passed?" he asked sharply, as she came under the tangled shade.

She put back the veil and looked up at him. "I will wait to confess," she said.

"Wait? Nay, there will not be another chance," he hissed. "I cannot vow safety elsewhere."

The priest was still standing under the church portal, looking after her. She could not have done more than tell him she would not make confession; there had been no time for more. Allegreto could guess that the old man’s pressing words had been strong advice to clear her soul. He took her shoulder, reaching to turn down the veil again. "I know it is difficult," he said more gently. "But he does not know you, nor will ever."

She threw the cloth back. Under the black hood, her skin was like ivory, her eyes the hue of the deepest lake. The shadows of reeds and branches played over her face. "Nay, it is not for shame." She lifted her chin. "I will wait for you."

"Wait for me?" He stood with his hands on her shoulders.

"I know you cannot. Not yet." She wet her lips. "But I will wait until you can be absolved, too."

He let go of her abruptly. "Do not be a fool."

"I thought on it these many hours," she said. "By chance I am a fool, but I cannot say I am full sorry, or ask for pardon alone."

"Why not?" he demanded. "I thought it was what you wanted."

"Because I thought on it—and thought—" She looked away from him, toward the lake and the dark clouds rising. "What if something goes wrong? What if we are slain?"

"So much the more cause to be in grace!" He caught her arm, giving her a little shake. "These are deadly sins, you know it. You’re in danger of damnation for such."

She looked down at his feet. "Aye, and ’tis pain of excommunication for me only to converse with you. I asked him, and he said me so."

"You asked him!"

"I did not say your name. I only asked it as a doubt I had, as if it were some neighbor."

He set his jaw. "And he answered rightly, but that we are wed, and so you may speak to me and such common things without penalty. I have inquired into all of those matters well enough myself."

She lifted her eyes to him. It was true that a wife need not shun her own husband—that much was certainly true.

"We are wed!" he exclaimed, with mulish resolve. "We will have it blessed in the church when we can." He looked toward the sanctuary. "But the other need not wait. Here is a confessor; you wished to repent and be shriven. It is foolish and...and"—he searched for sufficient words—"sinful to delay!"

She smiled then, as if she knew a secret that he did not. "I will wait."

"Elena!" Her easiness about it made him strangely angry. "It is your immortal soul at peril!"

She tilted her chin downward, like a wayward child, and looked up at him aside from beneath her lashes. "Are you a priest now, to be so alarmed for my immortal soul?"

He gave a huff of disapproval and stepped back. "Nay, I am no priest. But Hell is not a game of morra, for you to smile at me that way about it. I will not see you in danger of damnation; do not put that on my conscience, too."

"And neither do I wish to enter Heaven while knowing you could not. So I will wait."

"Elena! And risk—"

"Aye!" she snapped. "I understand what is at risk. And this is what I choose."

He heard her words as if they slipped through his mind without catching—sounds come and gone, senseless—and then their meaning struck him full, like a clout across his face.

The reeds bowed and rustled around them. An olive leaf fluttered down, a silvery thin shape, catching in a black fold of her veil. Her lower lip trembled as he gazed at her.

"I would miss you for eternity," she said. "I would grieve."

He shook his head, all the feeble movement he could summon. If she had held out jeweled cities, riches, towers of gold, all the stars and the sun and the moon offered to him in her hands, he could have spoken. But he could not. She would miss him in Heaven. She would grieve.

She did not know what she was saying, in truth. What she risked. He had read every poem and sermon and hymn about it; he had studied all the ghastly frescoes that portrayed the kingdom of Hell in terrifying and perfect detail. But that she would hazard the chance for an instant, or even think of it, for him...

He feared for a long moment that he would die where he stood, only from confusion. He put his hand on his dagger, for something solid, something he could understand in the roaring flood that engulfed him like water rushing from a broken dam of ice. "I pray you," he said helplessly. "This is madness. Go and repent. And then stay there. Stay away. Don’t come back."

She did not turn. She did not flee to safety and grace and the priest still standing in his infinite beckoning patience at the door of the church. "No," she said. "I will wait for you."