CHAPTER THIRTEEN

 

Servanne opened her eyes slowly, the lids heavy beyond belief. Her head was still pillowed on the bank of fragrant green moss, her body as yet suspended on several inches of warm, lapping water. The sand beneath her had been hollowed and contoured to lit the shape of her body, and enfolded her more snugly than the heated ticking of a feather-filled mattress.

She uttered a tiny gasp of dismay and allowed her lashes to flutter closed again. She knew she dared not look down to where the dark crown of his head was moving slowly, languidly between her thighs. She could feel the hungry insistence of his mouth and tongue and that was bad enough. To acknowledge she had regained the full use of her senses, or that she might have found enough strength to deter or dissuade him, would only make matters worse.

Worse? What could possibly be worse than lying helpless and vulnerable to a passion she had not known she was capable of feeling? What could be worse than permitting his hands and his lips free access to her body, or to respond to each deliberately provocative thrust of his tongue with soft cries and indelicate shudders that only invited and encouraged more unthinkable wickedness?

Her teeth tore at her lower lip to keep her from groaning aloud as she felt his hands skim up the gleaming litheness of her body. She half-heartedly cursed the knowledge in his dancing fingertips as he curled them around the straining flesh of her breasts, and, finding the nipples flushed with anticipation, he pulled them gently, abrading them with the calloused pads of his thumbs.

She stretched her own hands wide on either side of her, searching for something solid to grasp hold of. There was only water and sand on the one side, moss and slippery lichen on the other, and with a groan of resignation, she reached down and threaded her fingers tightly into his chestnut mane. She dug her heels deeper into the fine silt, aware of the water beginning to splash more violently over her hips and belly. Her arms tautened and her head pressed back into the moss. The heat leaped and flickered within her like a candle flame, the blue-white core burning in her loins, the orange and red sparks flaring and bursting behind her tightly squeezed eyelids.

Her gasped sobs of pleasure echoed wetly off the damp walls and ceiling of the cavern. Her shivers and shudders vibrated the steamy fingers of mist, causing them to thicken, she was certain, where the heat was becoming almost unbearable.

The Wolf’s mouth relented and his hands clasped her waist, drawing her down to where he knelt in deeper water. Servanne felt the urgency in his grip as he lifted her, held her against the incredible splendour of his chest, then slowly lowered her down over his turgid flesh. His dark eyes locked mercilessly to hers and there was nothing to be gained or lost by trying to deny the instant and violent spasms of pleasure that welcomed the solid, sliding penetration. There was nothing she could do but curl her arms more frantically around his neck and weather the same storm of pulsating contractions that forced him to pause and press a muffled groan into the curve of her neck.

He gathered her close, crushing her against the hard breadth of his chest, his powerful muscles bunching under the deluge of moist shivers that urged him deeper into her silken body. He was loathe to move too soon. The pleasure of holding her, of feeling the heat of her pour over and around him was almost pain—indeed, it was an agony demanding to be assuaged with each breath torn from his chest.

The Wolf rose off his haunches, carrying her with him, the wet skeins of her hair dragging through the water like spilled honey. He laid her back against the shifting mattress of sand and swallowed her cries as his thrusting body brought them both to a swift, savage release. Once, twice, Servanne’s hands tore at the bulging muscles across his back. Thrice she gasped and sent the feverishly gouging fingers to his flanks to ride the plunging motion of his hips.

Flung through one shattering wave of ecstasy after another, Servanne strained and writhed to a stunning climax beneath him. Even after their bodies ground to a dazed, reeling halt, the pleasure of his heat and presence within her continued to send tiny little spirals of sensation whorling outward from her loins to the farthest tips of her toes and fingers.

Worse, and worse again.

She should have heeded Biddy’s warning and stayed well clear of this creature of the forest. She never should have given way to her curiosity, never touched a hand to the hard, virile promise in his body, and never, never opened herself so greedily, so wantonly to the desires he roused in her. She should, by all rules of sanity and logic, be longing to see the last of him. Instead, she longed only to feel his hands roving hungrily over her body. She longed only to lie here in the steaming, mystic peace of the grotto, his hard body joined to hers, the texture of belly, hips, and thighs imprinted vividly on her flesh.

Moreover, she longed never to have to move from this place, never to have to discover any truths other than what she knew and felt to be irrefutable now and to her mind, forever.

