Chapter VII

 

SHE HELD her breath as he bent over her, his lips finding her mouth as his fingers stroked her satin womanhood. Ellie reached up, her fingers running over his hair, shorn above the ears, heavy soft waves on his crown that fell over his brow.

Griff’s eyes were black and glittering when he met hers and held her tightly as she writhed under his fingering. He would not release her from his gaze. It was as if he took pleasure in watching her helpless as he pleasured her. Rebellious, Ellie thought of demanding he stop, but when she saw the look in his eyes, she could not form the words. He would not stop. Captain Griffith would not obey her commands now. He was no longer her guardsman, but her lover.

Ellie lifted up, rubbing against the palm of his hand with a moan. His rough, battle-hardened hand stroked her silky, slick core faster and faster. She closed her eyes, surrendering all to him, withholding nothing.

And then she was delivered to a place in her body she had never been before. Ellie cried out as she climaxed, wet and wild with the pleasuring his fingers had given her.

She fell back against his chest, weeping and half-conscious. She was weak and confused by the demanding hunger he’d awakened to have him inside her, knowing he would deny her if she touched the iron rod between his legs and insisted, as her body insisted.

For it was wrong to ask for what belonged to his wife alone. Ellie must not put him in the terrible position of choosing between his lust and his marital vows. He had done as much for her as he could. She could not ask for more.

But she was young and such a resolve could not take hold in her mind when her body and soul cried out for Captain Griffith. He held her in his arms, giving her time to gather her wits and calm the beating of her heart.

“It is not possible for the two of us to stay here together, is it?” Ellie tried to smile, to cheer him. He was very gloomy for a young handsome captain, though certainly there was much to be gloomy about in these times.

“Nay, it is not possible, my lady.”

“I have betrayed Tyndale this night,” she sighed. “And I do not care. There are many more I would betray besides. My title, the established order of my class, the duties of my sex—I would turn traitor on all to stay with you in this Weald Forest for all the days of my life.”

“Do not speak so,” he said, turning his face away from her. “It is not possible.”

“Because of your wife?”

“Aye.”

She nodded. “I thought as much. You are a better man than I, Captain Griffith. I would abandon all for a love such as I have found with you these past few days. But that is my nature and it is not a good one, as my mother is fond of telling me. You must escort me to Canterbury, as is your duty, and I will marry Tyndale, as is mine.” She turned quickly to dash tears from her eyes and then faced him with a smile. “It has been a wonderful adventure. I believe I shall be quite content in my new life, having enjoyed some excitement first.”

He reached for her impulsively and she flung herself into his arms. The tears could not be retrained. She wept against his chest.

“Shh, shh, you mustn’t cry. Tyndale will be kind to you—kinder than I have been or could be. He will be loyal and trustworthy and give you children. Above all, Ellie, you will be safe with Sir Tyndale as you are not with me. The life I lead is not secure for a lady of the realm.”

“But you said Tyndale was not the man for me!” She clung to his neck. “You said you would have me for yourself. I am not so precious that I would choose comfort over seeing your face each day. Comfort without love is no comfort at all.”

“You are young. Love means everything to you. One day you will feel differently. You would grieve for what you had given up to be with a poor archer.”

“I would not,” she said stubbornly. “But we shall not discuss it any further as you are not free to be with me in any case.”

“You are not free to be with me either, unless you would throw Tyndale over.” He grinned.

“I would throw Tyndale over a cliff if you would have me.”

Griffith lifted his face to the night sky and laughed. It was lovely to see him laugh again. His handsome profile softened and his brown eyes fixed on her, sparking with renewed lust. He was truly her captain and she loved him with a sharp bitter love that had two sides to it. One was pure glorious sweet joy and the other was yawning empty anguish. Like falling off a cliff into the cold and salty sea.

She would not show that side to him in the time they had left together. For the short duration of their journey to Canterbury, Ellie resolved she would be the bright jewel in his memory of this time. She wound her arms about his neck and drew his mouth down to hers. “If I cannot be with you, Captain, then you must ruin me for Tyndale. Weary me tonight with your demands. And pay me no mind when I beg you to stop.”

 

SHE GAVE herself up to him so eagerly that Griff suspected her of playing false with him. Then he recalled that Lady Elspeth was a girl experiencing physical love for the first time. For such a girl, one of high passion and sensuality, Ellie was more responsive than other maids of her age. If Griffith were her husband there would be no sin in her eagerness but Ellie was too artless to be ashamed.

