“You can refuse me,” he said, his voice hard and clear in the darkness. The tension hummed through his naked body, every muscle drawn taut, as he waited for her response. Her silence was answer enough for him.
When he lifted the bedclothes to crawl in beside her, she did not cry out in protest. He felt her move on the bed, then heard the soft swoosh of her tunic hitting the floor. He turned toward her and, at long last, felt her naked body next to his.
In an instant, he had her in his arms, every part of her pressed against him. His hands moved over her as he kissed her hair, her face, her throat. Rolling her onto her back, he buried his face between her breasts and breathed in her scent. He sucked her breasts, first one and then the other, until her breath came in sharp gasps.
He tried to fill the yawning emptiness inside him with his passion, the feel of her smooth skin, the smell of her hair, the sensation of her body responding to his. Driven to possess her in every way, he lowered himself until his head was between her legs.
If this was sin, he was long past caring. He tasted her as he wanted to. As he’d wanted to from the first time. When she gasped in surprise, he tightened his hold around her thighs. She would have to make her protest loud and certain if she wanted him to stop. No other woman tasted like this, smelled like this. He licked and sucked and slid his finger inside her.
She writhed and moaned, but he would not be satisfied until he made her cry out. When she did, he surged up on his knees and pulled her hips against him, thrusting, fast and hard, fast and hard, until they cried out together.
He collapsed forward, panting, his weight on his outstretched arms, his forehead resting on her chest.
Neither had spoken a single word.
He lifted himself up and dropped beside her, spent.
Surely that frenzied coupling had satisfied the aching hunger inside him. But when her fingers brushed his cheek, he knew it had not. He wanted far more from her than he could trust her to give.
He lay on his back, staring into the darkness. Her fear in the first days of their marriage had been real. He was almost sure of that. But had she feigned the tenderness in the weeks that followed? Had she?
He was about to get up to return to his own bed when she moved beside him. The breath went out of him as her hand came to rest on the flat of his stomach. Then she leaned over him, her hair sliding over his skin.
And he was lost again.
She did not come to his bed as she used to. But each night he went to hers, and they made love. Silent, frantic, all need and want and anger. Afterward, he would leave her, unable to bear the intimacy of sleeping with her.
Though she let him into her bed each night, she avoided him during the daylight hours. Against his will, he watched for her all day. He caught only glimpses of her—leaving a room, walking on the ramparts with Stephen, running across the bailey yard with Jamie.
He knew it could not go on like this.
When she once again did not come to the hall to take her breakfast, he decided enough was enough. He took the stairs two at a time and entered the solar.
He stood outside the closed door to her bedchamber, asking himself why he was there. He did not know whether he could trust her. Whether her feelings were true. The hard truth was, none of that changed what he wanted. He wanted their relationship to be as it had been before.
Through the door, he heard her retching. He pushed the door open to find her vomiting into a basin. As she wiped her mouth on a cloth, she looked up. The apprehension that came into her eyes when she saw him took him aback.
“Are you ill?” he asked from the doorway.
“ ’Tis nothing. Just an uneasy stomach.”
His anger drained out of him. She looked so frail and vulnerable in her night shift, with her slim ankles and delicate feet showing below. Despite everything, a feeling of tenderness swept over him.
He took the basin and towel from her and set them aside. Taking her hand, he said, “Catherine, I want us—”
Before he could say more, there was a loud banging at the solar door.Damnation.
“What is it?” he shouted as he stomped into the solar.
To his surprise, it was not a servant waiting outside the door but one of his men.
“Lord FitzAlan,” the man said, “we have reports the French have landed a force.” He was breathless from running.
“What else do you know? Where are they?”
“They landed at Milford Haven,” the man said. “ ’Tis a disaster, m’lord. The castles at Haverfordwest, Cardigan, Tenby, and Carmarthen have all been taken. The French are now sweeping across the south of Wales to Cardiff.”
“God in heaven,” William swore, “the king and his army are in the North.”