But of course the dark head moved, as she knew it must, and the Wolf’s somber gaze sought hers through the glowing phosphorescence. He said nothing. In truth, he had said nothing—neither of them had—since she had taken her first tentative steps into the heated pool.

She suffered another mildly disconcerting shock as he bent his lips to hers and kissed her with tender thoroughness. When he released her, he did so on a sigh of feigned consternation.

“What am I to do with you now?” he asked quietly.

“Do?” she whispered, her eyes growing rounder and darker with alarm. “What more could you possibly do that you have not done already?”

The Wolf would have laughed if not for the suffocating pressure her words placed around his heart. He raised himself on his elbows and stared down at the bruised lushness of her mouth. Swollen and pink from his attentions, the sight was not kind on his composure. Nor was the damning residue of tears on her lashes, or the softly mottled flush that warmed the delectable plumpness of her breasts. And the mere thought of the fine golden hairs meshed with the coarser, blacker ones at his groin made it painfully clear there was little hope of regaining the cool indifference that had served him in their dealings thus far.

“Why is it I am left with the distinct impression you were a virgin in all but the strictest sense of the word?”

Servanne reddened, as much from the directness of the query as from the shivered response his voice triggered in her body.

“I … was not a virgin,” she insisted lamely.

“You were no longer in possession of your maidenhead,” he agreed, “But you were a virgin nonetheless.”

Servanne attempted to avert her head so she would not be forced to endure his mocking humour, but a resolute thumb tilted her chin back with ridiculous ease.

“Sir Hubert never bedded you?”

It was not so much a question as it was an expression of puzzled disbelief, and she could feel fresh tears welling along her lashes.

“He … never bedded me … like this,” she admitted haltingly.

Her words, and the ravaged emotions behind them, prompted the gray eyes to narrow and the Wolf to regard her in a new and disturbing light. Their bodies were so motionless, the surface of the water calmed to molten silver and the mist dared to venture close again, enveloping them in a creamy white veil.

“I did not miss the attention,” she explained in a rush, thinking his silence a request for such. “He was very kind and very good to me. A gentle, loving, and considerate husband in every other way. But … he was old, and … tired very easily. And … since I had no way of knowing … I mean, no way of judging … well, I did not know enough not to be content.”

“A woman’s logic,” he mused. “And you will have to forgive my ill-mannered curiosity for asking, but why did he not make other private arrangements for you?”

“Arrangements?” she asked, the warmth of only moments ago fading under an uncomfortable chill. “I was not aware my ignorance was such an offence.”

“No, little fool,” he said, smothering any hint of rebellion under the power of his lips. “I meant arrangements to insure you delivered him an heir.”

“A stud?” she gasped, shocked anew. “For breeding purposes!”

The Wolf shifted his weight forward to confine her outrage to a few half-hearted squirmings. “A man,” he said firmly. “For the purpose of protecting you against being sold or traded away in another marriage of someone else’s convenience. Surely Sir Hubert was aware of his shortcomings. He should have contrived to keep you from falling victim to a king’s greed again—especially if he was as gentle, considerate, and loving as you say he was. Had it been me,” he added intently, “I would have gone to whatever lengths necessary to protect you, even to finding a stud to breed you … even to binding you hand and foot to the bed and overseeing the deed myself.”

Servanne had no rebuttal, for indeed there was none. She would not have been in this predicament if she had given Sir Hubert an heir. Both she and the child would have become wards of the king until the heir came of age, but she would have been well within her rights to refuse any proposed unions which she did not favour.

What the rogue’s theory failed to consider, however, was that up until a few short hours ago, she had been more than content with the future arrangements made for her. She had been looking forward to her marriage to Lucien Wardieu with a naive eagerness that bordered on childish glee. There again, content in her ignorance, she had not been aware of any other choice available to her.

But was there any other choice? She had only his word he was come to England on a secretive, honourable mission for Eleanor of Aquitaine. She had only his word the golden-haired knight known throughout England as the Baron de Gournay was a cheat and an impostor. This man had bedded her, had introduced her to the wonders of her woman’s body, but was passion and pleasure any way to measure the truth from the lie?

The chill within her deepened and spread. Despite claiming revenge had played no part in this, would he not, when clearer, calmer reasoning prevailed, consider it a minor triumph to have bedded his brother’s intended bride beforehand? Men were all vainglorious creatures when it came to testing and proving their prowess; why should the Wolf’s motives prove to be any purer?

