White Lion's Lady Read online

  “It tickles,” she gasped, laughing softly.

  He gave her a wicked lift of his brow. “I'm going to tickle you some more.”

  Sliding his hands down her hips, he removed her gown entirely, lifting first one long leg, then the other, from within the tangle of skirts. He draped the kirtle over a faldstool near the pallet, then turned his attention back to Isabel, his breath rasping out of him on a vow. “Mon Dieu, you are exquisite,” he whispered, his loins thick with the heat of mounting passion, his arousal straining against the confines of his clothing.

  He positioned himself between her legs, reaching over to lift her slender foot in his hand. He leaned down, kissing the fine bones of her ankle, letting his mouth slide up the length of her calf, along the side of her knee, bending forward as he reached the velvet span of her inner thigh. She breathed a voiceless, “Oh!” as he sucked a mouthful of the tender flesh between his teeth, teasing her with a playful nip before hooking her bent knee over his shoulder so he could lower himself between her parted legs.

  She went rigid the instant his tongue touched her. Her pelvis arched and she started to squirm away, but Griffin held her in place, his hands resting lightly atop her hips, letting her know there was no need for shame, nothing to fear. As he had with the rest of her body, he made love to her slowly here as well, coaxing her to a writhing frenzy before taking the swollen pearl of her femininity into his mouth and laving it to the point of sudden, shattering release.

  Isabel's climax nearly unmanned him. She keened against him, whimpering his name, her reaction so unreserved, so complete, it was all he could do not to strip his clothes off and bury himself deep within her. But he had promised her the night was hers, and so he rode out the wave of her release, easing her back to earth with gentle kisses, soft caresses, murmured endearments.

  She reached down for him, her fingers scrabbling for him and twining in his hair. “Please . . . enough . . . “

  “Enough?” he chuckled, crawling up the length of her. “My lady, we are only getting started.”

  Her laugh was breathless, her eyes dark beneath her half-closed lids. “I want to feel you,” she whispered, bringing her hand up to stroke his face. “I need to feel your body.”

  “As you wish.” Braced on his knees astride her, Griffin unlaced his tunic and stripped it off. He flung the linen shirt to the floor, pausing to revel in the feel of Isabel's fingers touching his bare skin, his medallion pendant sliding cool against his skin as her hand drifted across the planes of his chest and down along his abdomen. Her gaze lingered where his erection rose thick and throbbing between his legs, stretching the fabric of his hose. “Feel what you do to me,” he growled, taking her hand and placing it against his straining flesh. “Feel how much I want you.”

  With his guidance, she closed her hand around the length of him, her parted lips and smoky gaze telling him that she wanted to know more, that she was ready to experience whatever he would show her. Shaking, exalted, Griffin unfastened the points of his hose and braies, rolling the last of his clothing off his hips and kicking it aside. Isabel made a soft exclamation of surprise as his arousal sprang free of its encumbrances, a guileless reaction that brought a prideful grin to Griffin's lips.

  “Does it hurt?” she asked innocently as she gazed upon his swollen member, sounding so concerned he nearly laughed aloud.

  “In a way,” he admitted. He slid down on the bed, covering her, holding himself above her and teasing her belly with the blunt head of his penis. “It aches for you, my lady.”

  “I think I ache for it, too,” she whispered.

  Griffin eased himself between her parted thighs, his shaft slipping deliciously into the cleft of moist curls. The wet heat of her body seared his flesh, soliciting a deep shudder of sensation from within the very core of his being. Instinctively, his hips began to rock against her, his sex shifting into place, impatient to be in her. Her moan of pleasure made him harder as they slid together, not yet joined but melding, yearning, moving as one. She matched his rhythm, clinging to him, her fingernails biting into his back, her legs coming up around his to hold him to her.