He opened her gown and her ripe, full breasts spilled out. Ellie’s eyes fluttered closed and her back arched under his fondling. Griffith tongued her nipples and suckled, as delivered as she was from the restraints of their class and propriety. They were alone in this wilderness and he felt as though the wild had entered them both. He stroked the soft flesh between her legs and pressed his face against her breasts of a size too large to be so high and firm. He was a soldier and had known many women both highborn and low. The wives of noblemen and the courtesans of the court, Griffith had sampled them all since his marriage ended, in an effort to forget. But none had unmanned him as Ellie had done. None had the power to weaken and enflame him at the same time.

He moved lower, positioning himself between her thighs.

“What are you doing, Captain?”

She sounded genuinely puzzled. She knew so little about the sex act that Griff was angered on her behalf. Her wedding night would have been a terror to endure. “Do you trust me?” he asked.

“Yes. You know that I do. What is this?”

He eased her legs apart and tasted her sweet sex. Warm juices tasting of salt and heady nectar compelled him on, deeper into her body. He suckled the hard bud nestled beneath the folds of her labia and was rewarded with a choked gasp of pleasure from Ellie’s lips. He fastened his mouth firmly to her hot core and would not release her though she bucked and begged him to stop. Griffith took hold of her buttocks to restrain her, lifting her split womanhood to feast, flicking his tongue rapidly over the now engorged bud. He could not have stopped; he would have performed the act all night on her if she had allowed it, aroused to wildness by her moans.

But Ellie came too quickly. She sobbed his name, calling him captain, her love, before crying out as she was taken in climax. He gripped her tighter, his mouth held fast to her pulsing hot flesh and he drank of her fluid. Her youth and inexperience was the cause. She was sensitive to the slightest touch of a man. Griff was grimly satisfied that it was his touch she was experiencing and not another’s. Tyndale or de Burgh’s men would have robbed her of her chastity and left her revolted by the sex act. Griffith knew well the horrors women who were taken by force were made to endure.

Ellie lay trembling, her legs spread wide. His hot gaze roamed over her breasts, her belly and the glossy patch of hair between her thighs—the locus of his pleasure last night and the cause of his present undoing. He had taken her to save her from evil and had paid the price in a tormented longing to return to her bed. Griffith knew if she refused him now, he would not have the strength to stop himself from taking her again. What had lying with Lady Elspeth awakened in him? Had he become the creature he had fought to defend her against?

He was no better than de Burgh’s men, Griff realized. He had taken her last night against her will and in a cloud of deceit. Though she be willing now, it was to the loyal Captain Griffith she gave her body. Her willingness would change if she knew who he really was.

Ellie lifted her face to his and kissed him deeply on the mouth. She clung to his neck, sighing in his ear with unspeakable innocence. He squeezed her breasts, desperate to have more of her. With a growl that sprang from deep within his chest, Griff shucked off his breeches. He hesitated for only a moment, not nearly long enough to allow for second thoughts to change his mind—and entered her with one accurate thrust.

She let out a scream of release and pleasure that would have ended Griff there if he had not prepared himself for the moment of being inside her again. The hours he had been away from this place of wet warmth and strength, her vagina tight around his cock, as though resisting but wanting too. The grinding movement of their hips joined together said what their words could not. Ellie was being carried high on carnal lust and the uninhibited pleasure of his cock thrusting inside her. She babbled a nonsense language of surrender and resistance, alternately begging him to stop and urging him on.

“Tell me,” she pleaded. “Tell me again who you are and what we do here.”

“I am your guardsman, my lady, charged to protect you.” Griffith gritted his teeth, straining to hold on for a few more strokes. “I am a soldier of six and twenty and you are a maid of eighteen. We are too young for old men’s wars. We are ourselves. We are—”

He threw his head back and howled with his orgasm. He came with such force inside her that he felt emptied, weak and vulnerable. Her condition was not much better. Ellie was shaking from head to toe and when he looked into her eyes, he saw that she was crying.

“What have we done?” she sobbed. “Oh Griff, what have you done to me? I cannot go back to what I was and I cannot go forward with you. I am lost. Lost.”

He had not the words to argue with her because she was not the only one who was lost. Griff lay back against the cool wet grass and cradling Ellie in his arms. He gazed in mute despair at the cold, twinkling stars high above them. When she learned the truth, he would never see her again. As much as she could not suffer to be parted from him now and as eagerly as she gave her body to him, the very name of Griffith of Nottingham would soon give her cause to despise every moment spent in his company.

This was war. And she was a spoil of war. His prisoner, his prize, and his undoing. Griff felt his doom as a noose around his neck. Her scent was in his nostrils and her body pressed against his, quivering and tender.

She slept while he kept watch.