Fear, conscience, uncertainty … and a sudden awareness of where she was—sprawled naked and wildly dishevelled in a cave hissing with the ghostly voices of pagan rituals —caused Servanne to tense noticeably. She lowered her hands from where they rested on his shoulders and placed them like a subtle barrier between his flesh and hers.

“Please, I …”

“What is it? What is wrong? Surely you still do not fear me as a demon with horns and a forked tail?”

“Devilish,” she admitted softly, her fingers curling involuntarily into the crisp pelt of hair on his chest. “But no devil, although it does confuse me profoundly to try to find a difference.”

He smiled crookedly. “Confusion is a woman’s normal state of mind, so I neither take nor lay blame for causing it in you.”

Servanne watched as he bowed his head and caught one of her slim, delicate fingers between his lips.

“You have done what your brother will have expected you to do,” she said matter-of-factly, and reclaimed her hand.

His gaze lifted slowly to hers. “That was not why I did it.”

“Nevertheless”—she spoke slowly, searching his eyes for the truth before she continued—“the deed is done and he will know.”

A long pause—long enough for a future of loneliness, regret, and despair to flash before Servanne’s eyes—ended on a faintly snarled oath. “You will be safe enough. The Dragon will not take his anger out on you.”

“But … he will be angry.”

“He will be angry,” the Wolf conceded.

“And … knowing this … you are still determined to sell me back to him as planned?”

“Your choice of terms leaves much to be desired,” he answered with a frown. “I am not selling you back to him. I am sending you on ahead to Bloodmoor Keep because, for the time being anyway, it is the safest place for you to be until the matter is resolved.”

“Safe?” she gasped. “How can you expect me to feel safe when you have said and done everything in your power to warn me away from Bloodmoor Keep?”

“I have only endeavoured to warn you away from the man who resides there as its master. Bloodmoor itself cannot be held to account for the taint he has brought to it. You will be safe,” he repeated. “The castle is full of wedding guests— important guests—and the Dragon will do nothing to rouse anyone’s suspicions until the halls and chambers are empty again. If anything, he will be only too eager to act as if nothing has happened beyond paying an enterprising outlaw for the release of his bride. He will not willingly admit to anyone his brother has come back from the dead, or that there might be some reason for the nuptials to be delayed or postponed. Moreover, there are other reasons for secrecy and silence; reasons which forbid both Etienne and myself from settling our conflict openly and speedily, and those I dare not tell you, for it would most definitely place you in certain danger.”

“But … would it not be better for me to know of this danger?”

The Wolf brushed his fingertips over the tight, damp coils of hair clinging to her temples. “I told you he and I were much alike. Just as I can see so clearly what you feel and think at times, one look, one glance into these wide blue eyes of yours and he would know you were hiding something behind them.”

“Knowing this, you would still send me to face him alone?”

“I think you are more than a match for whatever tests the Dragon may put you through. Furthermore, you will not be completely alone,” the Wolf promised, twining his hands into the wet tangle of her hair. “Nor will you be without recourse if something … anything happens to frighten you. The queen’s official representative at the wedding is Lord Randwulf de la Seyne Sur Mer. You can trust him. He or any of his men will provide help or sanctuary if you need it.”

His frown cleared and he smiled in an attempt to soften the bluntness of his words. “La Seyne is another blackhearted bastard you will undoubtedly take to task for his boorish manners, but he is loyal to the queen, and none too fond of anyone who shares the humour of Prince John. You can trust him. I do … with my life.”

Servanne’s eyes brimmed slowly with fat, shiny tears. Seeing them, seeing the uncertainty behind them, the Wolf tightened his hands and drew her forward. She tried to avoid his mouth as it came down over hers, but his hands were firm and his lips forceful. His tongue was quick and efficient at reminding her how futile any show of resistance might be, and Servanne moaned softly, helplessly. She went so far as to push against the lowering wall of muscle before her hands betrayed their true desire and crept up and around the bronzed width of his shoulders.

 

At almost the same moment as Servanne de Briscourt was experiencing the greatest joy in her young life, the Dragon de Gournay was flushing with excitement.

