“What women?”
She rolled her eyes and sighed exhaustively in front of him. “All the women who fawn over you.”
“I wasn’t aware of any fawning.”
“Oh please, Gareth,” she said turning to give him a skeptical smirk. “You’re an extremely virile man. My goodness, you walk like you’ve just laid claim to a sultan’s entire harem. Why, Eleanor Fitzdrummond offered herself to you one day after she met you!”
“Tanon,” His eyes softened on her. The warmth in their heavily fringed depths made her scalp tingle. “If I didn’t know any better, I would think you are falling for a savage.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Her gaze strayed to his lips and she licked her own, trying to remember to breathe. “You’ve proven you’re no savage.”
“Have I?” he drawled. “Then you’re no longer afraid to make love to me?”
“I wasn’t afraid of you. I was unsure of what—”
Shifting slightly, he fit her rump neatly between his thighs.
Tanon’s eyes grew wide at how hard he suddenly felt there.
“You were saying?”
“I was saying…I think…” She swallowed. That was the problem. She hadn’t thought at all. He ignited fires in her, and then left her burning. He seduced and intoxicated her. He made her ache to do things she knew naught about, but she didn’t think abouthowshe would accomplish them. Good God, the man was enormous! “Will it hurt much?” she asked, too curious now to care what he thought of her query.
“Not if it’s done right.” His sensual grin convinced her that not only did he know how to do it right, but he did it marvelously well.
“Will you kiss me while you do it?” she asked him breathily, eager for his mouth only a scant few inches from hers.
“Aye. I’ll kiss you before, during, and after, and in places you never dreamed of being kissed.”
He lowered his head and brushed his mouth over hers, giving her a teasing taste of the tender prince he could be. He withdrew slowly and only a breath away so that she could see the hunger that gleamed in his eyes.
Tanon’s breath quavered and a delicious tightness spasmed between her legs. She was wrong. The savage was here, only controlled. His passion had been carefully harnessed while he had watched her being undressed, when he had fit her hose over her legs, and every night while he held her until she slept.
“Is it only fighting that sets free the beast?”
The raw, sexual heat in his gaze impaled her, his rough, ragged voice weakened her against him. “Be wary of what you ask for, lady, else I might show you.”
“Aw, no!” Alwyn trotted up to them to have a word with Gareth. He blanched in his saddle when he saw his lord about to kiss his wife. He turned to the others behind him. “He’s going to kiss her! What did I tell you bastards? Soon there will be a brood of littleCymry-Norman brats all over Wales!”
Tanon melted all over again when her husband tossed his head back and laughed.
Chapter Fifteen
They reached theWelsh marches two days later. Tanon clutched the window frame of her coach when they passed dozens of small villages, the inhabitants watching her troupe with frightened, suspicious eyes. She saw a grand castle in the distance, built high above a carved-out niche of hundreds of cottages. They crossed Offa’s Dyke and continued on unhindered for another two leagues before they were stopped by a group of mounted Norman knights bearing an unfamiliar standard of a hawk with four outspread wings.
When the carriage rolled to a halt, Tanon stuck her head out the window. A guardhouse made of stone and timber, with more armed knights patrolling the low battlements, loomed before her.
“Quelles sont vas affaires au Pays de Gales?”One guard with flaxen hair peeking out from beneath his helm called out. Twelve other guards flanked Gareth and his men on every side. The one who had spoken rode toward Gareth with one hand on the hilt at his side.
“Speak the language of the Angles and the Saxons as your king has ordered.” Hereward called out from atop the carriage.
The flaxen haired knight turned to him. “Who addresses me?”
“Hereward the Wake, friend of King William, who himself speaks in the tongue of those he rules.”
A flurry of whispers rose up from the knights as Hereward announced his name. Many of them still harbored ill will toward the Saxon rebel for his years spent fighting against their king, but none considered laying a finger on him. Not only was it known throughout the land that King William had pardoned him, but none of them wanted to fight with six feet four inches of pure brawn.
“Very well. I am Sir Philip Bonvalet, commander of Lord Richard D’Avre’s first regiment. Now, I ask you again in your own tongue, what business have you in Wales?”