  When he would have tried to slow down, tried to pace himself, she urged him on with a single word: “Yes . . . “

  And then, he was beyond wanting, beyond desire, caressing her breasts, kissing her mouth, grinding against her in an effort to get closer, to bring her back to the brink of ecstasy when the pain of what he would do--what he had to do to answer his own need--would not be so difficult. She was nearly there; her limbs were quaking, breath coming fast and hot against his face.

  “I have to be inside you,” he murmured, not giving a damn for how needy he sounded in that moment.

  She clutched at him, squirming in passionate frustration. “Oh, yes . . .”

  He couldn't have waited any longer if his life depended on it. Holding her between his braced elbows, he shifted his pelvis, and with a single, deep thrust, he penetrated the barrier of her maidenhead. She cried out, but already her sheath was convulsing around him, the tight walls of her womb wracked with the force of the climax she had been so close to finding before he entered her. Despite that his body was taut, fevered, trembling with the need for release, Griffin held as still as he could, allowing himself only the smallest of movements while Isabel caught her breath, adjusting to this new, sensual invasion.

  He placed a kiss to her damp brow. “That was the worst of it, I promise.”

  “Well, it wasn't so bad,” she whispered shakily. “It hardly hurt at all.”

  Griffin smiled down at her, his brave little angel. “You're crying.”

  “Yes,” she answered. “Because I'm happy.”

  Prayerfully, humbled, he kissed the tip of her nose. “So am I, my lady,” he said, hoping she wouldn't hear the bittersweet edge to his voice.

  With a reverence that deepened every moment he gazed upon her, Griffin began to move within the sweet sanctity of Isabel's body. She accepted him fully, rising up to meet his light, easy thrusts, caressing his back, kissing his chest and shoulders, as he slowly found his pace once more. He rocked against her in a numbing brand of bliss, filling and withdrawing, his tempo growing more urgent as her womb clenched around him, coaxing his release.

  Too soon, he felt his climax building, climbing to crescendo. He was lost to the feel of her, the scent and taste of her . . . lost to the very thought of her. He whispered her name, praising her as he filled her with the breadth of his passion, his strokes long and deep, hips pumping, his sex raging toward completion. He wanted to make it last, but he was too hard, too hungry. Too far gone.

  His control began to slip, then snap. He lifted her pelvis and impaled her with a final, savage thrust, a hoarse shout tearing from his throat as his seed began a fast, molten rush from his body. Only at the last moment did he find the strength to catch himself, somehow managing to pull out of her silken warmth and roll away before he cost Isabel anything more than her virginity that night.

  She turned toward him on the mattress after he left her, placing her head against his chest and stroking him as he shuddered, struggling to find his breath. Her lips were tender on his bare skin, her kisses sweet with concern. “Are you all right?” she whispered.

  Griff gave a thick chuckle and wrapped his arms around her. “Oh, yes. I don't think I've ever been better.”

  He could feel her smile curve where her cheek rested against him. “My White Lion has saved me again,” she told him, her voice like a sigh. “I thought I owed you my life for rescuing me the day we met, but now . . . after tonight . . . “

  “No,” he said, gathering her close. “I was the one in need of rescue, my lady. And you have given it well beyond what I deserve.”

  She said nothing for a long moment, her fingers stroking idly at his chest. The evening had grown still, the monastery chapel having faded to quiet. Mass was ended; on the table next to the small bed, the candle sputtered and breathed its last. Griffin eyed the bowl of smoking, melted tal
low with scorn.

  “I shouldn't stay here much longer.”

  Isabel's reply was soft, regretful. “I know.” She toyed with the medallion hanging around his neck, lifting the half-moon of bronze into her palm, rubbing her thumb over the enameled design. “Would you think poorly of me if I told you that it wasn't enough? I thought I could be satisfied with just one night, but it's passing so quickly . . . I'm afraid to let you go.”

  “My sweet lady.” He bent his head and placed a kiss in her hair. “Sometimes we have to do things, even if they scare us.”