“We believe we have found their lair, my lord,” Sir Aubrey de Vere reported. “We did not dare take the risk of creeping too close lest we betray our presence, but all signs indicate the Black Wolf has made camp in the ruins of an abbey once known as Thornfeld.”

“Thornfeld?” Wardieu’s blue eyes narrowed sharply. “Why am I not familiar with the name?”

“It is … was a cloister inhabited by monks who shunned all contact with the outside world. It is but a half day’s ride from here, no more, and not five leagues from where we lost the scent of the two foresters the other night.”

“By God, right under our noses,” muttered Wardieu. “And no one thought to search this ruined abbey before now?”

De Vere frowned uncomfortably. “It was believed the brothers who lived there were followers of the Antichrist. At any rate, the abbey was put to the torch and the monks slaughtered, and for nigh on eighty years, no one has set eyes upon the ruins or dared to venture anywhere near that part of the forest.”

“No one? Not even the hounds of our fearsome Lord High Sheriff who professes to have scoured every square inch of the forest in search of the outlaw and his band?”

“It is not an easy place to find,” De Vere said. “The trees are thicker than flies on rotted meat, and the hills are pocked with caves and gorges to easily lead a man astray.”

“Surely the local villagers know of its location, especially those who poach the king’s deer with impunity.”

“Indeed, my lord, and to them this Black Wolf would be a rogue hero; they would not betray his whereabouts even if they knew it. We could only find one toothless old crone who would even admit to knowing of the place, and then only because she was an imbecile and has kept to her own foul company in the woods these past twenty years.”

“Perhaps we should make this imbecile sheriff then,” Wardieu said angrily. “Who else would think to look first on cursed grounds for a man who would like the world to think of him as a spectre who can appear and disappear at will? By God, it is just as well Onfroi de la Haye lies so near death; I would strangle him myself for all the worth he is to me.”

Nicolaa de la Haye emerged from Wardieu’s pavilion and scowled up at the sun. Light filtering through the overhanging flap gave her milk-white complexion a faintly bluish caste. Her eyes were puffed and her stance unsteady, for she had needed strong decoctions of crushed willow bark to help her sleep without dreaming too vividly.

“What is all this about strangling Onfroi?” she grumbled. “I have been entreating you to let me do so for years, but you have always stayed my hand.”

“Thornfeld Abbey,” Wardieu asked brusquely. “Do you know of it?”

“Thornfeld? Thornfeld … the name tastes familiar somehow …”

Wardieu allowed a flicker of disgust to cross his face as he regarded her unkempt, dissolute condition. Was it just the sickly blue glow from the pavilion overhang giving Nicolaa’s raven beauty a brittle edge, or was it the stirring of memories that vaguely repulsed him? She had clung to him like a leech the past two nights, and while her body had afforded its usual erotic release for his tensions, there had been no real pleasure derived from her frantic manipulations.

Wardieu turned back to De Vere. “Have the men in full armour and ready to ride in twenty minutes. Are you certain you can find the place again?”

De Vere smiled wanly. “We still have the hag and she still has possession of half her fingers and toes. Milord D’Aeth has been most persuasive in winning her cooperation thus far; I have no doubt he can continue to do so.”

“Tell him he can have more than her fingers and toes to chew on so long as she lives long enough to guide us to Thornfeld Abbey.”

 

It might have been an hour, a week, or a month later when Servanne wakened from her passion-induced drowse. The air was markedly cooler where they lay twined together on the moss, although there was more than enough heat emanating from the Wolf’s body to maintain hers at a rosy flush. The edge of the pool was a few inches from where her fingers rested limply on the moss, but the slight disturbance caused by uncurling them and dipping them into the water produced a distinct change in the tempo of the heart beating beneath her ear.

Servanne sighed and raised her head with an effort. He was awake, but not much longer before her, judging by the heaviness around his eyes.

“The hour must be dreadfully late,” she said, warming self-consciously when she saw how intimately their bodies were positioned, one cradled atop the other in contrasting lengths of palest white and weathered bronze.

“You were sleeping like a kitten. I had not the heart to waken you.”

The Black Wolf of Lincoln—admitting to a heart?

Servanne smiled at the thought and looked around her in the gloom. Their clothes would undoubtedly be damp and wrinkled beyond any possible logical explanation. Biddy would know—the whole camp would know where they had been and what they had been doing for most of the afternoon. Her hair would take hours to dry and tame into a semblance of order. Her knees, back, and buttocks felt chafed raw from the sand, and she was certain, in any but the dimmest light, the whiteness of her skin would be marred by visually explicit bruises.

