Dream of Me/Believe in Me

heavy. She made her way to bed scant moments before sleep claimed her.
    I N THE DEPTH OF THE NIGHT, KRYSTA AWOKE. TURNING over in the bed, instinctively reaching for the warmth and strength to which she had become accustomed, she encountered only emptiness. It was enough to drive her from her dreams. She sat upright, looking around with some confusion until she remembered where she was. Realized, too, why she had awakened. With a small sigh ather own indiscretion, she hugged her knees and tried to convince herself that she could go back to sleep. Her effort failed. Instead, she left the bed and padded back to the windows from which she could look out over the town below. As at Hawkforte, the walls were manned. Torches blazed along them and she could see the guards walking back and forth. Otherwise, it seemed as though everyone slumbered save herself. The lamps were extinguished in the houses and shops, the cooking fires well banked.
    Yearning for some distraction, she looked around the room. The stone floor was covered with woven rush mats instead of the more usual loose rushes. The walls were paneled with wood set in intricate designs. Along one wall hung a tapestry depicting huntsmen pursuing a wild boar. As she was admiring it, Krysta noticed a door set in the wood paneling that she had overlooked previously. Surprised, she tried the latch and was yet further startled when the door swung out into an adjoining room.
    Hawk heard the door open and went very still. Under ordinary circumstances, even here in the residence of the king, his hand would have sought the sword never far from his side. But he knew who had been given the adjoining room because Alfred's steward, spiritual kin to the redoubtable Edvard, had told him so. The man had mentioned it matter-of-factly as Hawk was retiring for the night, thereby giving evidence of the skill and discretion he brought to his position. That such thoughtfulness had been shown him did not surprise Hawk. Alfred, for all his genuine piety, was a man who had struggled in his youth with what he regarded as excessive love of women. In marriage he found the reconciling of passion and piety, and was a happy man for it but he had not forgotten how hot the blood could run.
    Unmoving, eyes shut, he listened to Krysta's soft footsteps as she crossed the room. She came hesitantly, pausing several times, and once she seemed to turn back,only to reverse herself. At the side of the bed, he heard the sudden agitation of her breath and had to fight against a smile. The night was warm, he slept nude and without covers. The knowledge that she was looking at him swiftly began to have the predictable effect and he wondered how long he would be able to maintain the pretense of sleep. A soft sigh escaped her and it tugged at his heart. He knew that the seduction he contemplated was reprehensible, but he told himself it was all for an honorable end—that she should marry him—and besides, he had never hesitated to take advantage of any weakness in battle. That this was combat of a sort he did not doubt. He merely salved his conscience with the thought that he intended neither of them to lose.
    Even so, he found himself hard-pressed to remain unmoving as he felt the whisper touch of her fingers gently easing aside a lock of hair that had fallen across his brow. She sighed again and this time there was a little catch to her voice that sounded suspiciously like a sob. He clenched his hands into the mattress to keep from reaching out for her and hoped she would not notice.
    Krysta did not, engulfed as she was in a riptide of emotion. Not even she could swim against so strong a current as seized her the moment she saw him lying on the bed, his splendid body fully revealed to her. That current had drawn her into the room, to his very side, and even to touch him against all her better sense. She had to leave.
Had to.
Yet there she stood as though frozen, fighting the urge to touch him yet again. To let drop her shift and ease onto the bed beside him. To trace the chiseled line of his mouth with her fingers and twist within them the silken curls of his hair. To run her hands over his powerful shoulders and along the contours of his heavily muscled chest, over all that taut, burnished skin. To twine her legs around his and tease her toes down his sinewy calves. Tomove between his thighs and gently cup him in her palms, to taste him as he had tasted her …
    Krysta lifted the heavy mane of her hair with