  It wasn't the answer she was looking for, he realized, but he would not give her false hope, not after all she had given him since he had come to know her. In truth, he shared her fears, perhaps more for his understanding of how short their time together now really was. As much as he hoped for her happiness, he could not bear the thought that she might forget him one day. They would always have the memory of this night, but in time another man would bring her pleasure. Another man would give her children, be at her side as she grew old. As unfair as it was for him to despise that man, Griffin found himself nursing a profound contempt, a selfish want to know that Isabel would take something with her from their time together, something to remind her . . . and then he knew.

  “I never forgave myself for losing that medallion,” he heard himself telling her as she let the amulet fall to rest once more against his skin. “It was my greatest treasure, everything of value that I had as a youth.”

  “And you said you planned to sell it at first chance,” she scolded, slapping her palm down on his stomach in light reprimand.

  He chuckled, but there was little humor in his voice. “I never would have sold it. And I should have thanked you for keeping it for me.” She started to say something, no doubt ready to deny his appreciation, but her reply cut short when he reached up to remove the medallion from around his neck. He brought it down before her, draping the long chain over her bed-tousled head and letting the pendant settle between her bare breasts. “I want you to have it back.”

  “Griffin, I can't,” she said, meeting his gaze. “You said yourself it's your greatest treasure. It's all you have of your family . . . “

  If he had family at all, Griffin supposed that he was looking at it now. If the bond of blood could be as thick and true as what he felt for Isabel, then he need never know any other kin. She was all that mattered to him, and if he had been searching for a place of belonging before, he had surely come to know it with her. He lifted the medallion into his palm, staring at the image of the white lion rampant, the one half of a full circle that seemed somehow complete now that it rested over Isabel's heart.

  “This is where it belongs,” he said.

  And with her sweet, answering sigh, the night became a fragile thing. Too fragile for talk, and so they came together again without words, a joining of lips and hands and bodies, a breathless twining of hearts and souls. Griffin brought Isabel astride his hips and slowly guided her to another climax, watching as she rode him to the precipice of bliss and following her over the edge in the next instant. This time, he could not stop himself from filling her with his essence; he was too desperate to hold onto her, to hold onto the moment.

  Together they shattered, their gazes locked, burning. Neither could look away; neither could let go, not even when their bodies collapsed on the bed, spent and sated. Trembling, silent, they clung to each other, unwilling to separate. Unwilling to surrender to their exhaustion, or to acknowledge the threat of the fast-approaching dawn.

  Chapter 26

  He was gone when Isabel opened her eyes that next morning. He had left, probably sometime after she had finally fallen asleep, but his scent and the memory of last night's splendor remained. She stretched her limbs and rolled to put her face in the thin down bolster, breathing in the arousing muskiness of sweat and leather and man. She could smell him in her hair and on her skin and she thought she might die for the pleasing ache it brought to her soul.

  Her body knew a pleasing ache as well, a fullness and a void. Though she had never been so tired, down to the depths of her bones, never had she felt so alive. And she knew that the source of her awakening could be summed up in one word: Griffin. She had to see him. She had to tell him how special last night had been. She had to know if he felt any fraction of the bliss she did for what they had shared.

  Scarcely able to breathe for her excitement to start a new day with him, to put herself near him again, Isabel pushed up off the pallet and reached for her clothes. And then she heard it.

  The slowing beat of horses' hooves on the approach. The clink and shift of riding gear. The jangle of armor and the low rumble of men's voices. Someone hailed the father abbot in the courtyard with an indiscernible greeting, the tone short, serious. Demanding.

  Dear God, was it Dom's men?

  Panic rising in her throat like a knot of cold, cutting steel, Isabel threw on her chainse and blue silk gown, her fingers working like mad to lace the bodice, the injury at her arm burning for her haste and lack of care. She shoved her feet into her shoes and lunged for the door to her chamber, frantic to find Griffin. Frantic to warn him that they had been found.