The gray eyes were observing her every change of expression and it was not too difficult to interpret her thoughts. An unexpected surge of protectiveness gripped him and he had to keep his hands flat by his sides to stop them from reaching out and gathering her back into his embrace.

He had not wanted this to happen, had not intended this to happen and for the very reasons that sickened and appalled him as he saw her trying very hard to shield her thoughts and emotions. The Dragon would see her guilt as if it were a beacon on a stormy night. Arrogant bastard that he was, it might not occur to him that she had allowed herself to be despoiled willingly. Hopefully his rage would remain focused where it should: on the man who had kidnapped and ravished his bride. But if the Dragon suspected for a moment there had been no force, no rape involved in Servanne de Briscourt’s submission, or if she betrayed by the slightest word or gesture that she preferred the touch of one man over the other …

Cursing inwardly, he turned away and started rummaging beneath the mist for his discarded clothing. He was shrugging his heavy shoulders into the green linsey-woolsey shirt when the touch of her hand on his scarred flesh stopped him again. It was only the tips of her fingers that gently traced the hideously misshapen weals, but it could have been a red-hot iron searing his flesh for the same impact it left on his body.

“These must have caused you a great deal of pain for a very long time,” she whispered.

“Wounds of betrayal hurt far more than any wounds of the flesh,” he said flatly and pulled the shirt down to cover the scars.

Servanne sat motionless a moment longer, chastened by his sudden anger, yet ignorant of the cause. She began sorting through the tumbled ruin of her own clothes, each small movement emphasizing the empty ache inside her. Even her hair, brushing over her bare skin, produced shivers that would never again foster innocent thoughts.

Had he been left unaffected by the passions they had unleashed together? Could a man do all that he had done to her, share all they had shared, and not be changed, altered in some way? She did not expect declarations of undying love and devotion but neither did she expect to have her clothes tossed casually across the moss as if, for him, it had been but a pleasant afternoon’s diversion.

“Might I ask another question without fear of having my head snapped off?”

“Ask it,” he said sharply. “And we shall see.”

“This black-hearted knight you would foist me upon to ease your conscience … does he know who you are and why you are here?”

“La Seyne?” Something akin to a smile glimmered in the dark eyes. “He knows.”

“Does he also know of this other … danger, to which you referred?”

“He knows more than he would care to have as a burden.”

“You said you could not provide proof of who you are until you are inside the castle. Is La Seyne here to back your claim when and if it becomes necessary?”

The Wolf looked at her with a grudging respect. A claim made against one of Prince John’s allies was useless and suicidal without the support of equally formidable and influential witnesses. La Seyne Sur Mer was the dowager queen’s champion; a knight regarded as being above reproach, who would be no easy man to fool or slough off with half-truths.

“You had best not show yourself to be too clever around the Dragon,” he warned softly. “He does not take kindly to minxes with sharp noses and sly tongues.”

“Another similarity with his brother. I confess I am becoming more intrigued by the moment to meet and compare qualities myself.”

The Wolf was leaning over to retrieve his deerskin leggings when the unexpected sarcasm of her words halted him. With their faces only inches apart, and the light from the mouth of the cavern at its most generous angle, Servanne again thought she saw something flicker in the guarded depths of his eyes. If she did, it was quickly hidden and her humour as effectively quashed.

“As I told you before, there are some things we do quite differently. If you doubt me, ask any one of his scores of former mistresses … or his current one: Nicolaa de la Haye.”

Hurt and confused by his unwarranted bitterness, Servanne stared down at the crumpled folds of velvet she held in her lap and wondered why it seemed to be his prime task to perplex and confound her to the verge of tears. Resolutely, she gathered her courage to ask one more important question of him, but when she looked up, her emotions as exposed as an open wound, he was not even paying her any heed. Something had drawn all of his attention to the wall of ivy, and that something was causing him to turn as still as stone.

“What—?”

His hand lashed out to cover her mouth and stifle the question against her lips. Another moment passed before she heard it too: the squeak of leather, the faint chink of metal on metal, the snap and rustle of carefully bent saplings.

There was someone in the woods nearby. Someone moving with the deadly stealth of a hunter closing in on a wolf’s lair.