  She flung open the panel, dashing out as it banged against the wall, a sound that seemed to echo like a clap of thunder in the corridor. The leather soles of her slippers slapped on the smooth stone floor as she ran through the quiet infirmary building. Isabel headed for the main artery of the maze of halls and passageways, in the hopes that she could flee to the back of the compound before the guards forced their way inside to search for them.

  With every pained stretch of her legs, every lurching beat of her heart, she prayed that Griffin was safe somewhere on the monastery grounds. She begged God to keep him hidden from the soldiers in the yard, asked for speed in reaching him before either of them fell into Dom's hands.

  Let her be taken if one of them must go, she pleaded as she rounded the last corner, breathless and panting. She half stumbled, her fingers clawing at the rough wall to keep from falling as she pitched into another wild run down another corridor.

  Please, Lord, she silently intoned, let her find him before the guards did. She would go with them willingly, so long as she could be certain Griffin would not be harmed . . . .

  “My lady.”

  The deep, unfamiliar voice issued forth from behind her, a calm command that stopped her halfway down the wide passageway that would have led to freedom.

  “My lady, Isabel de Lamere.”

  Slowly, making good her bargain with God, she turned to face her fate. A knight stood in the gloom at the end of the main corridor, his large frame blocking out the scant light at his back, casting him in ominous silhouette. A rich surcoat of shadowy color fell from his broad shoulders to his knees, the line broken by a wide belt of leather cinched at his waist. Though his clothing bespoke his titled rank, he wore a suit of chain mail armor, as if fully prepared for the prospect of battle; his sheathed sword a slash of darkness at his hip, his polished steel helm tucked under his arm.

  “It is I, my lady,” he said when she made no immediate reply. “Sebastian, Earl of Montborne. Your betrothed. I have come to take you home.”

  * * *

  Griffin sat on a turf-covered bench in the monastery garden, his elbows resting on his knees, his head dropped low between his shoulders as he stared sightlessly into the small reflection pool at his feet. He had gone there for solitude, to find some space to think, having been able to tear himself away from Isabel's side only a few short hours before. But now, hearing a shuffle of activity within the cloister-- the stir of voices, the unmistakable sounds of arriving soldiers--he knew the true reason he had sought the garden's seclusion: He had gone there to hide.

  The day he had been dreading was here . . . .

  Sebastian of Montborne had arrived, and Isabel was soon to be leaving.

  He supposed he had felt the awful coming of it in his bones that morning, when he woke up beside her, hold
ing her with a fierceness that was too gnawing, a contentment that was too complete, too profound to last. It hurt too much to hold her knowing he would have to let her go, and so he had left her. Now that her betrothed was come to fetch her, Griffin hoped that she would understand his absence. He hoped that she would not regret the beauty of the night they had shared, that she might know what it had meant to him . . . what she meant to him, and always would.

  But more than that, his cowardly heart wished--prayed as never before--that she would simply ride away to where she belonged, and spare him the pain of watching her go.

  * * *

  “My lady, did you hear me? You've nothing to fear anymore; you're safe now.”

  Sebastian of Montborne took a careful step toward her, his free hand extended in a gesture of peace, surely meant to comfort the stranger who was his bride, a woman who stood numb and trembling a few paces away from him. She could not believe what she was hearing, could not make sense of what she was seeing. Not Dom, not a retinue of hard-eyed guards ready to seize her to meet the whims of a scheming lord and a wicked prince . . . but her betrothed.

  She should have felt grateful. She should have felt relieved. Instead she felt a deep sickness in her soul, a wretched hopelessness that clawed at her, sucking the breath from her lungs as it sought to sap the strength from her legs.

  It had been easy to deny that she was sworn to the earl when he was merely a name flitting about in her head, a guilty feeling of obligation that she had allowed her heart to push aside. But now that he was here, flesh and blood, a man whose only trespass was to be chosen by the king to be her husband, Isabel knew a terrible sense of shame. He had given her no cause to fear him and yet she shook with bone-deep dread as his spurs ticked on the stone floor with his approach.